A friend recently posted on Facebook –‘Been looking for freelance writing/proof-reading work in
London. Amazed at how many jobs are advertised as “unpaid but providing a wealth of experience and a well-known name for your CV”.  Next time I need the plumber, I'll tell him I won't pay for him to fix my tap but he can certainly list my name on his website. Actually, I might just try that at the supermarket.’

I know how my friend feels. I get the odd query from a first-time author with inflated expectations, asking if they can pay me a percentage of the book’s take instead of paying up front. No way José – I know how much most self-published authors make, and that’s 'very little'. If you self-publish, you must be prepared to do it for love. Even authors published by the big houses might not make a living wage – it’s said that the average author in Australia earns less from writing than they would on the dole. And given the tough economic times and the state of flux of the publishing industry, it's going to get worse.

It’s not just writers and editors who suffer, either. In all the arts, there have always been more good people than available jobs. It's more apparent than ever today, and part of the problem, I think, is that the tertiary institutions are turning out too many graduates. These graduates have to create their own employment, and usually their projects can’t be realised without some kind of subsidy. Or they work in community theatre for nothing. Or they self-publish books. As one of my writerly friends puts it ‘Centrelink’ (Australia’s social security department) ‘is the biggest patron of the arts since the de Medicis’.

As long as there is cheap or free labour around, the arts will remain a buyers' market, and inevitably, this 'amateurisation' of the arts will continue. Yet if you are an artist of any ilk, you are probably also a rugged individualist. An office job would drive you insane. Routine bores you, and lack of a creative outlet can make you severely depressed. Furthermore, trying to be creative while selling your soul to the system is a sorry task.

It’s a conundrum, and I don’t think it’s a new one. As Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote: ‘The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the collective. If you choose to fight, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened ... but no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.’

Nietzche is also reported as saying And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. May there always be those few of us who do hear the music, either as creators or consumers of the arts. We might be thought insane – but I do believe we keep the rest of society out of the madhouse.