As an independent author I am all to well aware of the difficulties in making a living from writing alone. The drive for celebrity biographies and for small selections of cut price top sellers results in a very thin market for everyone else.
Having tried to break through into the mainstream for a few years and, in general, being told that my writing was good but that there was no market for fantasy, I finally decided to go down the digital PoD (print on demand) route. This method only brings in 'pocket money' but at least I have the pleasure of continual sales and some great feedback from my readers.
Perhaps as ebooks become more popular some of this will change but I have the feeling that the 'big' players will start to dominate this media too.

Taff Lovesey, Bourne, Lincs

It's no surprise that authors are living on the poverty line when bookstores takes 40% of the retail price & supermarkets to slash prices of a paperback to around £3 leaving an mainstream author earning 10% royalties of 30p for each copy sold, yet they still got to pay an advance back to their publisher. Is it any wonder as a result that more authors are opting to be independently published, with bigger royalties & to fix their own prices to minimise the poverty of writing. In a recent media poll, it showed that independent authors are increasingly taking a larger share of the book buying market.

Mark Radford, Portsmouth, Hampshire

Certain chains of bookstores must bear some responsibility for this, surely? If a book isn't on a the 3 for 2 offer or similar, nobody is ever going to see it, let alone buy it. How many would-be readers bother going past the special offers to the back of the store where the interesting stuff moulders away? It's only the bookseller that benefits from mass sales of a few titles, certainly not the reader or writer.

Vicky Mills, Exeter, UK