Applications for the Royal Literary Fund’s (RLF’s) hardship grants for professional writers increased by 400% between last year and this year, the charity has said.

There was a nearly fivefold increase in applications in the first quarter of this year compared with the same period in 2023, RLF CEO Edward Kemp told the Guardian.

The RLF’s grant applications are open to writers who need short- or long-term financial support because they are, for example, facing an unexpected bill, reduced income, or are unable to write due to a “change in circumstances, sickness, disability, or age”, according to the RLF.

The grants are given as a donation towards the “removal of distress for the applicant”, rather than to help complete literary works. Writers must have published (via a traditional publisher, not self-published) at least two books in the UK or Ireland to be eligible for a grant.

The rise in applications comes after research published by the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society in 2022 showed authors’ median earnings were just £7,000 a year, down from £12,330 in 2006.

“With the average professional author earning only £7,000 a year from their writing, almost all writers depend upon a complex ecosystem of employment to remain solvent, which is being eroded on many fronts,” said Kemp. “As more of mainstream publishing expenditure, from advances to marketing, is being centred around the escalating trend of celebrity writers, it is becoming harder for ‘mid-list’ writers, even those with a solid track record to survive by writing alone.”

At the same time, many ancillary income sources for writers are being removed, he adds. Teaching is one such example, given that “a large number of universities are closing their humanities departments, including English and creative writing”.

The “growing integration” of AI into creative industries also “removes some of those jobs, such as copywriting, script development and translation, that are vital for sustaining and building professional careers. Meanwhile writers face the same rises in the cost of living as the rest of the public, along with the vagaries of the freelance life”, such as delays in payments from publishers.

The RLF was founded in 1790; it has provided financial assistance to significant literary figures including Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Joyce, Dylan Thomas and Bram Stoker, and more recently Edna O’Brien, Hanif Kureishi and Ali Smith. Most of its income originates from authors who bequeathed some or all of their literary estates to the fund, including Colin MacInnes, Somerset Maugham, AA Milne and Arthur Ransome.

The RLF has seen a “significant increase in enquiries from dramatists and screenwriters, with the downsizing of writers’ rooms, the cancellation of several long-running TV series like BBC’s Doctors and a reduction in new work within theatre, along with streaming platforms deciding to reduce their original scripted output in the aftermath of the WGA writers’ strike. These are all straining an already precarious profession.”