This week, the Daily Telegraph published a piece about grants given to Welsh writers, under the headline Taxpayer funds Welsh authors to write books no one wants. The article quotes Julian Ruck, a self-described author and freedom of information campaigner, who obtained figures on how some of the subsidies have been spent. He calls the grant system outdated, especially in the era of ebooks.
I thought that the Telegraph didn't publish fiction, but the editors have been duped. The Welsh Book Council's annual report tells you Ruck has a strong imagination. He asserts that the council received £7.6m of public money, but in the report, the correct figure for 2011-12 is £4,587,900 (money received from the Welsh government). The council generated a further £3,167,234 from its own activities, including sales, not far off matching its grant receipts. Ruck asserts that At Arm's Length by Geraint Talfan Davies sold 176 copies, but the publisher's figure is four and a half times that – no disgrace in commercial terms, regardless of subject or size of market [see footnote]. It's not hard to see how an attack on the public funding of publishing in Wales would be attractive to a rightwing paper in austerity Britain – never mind that arts funding is devolved and, therefore, of no concern to readers outside Wales.
I want to defend grants for writers and publishers on two grounds. The first is the obvious argument that public subsidy is necessary to supply important gaps in the market. The market determines price, but not value. Bodies like the Welsh Books Council and Literature Wales are investing in a whole cultural sector which cannot operate in the usual market terms. Welsh predates English in the British archipelago. If you want to know what cultural despair is, go to the US and see, as I did recently, the bleakness of a Native American poet trying to piece together his tradition from oral sources recorded by a white anthropologist. The rarity of a plant makes its preservation more important, not less. Nobody in their right mind would argue for the abolition of an ecosystem on the grounds that it's financially unviable – there are too many fundamental benefits centred on it.
The second reason for dismissing Ruck's attack is that it completely misunderstands the complex relationship between the subsidised and commercial markets. Far from being distinct, they bleed into and need one another. Take, for example, Patrick MacGuinness, winner of the 2012 Wales Book of the Year with his first novel The Last Hundred Days about the fall of the Ceausescus. Published by Seren Books, the novel won the Writers' Guild Award for best fiction book, was longlisted for the Man Booker prize, the Costa first novel award, the Desmond Elliot prize and the Authors' Club best first novel award. The original grant that enabled Seren to publish the novel has acted as seed money, so that profits can be reinvested in future talent – excellent value for money.
On an individual level, the creative economy works indirectly. It's not a matter of putting in a pound and receiving a set piece of work from it. I'm not speaking here of commercial success (if you want that, become a banker) but of artistic quality. My first book of poems in Welsh, funded by the Welsh Book Council, paid me just over £14 I did consider framing the cheque (as my cousin did the $30 he received for expenses during each of four flights in the space shuttle), but I though it'd be useful for groceries. I publish Welsh poetry in Wales, English-language work with Bloodaxe Books and non-fiction with Harper Collins in London and America. Work in one form has an effect on what I can do in all the others. Therefore, a modest grant for a book of Welsh-language poems has a direct impact on what I can sell, say, in the US.
The imagination works by underground streams, proceeds by snakes and ladders. You grow new writers by doing not one thing but many different activities at the same time: promoting critical thinking, publishers whose commercial successes can subsidise fledgling talent and promotional services to expand the reach of high-quality writing like that of Owen Sheers and Rachel Trezise, Deborah Davies, Horatio Clare, Catherine Fisher, Fflur Dafydd, Belinda Bauer and many others.