Thread alert: I spend a good deal of my time nowadays trying to raise awareness about writers, how poorly paid most writers are, and why any of us should care. It's uphill work, and one of the reasons is that most people are entirely unaware of how much writers do for them.

The average person, when asked to name a writer, will name a certain famous (and very wealthy) writer of children's fiction. Or Dickens. Or Jane Austen.

The average person doesn't necessarily know this, but they encounter writers every day without being aware of it. These are for the most part ordinary people, doing ordinary jobs that impact on our lives in all kinds of ways we don't notice.

Even people who do not consider themselves to be readers consume the work of writers EVERY SINGLE DAY.

Did you pick up a newspaper? A magazine? Read a current affairs website? Play a game? Watch a soap, a film, a Netflix show? Take in an advert? Listen to an audiobook? A radio play? Remind the kids to pack their schoolbooks? Writers wrote all those things.

In fact, there isn't a day during which you won't consume the work of dozens of writers. Writers are at the heart of the entertainment industry, the news industry, the game industry. Writers don't live in ivory towers. They mostly live like you.

So next time you read a book, an article, next time you listen to an audiobook, a play, a musical, play a game, watch TV, go to the cinema, cook from a recipe book, read to your kids - take a second to acknowledge the person who made what you're using.