I was as shocked and saddened as
the rest of the world by the death of Anthony Bourdain. Recently I contributed
one of my sourdough loaves to a friend’s luncheon and he regaled me with
imitations of the ‘feed the bitch’ line from a Bourdain episode on feeding your sourdough starter. A couple of weeks later Bourdain was gone.
I was surprised to read his estate
was valued at just over a million. He was a television personality with a
number of shows. He was a traditionally published author, and I assume his
sales will increase with his death, as they perversely always do. Nothing sells
like death, eh?
In Australia the news has been
full of a legal battle between author Colleen McCullough’s estate and her
husband. Her most recent will had left her estate to a library in the US but her
husband contested it and won. He was awarded the total of two million dollars.
Wait… McCullough?! You mean ‘The
Thorn birds’, the Masters of Rome series… the movies, the film rights…
everything?!? The Thorn Birds alone sold 33 million copies. It has pretty much
never been out of best seller lists and was recently voted Australia’s
favourite beach read.
And her estate was only worth two
million?
That’s enough to buy a nice
apartment in Sydney. &&
*blinks*
Omg. But then again, The Guardian
reported recently that wages for English authors were an average of £10,500.
Average. Per ANNUM.
Just as well I can make sourdough…
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/27/publishers-pay-writers-pittance-philip-pullman-antony-beevor-sally-gardner
&& Or a NOT as nice one in
my area if you want to bank the other half.
