[HN Gopher] Writing books remains a tough way to make a living
___________________________________________________________________
Writing books remains a tough way to make a living
Author : gone35
Score : 170 points
Date : 2024-01-01 06:37 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.publishersweekly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.publishersweekly.com)
| dannyw wrote:
| Authors apparently earn cents of royalties for every physical
| book purchased. That seems crazy.
|
| I wouldn't mind paying $5 more for a book if >90% of it went to
| the author.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| > Authors apparently earn cents of royalties for every physical
| book purchased. That seems crazy.
|
| Agreed, but it is (somewhat) justified by the sheer length of
| the chain (printing house, distributors, bookstores etc.)
|
| FWIW, I wrote and self-published a book on a 99% automated
| platform (e-book only), and I get 80% royalties.
|
| Another (anec)datapoint: I published a book (this time not
| written by me) in a more "traditional" way (i.e., on paper).
| The book is pretty niche, had 0 marketing expenses (we
| basically only relied on word-of-mouth). We kept the costs low,
| but not too low (we paid a bit for nice typesetting,
| illustrations, good paper etc.). We did not even try to put it
| in bookstores and only sold it via Internet (using an ebay-
| style platform, not even a custom e-commerce solution; we
| didn't even had a landing page with a our own domain!). This
| allowed us to break even after a few months, which I think is
| insane comparing to the "big book" (aka publishing industry).
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| > FWIW, I wrote and self-published a book on a 99% automated
| platform (e-book only), and I get 80% royalties.
|
| Would you mind sharing which platform this is?
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Sure. While at that, let me also plug my book:
| https://leanpub.com/hacking-your-way-emacs
| pomian wrote:
| Thanks for that link! That's very interesting. I am
| editing two books for two authors at the present, both of
| whom already published, in paper, and with Amazon I
| believe. But this looks like a very interesting
| publishing model. Especially for more technical books.
| There are a few in progress that I know about. (Is emacs
| something different than the apple computer?)
| smugglerFlynn wrote:
| Any book that is $5 more expensive than current market price
| will instantly lose to thousands of competative cheaper books
| where authors write about similar topics while agreeing to earn
| peanuts.
|
| You can try solving this by industry-wide regulations, but that
| would make average price of books much higher, and will likely
| steer readers to other medias, shift revenues to already
| established writers, or both.
| zer0tonin wrote:
| Are books purchase really so price sensitive? It's not
| exactly like you're buying potatoes
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure it's a continuous supply-demand curve but you
| get out of the "normal" discounted range--say above $15-and
| people will really think twice.
| falcolas wrote:
| IMO, in the age of Kindle Unlimited, yes. I, myself, have a
| very hard time justifying purchases over $6. The reason is
| pretty simple, the higher priced books are not guaranteed
| to be better, just written by a more widely recognized
| author.
| EA wrote:
| OP should just donate $5 to his favorite writers.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Any book that is $5 more expensive than current market
| price will instantly lose to thousands of competative cheaper
| books where authors write about similar topics while agreeing
| to earn peanuts._
|
| I could see this being true for non-fiction, but for fiction?
| I'm generally not looking at price, I'm looking at whether
| the story seems interesting.
|
| Two books can both be about space battles (or whatever your
| topic of choice is), but one can seem extremely interesting
| while the other doesn't. Similar topics doesn't really mean
| much compared to everything else (writing style, characters,
| etc.)
| massysett wrote:
| "You can try solving this by industry-wide regulations"
|
| Also known as "price fixing".
| jeffwass wrote:
| A few years ago I met an author who was switching from self-pub
| to traditional pub for one of his books (usually this is tough
| to do, traditional publishers typically won't touch a book that
| started off as self-published).
|
| His take went from 70% on Amazon to just 7% w/ the traditional
| publisher.
|
| Of course the traditional publisher handles all marketing and
| distribution, so hopefully the slimmer percentage of a much
| bigger pie works out.
|
| But I was amazed at how low the final percentage was.
| ryanbigg wrote:
| Absolutely! When I wrote for Manning, a print book that sold
| for $45 netted me a huge $4.50 -- 90/10 split. Ebooks were
| 50/50. Guess the print guys all gotta take their cut.
| stubish wrote:
| This was Science Fiction/Fantasy with major publishers early
| to mid 2000s. The 50% ebook royalty dropped to I think 10%
| not long after.
| jimmyed wrote:
| Another reason for this is the sheer amount of rubbish literature
| that is being printed, specially in the category of "Young
| Adult". There are endless streams of psychopath male leads and
| damsel in distress characters, with predictable story lines and
| pretentious dialogues.
| dageshi wrote:
| It's pulp. If you made it disappear the people reading it
| wouldn't magically start reading "the good stuff", they'd move
| onto something else suitably mindless in another medium.
| QVVRP4nYz wrote:
| > There are endless streams of psychopath male leads and damsel
| in distress characters, with predictable story lines and
| pretentious dialogues.
|
| I mean - it sells. Is it readers fault if other authors write
| unpopular stuff? "Royal Road" is my guilty pleasure. Almost
| everything there conforms to that quoted scheme but even among
| mountains of crap there exist various degrees of quality. That
| said the popularity isn't strongly correlated to that -
| checking 2 authors I follow one has $300/month on Patreon while
| other $20k/month.
| mobiuscog wrote:
| Personally, I think this is where Patreon (and similar)
| shine. Allows 'true fans' to support directly with a much
| smaller cut than traditional distribution/publishing
| mechanisms, whilst also not requiring long-term
| subscriptions.
|
| If your content is in demand, you do well.
| dageshi wrote:
| Honestly Royal Road is a treasure. It's the only site where I
| actively click on t he ads because the ads are all for new
| stories and there's a decent chance I'll like one.
| drakonka wrote:
| For many people, reading is a fun escape into an alternative
| reality that they would never want to live out in real life. If
| they want to escape into a world of dark romance tropes
| featuring psychopathic male leads, more power to them and to
| the authors they're supporting.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Don't forget that these also have experienced publisher and
| marketing networks behind them; on their own the books are a
| dime a dozen, it's the publishers that make it popular.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| just don't read it if you have a problem with it. and don't
| waste your emotional energy on hating it. there are a ton of
| books out there that you would love, why spend your time
| thinking about books you don't like?
|
| let the readers read what they want, let the writers write what
| they want, and don't judge people based on their reading
| preferences. even if it's rupi kaur.
| jimmyed wrote:
| The largest demographic of readers, who have the ability to make
| or break a book is middle class white women. If you can convince
| them to read your book, you have made it.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| I would say it depends on the book. I don't have such data for
| my Elisp textbook (which fared pretty well), but I'm not sure
| it would confirm your claim.
| taopai wrote:
| > middle class white women
|
| Sachachua enters this category. I am sure she would be glad
| to read your book.
|
| pd: sacha if you read this, no offense, just joking, hahahaha
| helboi4 wrote:
| As someone who was considering creating a graphic novel this
| year, I'm glad to see I'm in one of the most lucrative
| categories. Especially since I have no desire to write pulp
| romance novels.
| dageshi wrote:
| I suspect a younger generation of authors coming up now will
| almost exclusively self publish.
|
| In the niches of fantasy I read there are no traditionally
| published authors any more, they all monetise via patreon, kindle
| unlimited and audible. From what I've gleaned no traditional
| publisher can compete with this.
|
| I think probably we reach a point where hardbacks become
| "collectors editions" for successful works only, while paperbacks
| are print on demand. The vast majority of consumption will be
| ebook or audible.
| SethMurphy wrote:
| This would follow the same path as the music industry and the
| revival of vinyl record albums. Most are collected and not
| played since streaming is so much easier and portable. I would
| go further and say that paperbacks will fall almost completely
| out of favor as they are less durable and could be seen as more
| of a "waste" environmentally. A bookshelf in a home is still a
| wall of virtue and interest signals and I don't think that will
| go away completely.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's still a large "I like the feel of a real book even if
| it's a paperback" contingent. But I assume that is much less
| true of relatively younger people. (I've gotten rid of a lot
| of my books that are in the public domain and would largely
| clear out most of my paperbacks if I could magically get them
| in digital format.
| panzagl wrote:
| My daughters (gen Z) prefer physical books, though we'll
| see if that persists past the first time they have to move
| apartments themselves.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Record stores that still exist aroud me seem to have
| travelled back in time, I now feel like the first days of the
| CD sales, where they were at a corner in a shop full of vynil
| records.
|
| Also someone is buying those vynil players with bluetooth and
| USB connectors.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i have some rare paperbacks that have insurable value. this
| is a counterpoint to the assumption that paperbacks are
| worthless.
| prosqlinjector wrote:
| Of course rare books are valuable. The point is that if you
| want to buy a physical book you probably will pay $10-15
| more for the nice version. The market for the cheap entry
| is smaller.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Paper books have legal value - you have rights to resell it,
| for instance, that you don't have for ebooks. Until we unfuck
| those, ebooks will never completely replace them.
|
| Paper books aren't particularly environmentally wasteful - if
| you buy _one_ extra electronic device (say, an ereader), that
| basically outstrips the damage of any number of books you 'd
| buy. That might not be relevant to the _perception_ , though.
|
| Books as expensive wallpaper will definitely keep being a
| thing while dead-tree books are common, but they're
| fundamentally about conveying an impression, and impressions
| can change - if ebooks become the overwhelming majority to
| the point that office decoration is the _main_ point of
| books, then anyone who sees the bookshelf will assume you 're
| a poser doing it for the image, and thus people will stop
| doing it. So wallpaper-bookshelves can't exist as a sole
| purpose of books ( _probably_ ).
| ghaff wrote:
| You take away the importance of getting bookstore shelf space,
| material marketing and book tours (good luck getting that),
| etc. and publishers add less and less for a huge cut. As I
| commented ed elsewhere I almost certainly benefited non-
| monetarily from going with a well-known technical publisher but
| I wouldn't do it going forward at this point for various
| reasons.
| falcolas wrote:
| > In the niches of fantasy I read there are no traditionally
| published authors any more, they all monetise via patreon,
| kindle unlimited and audible. From what I've gleaned no
| traditional publisher can compete with this.
|
| I see this too, but I've also seen the next step: Publishers
| chase them down for book deals. Azarinth Healer is the one that
| comes to mind (since I'm working through Book 3 again), where
| the author monetized via Patreon for years, then got a
| publishing deal through Portal.
|
| Honestly, it's been a good thing overall. The audiobooks are
| high quality, and the editing has done the story a tremendous
| amount of good.
| Retric wrote:
| Moving from self published Patron into traditional publishing
| is a bumpy ride. To use your example, Azarinth Healer's
| author significantly reduced output while working on editing
| the book without disclosing why they were doing so. They then
| didn't hand out copies of the edited work on Patron thus
| massively discouraging people from continuing to support
| them.
|
| I went through that process a few times with minor variations
| and it's annoyed me enough that I decided to permanently
| boycott both Amazon (including AWS) and Patron.
|
| The reverse where traditional authors give fans more access
| on Patron is less problematic, but also distracts from
| actually writing.
| falcolas wrote:
| A bit of a tangent about Azarinth Healer's journey to
| follow, with a more generic wrapup...
|
| > To use your example, Azarinth Healer's author
| significantly reduced output while working on editing the
| book without disclosing why they were doing so.
|
| Interesting. This drama must have been largely contained to
| Discord, since I never really saw it come up in Patreon
| itself. Plus, their output has been a bit unpredictable due
| to real life mental health complications for years.
| Notably, though, supporters on Patreon were not charged
| when they were not producing new chapters.
|
| Ultimately reduced output, especially for the sake of
| fixing prior works for publishing, is acceptable to me.
|
| > They then didn't hand out copies of the edited work on
| Patron thus massively discouraging people from continuing
| to support them.
|
| The author probably couldn't. They can't even keep the un-
| edited version up on Royal Road, so the contract probably
| stipulated what could and could not be done with the edited
| manuscript. And, honestly, I'm OK with that. Since Patreon
| charges have been turned off for awhile, paying $5 for the
| edited books is acceptable IMO.
|
| > distracts from actually writing
|
| Authors gotta market their work; even traditional
| publishers aren't doing that nearly as much anymore.
|
| While output might be the key metric that some readers
| judge authors by, at the end of the day it's not the metric
| authors need to worry about the most. An author who can't
| support themselves by writing will produce even less output
| than one who is bound by the need to make money.
|
| At the end of the day, I have a hard time being sour about
| authors - Rhegar included - finding a way to earn a living
| off writing.
| j2kun wrote:
| You can print hardcover on demand too these days.
| ghaff wrote:
| For most non-fiction authors, far and away the biggest monetary
| benefit of writing books is indirect, e.g. reputational benefits
| associated with being a published author on a topic. (Going with
| a recognized publisher can make more sense in this case.)
|
| I did make a few thousand the one time I went with a publisher.
| I've also self-published and didn't really try to make direct
| income at all as I had a free downloadable ebook. The only real
| cut I got was when third parties bought books for me to do book
| signings.
|
| On the other hand I'm pretty sure I've made tens of thousands of
| dollars at least in indirect professional benefits.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm convinced this is what most tech oriented books are about,
| not so much about earning money from a book, but putting
| "Author of xyz" on their CV and website; "you literally wrote
| the book on xyz, you are an authority on xyz"
| ghaff wrote:
| Assuming they're going in with eyes open, totally. It's also
| a good forcing function to dive deeper into a topic than you
| might otherwise do.
|
| And traditional technical publishers are probably a more
| effective route for this reason even if you're leaving some
| direct money on the table.
| tnecniv wrote:
| The famous mathematician Vladimir Arnold said
| (approximately) "the best way to learn a topic is to write
| a book on it." He did that a few times in his career --
| most notably his excellent book on classical mechanics.
| rafaelbeirigo wrote:
| The only easy way to make a living is to sell.
|
| Intelectual work like writing, researching, teaching, etc.
| despite being important, don't have intrinsic appeal such that
| people naturally and voluntarily put money on it. We are not
| built like that.
|
| This is where institutions like universities, governments, etc.
| come in.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course you need to be good at selling in situations where
| you can get a good cut. I'm sure there are a lot of car
| salesmen that are just squeaking by.
|
| But, yes, good salesmen for things like enterprise software can
| do quite well though you more exposed of the vagaries of the
| market than someone more removed from the front lines.
| j7ake wrote:
| Even scientists doing basic research need to "sell" their
| research proposals and papers to get them funded and published.
|
| Every piece of professional work has an intended audience, and
| that means selling to that audience.
|
| A work with no intended audience is a hobby.
| prosqlinjector wrote:
| > This is where institutions like universities, governments,
| etc. come in.
|
| Science was doing pretty well before it became
| institutionalized in the early 20th century. It's not without
| tradeoffs, but these aren't essential components.
| delboytrotter wrote:
| Being an author is tough, but it's not all bad news. I've made
| over $2mil over the past 5 years with a self-published book.
| Certainly not a typical result, but I want to give the authors
| here some hope.
| lock-the-spock wrote:
| That is indeed unusual and very impressive, congratulations!
| Are you willing to share any more details? E.g. fiction or non-
| fiction, genre, distribution channel, how you made your income?
| Thank you!
| mobiuscog wrote:
| Really hoping this isn't a book telling you how to make money
| by self-publishing, or similar.
|
| Self-publishing as discussed elsewhere, is certainly the way to
| go, otherwise those profits would have gone to the publishers.
| gwervc wrote:
| Could you give some more information, like topic, kind of book,
| marketing strategy?
| ot1138 wrote:
| That's an unusual and excellent outcome! But congratulations
| for your success!
|
| I've published three non-fiction books. The first was self
| published and got noticed by Entrepreneur press. They published
| the second two.
|
| Despite being a bestseller in the business category, I've made
| probably only about $30,000 from them. I've been told that mine
| is also an atypical result as most authors make next to
| nothing.
|
| Despite having plenty of things to write about, I've since
| decided there are much better uses for my time.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| If you want to give hope you'll have to give a lot more detail
| than that. I might even say evidence.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i'm very skeptical of this claim!
| drakonka wrote:
| I've been self-publishing fiction for a couple of years. Many
| years ago I looked down on self-published works, expecting them
| to be of low quality. I thought if someone self-published it was
| just because they weren't good enough to get a "real" publisher.
|
| It is true that self-publishing has a lower barrier to entry so
| there's a lot of crap that gets put out. But even for _really
| good authors_ who take the work seriously, trad publishing makes
| little financial sense most of the time. To succeed in self-pub
| in the most competitive and lucrative genres your book has to be
| on-par with any traditionally published book. Expectations have
| risen.
|
| And when you're sitting there looking at a trad deal that will
| make you a few cents at best from every sale and compare that to
| the 70-100% royalties you can get self-publishing, the trad deal
| begins to make much less sense. New writers sometimes think a
| trad deal will pay off in other ways: they won't have to worry
| about marketing or other business aspects of putting out a book.
| But that's not even the case anymore - many traditional
| publishers expect you to market your own work and build your own
| following. They won't spend marketing resources on most writers
| they sign.
|
| Making a living as an author is hard, and making a living as a
| traditionally-published author is near-impossible.
| chii wrote:
| > But that's not even the case anymore - many traditional
| publishers expect you to market your own work and build your
| own following. They won't spend marketing resources on most
| writers they sign.
|
| so is the only reason for using a traditional publisher is the
| cash advance then?
| drakonka wrote:
| For most authors the advances are pretty laughable, too.
| There is a very small percentage that publishers throw all
| their weight behind, offer generous advances to, marketing
| resources, etc. The rest of those they sign are more like
| "filler".
|
| I can't speak for all writers, but here are a few reasons I
| have seen some authors going with a trad publisher:
|
| * Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I have a
| book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is pretty weak
| for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much special prestige
| anymore.
|
| * Translations. There are some great untapped translation
| markets out there (like Germany). Some authors self-publish
| the English version of their books and sell translation
| rights to a publisher. The publisher then does the work of
| translating and republishing in the target countries, taking
| that effort off the author. The royalties are lower, but
| funding high-quality translations can cost a fortune and for
| many authors offloading that cost and effort can be worth it.
|
| * Audiobooks. Similar to translations. Author may publish the
| ebook themselves and sell audio rights. Good narrators can
| cost a fortune, and many authors can't justify that outlay
| themselves. A trad audiobook publisher can get access to the
| best narrators and fund the entire production if the author
| doesn't have the means or desire to do it themselves.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| I'd add (for fiction the only market I have exposure to):
|
| - the editor: if a good traditional editor gets involved in
| your project they can make a huge difference in the quality
| of your books. Many people seem to think editors are just
| marking up your punctuation. In reality they are more akin
| to product managers in software. They help set the tone of
| the books and ensure that the vision is adhered to.
|
| - which leads me to copy editors. The traditional
| publishers employ all the best ones. You can hire
| independent copy editors but their quality is a crapshoot.
| And you don't find out until it's too late.
|
| - the sales rep network. If reps like your book they will
| get it in front of people. Independent of marketing the
| boots on the ground factor can make a huge difference.
|
| Now, you won't necessarily get any of these benefits going
| with a publisher but you can't get any of them self
| publishing.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > if a good traditional editor gets involved in your
| project they can make a huge difference in the quality of
| your books
|
| I've also heard about mediocre editors that waste a lot
| of author time, and bad editors that ruin the project.
| ghaff wrote:
| My developmental editor for my semi-technical book was
| "fine" but he didn't do any of the structural re-
| factoring I did for my second edition. The company was
| using a new set of copy editors for the second edition
| and they were much better than the first.
|
| Overall I can't really complain about the editing but I
| think the benefits were relatively modest.
| stubish wrote:
| The major publishers seem to have gutted their editing
| staff over the last decade or so, and submitted
| manuscripts changed little before publishing. The primary
| editor you get barely has time to read it, and an
| outsourced copy editor (who are probably the better ones,
| yes).
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Do you think I could offer English->German translation
| services to indie authors as a reasonable side income?
|
| Do you know a good place to get to know them or start out
| building some connections?
|
| I have been doing it in the past (mostly for ads and other
| marketing content) but it paid very little (was working
| freelance for an agency) but I enjoyed it a lot.
| drakonka wrote:
| To be honest I'm not sure. It seems like _a ton_ of work
| to put out a high quality translation. I do not know how
| much time and money translators spend on each project but
| can imagine it being a lot. For example, some authors may
| expect a legit highly-paid translator to work with their
| own German proofreader etc to ensure quality of the
| output.
|
| (Tangentially, I think Germany has some special laws that
| you as the translator would need to be familiar with. For
| example I think the translator needs to grant rights to
| the original author to republish the work. Not 100% sure
| on this, but worth checking!)
| sjfjsjdjwvwvc wrote:
| Unfortunately there is not much information for this
| online (atleast from a quick search I didn't find much)
| Most seems to be related to working together with
| publishing houses (I loathe the German publishing houses
| so that's definitely no option).
|
| I would prefer working directly with an independent
| author - when I have a bit more time I'll check out how
| to best get in contact with them.
|
| Not sure about the legal side of it, but I have a friend
| who works in German copyright and who could probably help
| figure that part out.
| drakonka wrote:
| One place to get started might be the Alliance of
| Independent Authors:
| https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/
|
| They are author as opposed to translator-focused, but
| maybe reaching out to them can be a first step in getting
| the lay of the land? They might have some information
| about how their authors tend to use translation services.
| Although I'm sure there must be some translator
| communities out there that could provide even more
| focused info.
| falcolas wrote:
| > Audiobooks ... Good narrators can cost a fortune
|
| To be specific, between $200 and $300 per finished hour,
| and a finished hour is about 9,000 words. It can cost more
| if you want two or more narrators to handle male/female
| parts (there's a lot more editing involved).
|
| I know at least one self-published author who does create
| audiobooks for some of their works, but does so at a loss.
| Even at $15 per audiobook sale (through bookfunnel, so
| there's little overhead), making back the $3k they pay for
| the narration is a pretty high bar for a relatively niche
| market.
| wharvle wrote:
| > * Reputation. It can just feel cool to say "Oh yeah I
| have a book published by Tor" (or whatever). This one is
| pretty weak for me. Trad publishers don't hold that much
| special prestige anymore.
|
| I think it's a validation thing, largely. If you get trad-
| published but the book does poorly--well, at least you got
| trad-published, so you must not be _too_ awful (although...
| if you 're in certain "hot" niches, there's some _real_
| crap put out, that looks like it was barely even edited),
| but your book just didn 't land well. It happens. But
| you're an author, for sure.
|
| If you self-publish and your book doesn't do well--did you
| market poorly? Would it have done better with a trad
| publisher? Are you... in fact so terrible at writing you
| shouldn't call yourself an author, and it didn't sell
| because it's total crap? You may never know!
|
| Since there's not real, _real_ money in it unless your book
| 's such a hit you get movie deals and such (with rare
| outliers who make it big-enough purely on book sales but
| don't get adaptation interest) it's largely about _being an
| author_ , so having that validation up-front has real
| appeal.
| sturz wrote:
| It's probably the prestige. Most new authors are likely
| subsidized by their wealthy families.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Most new authors are subsidized by their day job. It's a
| huge moment in an authors life when they start making money
| exclusively from writing. A moment most never get to.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Same deal with most board game designers. The vast
| majority are subsidized by their day job, and aren't ever
| going to make serious money from designing games.
|
| I know a guy, for example, that worked two years in his
| spare time on one game, got picked up by a publisher,
| ended up in Barnes and Noble and was considered a success
| by the publisher (they even requested and released an
| expansion), and the guy got only $9,000 in royalties
| (with no advance) for all his efforts.
|
| Pretty much the only people making enough money for it to
| be their sole form of income are either hired directly a
| publisher or are out there hustling constantly and
| signing like 8+ game designs a year, or have insanely
| cheap cost of living (one game designer mentioned how he
| made net income of $12k one year and was able to survive
| off that because they live super cheaply), or have
| somehow landed on a massive evergreen hit, like Azul or
| Carcassonne.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/JPacCantin/status/1647455444884156417
| ryanklee wrote:
| > Most new authors are likely subsidized by their wealthy
| families.
|
| You think most new authors have wealthy families?
|
| That is a very odd assumption, given how hard it is to
| write a book... and given how low the returns are... and
| given how many other ways there are to achieve prestige...
| and given how little people regard authorship these days as
| a measurement of it... and given how unlikely it would be
| for wealth to have an outsized representation in a career
| generally associated with poverty... and how all old
| authors were once new authors which would imply that most
| of them are wealthy too, which, not so.
| sturz wrote:
| I'm talking about contemporary literature. It has been
| this way historically and nothing about it has changed.
| ryanklee wrote:
| What historical data do you have?
| sturz wrote:
| Wikipedia. Most authors in the western cannon are
| descendants of aristocracy.
| ryanklee wrote:
| "Most authors in the Western cannon" as a group is not
| representative of most authors, Western or otherwise.
| pi-e-sigma wrote:
| They are the representation of the _successful_ authors,
| though. Because they are the cannon now. So the OP is
| right.
| ryanklee wrote:
| He is not right. His original claim was that new authors
| are mostly wealthy. All he did was weaken his claim until
| it was (more, but not actually) supportable.
|
| Further, to address your own point, they are not even the
| representation of successful authors. There's thousands
| and thousands of successful authors that aren't even near
| to being close to the gates of the Western canon.
| IKantRead wrote:
| I know plenty of authors and none of them are subsidized by
| wealthy families. All of them do it part time in the
| evenings out of a labor of love.
|
| It is worth pointing out that there's nothing particular
| odd if it _were_ the case that writing was subsidized by
| wealthy families. For the vast majority of the history of
| writing, writing was subsidized an left to monks,
| philosophers or aristocrats. It 's only been in the
| relatively recent time period that writing was a potential
| occupation for anyone interested with enough skills/talent.
| sturz wrote:
| In my experience, in NY, the majority of people working
| in contemporary literature publishing are ivy leage
| graduates, mostly women, and they live off of their
| parents. I'm not judging, just stating my observation.
| wharvle wrote:
| Literary fiction, yes. That market's so fucked that the
| vast majority of literary magazines don't pay _at all_
| and you 'll often get sneered at for asking about pay.
|
| Anyone trying to make any amount of money at writing
| writes genre fic of one sort or another. Fantasy or
| _maybe_ sci fi, and probably "juvenile fiction" (tends
| to sell better to adults, too). Romance (which may or may
| not actually be straight-up porn, basically). Airport
| thrillers. Not lit-fic. Never, if your goal is to make
| any money at all.
|
| And yeah, the publishing-side heavily favors people with
| money, lit-fic or not, for the reason that making a
| living at it requires excellent connections to get you
| directly into a high-paying part of it, or else years and
| years making less than it takes to live on in places like
| New York, to work your way up the ladder. Either way,
| that probably means family money. This phenomenon been
| mentioned, directly or obliquely, in IIRC all of:
| _Bullshit Jobs_ (Graeber, 2018), Fussell 's _Class_
| (1983), and _The Official Preppy Handbook_ (Birnbach et
| al, 1980).
| greenie_beans wrote:
| a traditional publisher will distribute your book through all
| of their sales channels. if you self-publish, it's very hard
| or near impossible to sell your book at a proper bookstore.
| the sales reps will also push the books onto independent
| booksellers, who might love the book and want to handsell it.
| IKantRead wrote:
| > only reason for using a traditional publisher is the cash
| advance then?
|
| A few really important things come to mind:
|
| - _Editing_. I 'm not talking about mere copy editing which
| you can get done reasonably cheaply, but rather having an
| editor that is reading through everything and giving feedback
| is _hugely_ important.
|
| - _Layout and printing of the book_ There 's a lot that
| happens between writing and having a polished book in your
| hands. You can contract all this out but it adds a lot of
| work.
|
| - _Distribution_. While the burden of marketing a book has
| increasingly fallen upon the author these days, if you want
| your book to be on the shelf at your local Barnes & Noble,
| then your much better off going with a traditional publisher.
|
| - _Prestige_. Like it or not, the vast majority of people on
| Earth still look down upon self publishing. For some types of
| books this is _less_ important: technical books and fantasy
| fiction books can go without in many cases (but if you want
| to use your book for credibility in something like consulting
| you 'll still want a traditional publisher). But if you want
| to write on a serious topic it helps a lot to have an
| academic press publish your work, or if you want to really
| pursue writing literature you at least want some publisher
| that is recognized in your relevant community.
|
| Currently I think the only really good use cases for self
| publishing are the fantasy fiction and niche technical book
| markets _assuming_ you already have an audience. And even in
| those cases there are plenty of reasons to go with
| traditional publishers over self publishing.
| jrmg wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting so many downvotes. The first
| two are definitely real issues with a lot of self-published
| work.
| drakonka wrote:
| I did not downvote, but just wanted to mention that the
| first two do not require a traditional publisher. In fact
| none of them do, but especially not the first two.
|
| It is true that there are real quality issues with a lot
| of self-published work because you don't _need_ an editor
| to publish your book. Heck, you don't even need to do a
| self-edit pass. Write it and hit publish! But it is
| increasingly an expectation that you have one, because
| quality expectations are extremely high, especially for
| competitive money-making genres.
|
| I started out self-editing and now pay for three
| professional edits for each release: developmental, copy,
| and proofread. Professional editors are not exclusive to
| traditional publishing houses.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Correct on Distribution & Prestige. If you claim trad
| publishing isn't necessary at all, then explain to me how
| you get:
|
| 1) placed in bookstores
|
| 2) on the "upcoming books" circulars that the trads send
| out to likely "author talk" venues
|
| 3) reviewed in mainstream media
| drakonka wrote:
| Ingram Spark provides global book store and library
| distribution.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| In practice, that just means if someone walks into a
| bookstore and asks for your book, they can buy it without
| going through Amazon.
| drakonka wrote:
| Yup, and if they think it'll sell then book stores can
| stock up more. Many book stores don't stock unless the
| book is distributed as returnable (in case it doesn't
| sell). Whether self pub or trad pub, unsold books
| returned by stores come back out of the author's cut. In
| many cases it doesn't even make sense for the author to
| physically reclaim returned books as the shipping and
| storage are more expensive, so they get destroyed.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| the funny bit is, you have to set a "retail price" in
| every country they operate in, and if you set it too low,
| the bookstore has a loss on each book. So you have to
| keep increasing the price until the margin is positive.
|
| just in case someone in Australia goes to a bookstore and
| asks for it :)
| julianeon wrote:
| No. I think the actual answer is "real-life SEO."
|
| Say you have a Mexican restaurant in NYC. There must be
| hundreds of them, right? But imagine that someone in NYC
| googles "Mexican restaurant," and your restaurant is the
| first search result that comes up. That's worth a lot of
| money.
|
| Self-publishing is like opening your own restaurant, while
| being published by a major publisher is like being on the
| first page of Google. When, say, CNN wants someone to be a
| panel expert, they might call you. You can get invited to
| conferences on the strength of that credential, and then
| build up to greater opportunities from there. In essence
| you've been socially validated.
|
| That's worth quite a lot of money, though it's up to you if
| it's worth the cost. If you didn't have any fame going in,
| then I think it will be.
| taopai wrote:
| I read some reddit's post regarding to this topic.
|
| The main takeaway was that living, or higher profits came only
| if you were being aggressive with ads.
|
| Something like reinvesting 50% of the profits in digital ads
| (google, amazon).
|
| If your book reaches near top #1, you've done it. Now I
| realized that most of the books I read published on XXI century
| had been very popular, top of the chart books in some genre,
| during some years and I found them trough reddit/forums
| recommendations. Books that you would still find regarded as
| best in Amazon.
|
| Internet it's pushing Pareto principle to an extreme. The same
| goes for music, digital art, cinema, teaching, etc. Small
| artists are sheltering themselves in services like Patreon
| because they beat the giants in terms of selling.
|
| Also I think people are reading less. My friends don't read.
| They pay +15/30 USD a month to Netflix and other services.
| That's money and _time_ "taken away" from reading, books.
| drakonka wrote:
| I know quite a few authors making a living without paying for
| any ads, but it's definitely a different type of effort. You
| have to really hone in on social media, getting large review
| teams, etc to get visibility for your books without ads.
|
| IMO someone starting out is probably best off not spending
| money on ads. They have too many other things to perfect as
| they learn, which can only be done by publishing over and
| over. At least with fiction, you're looking at building a
| backlist - it's not a "write one breakout book and live off
| of it forever" kind of thing. After a few books published it
| can make sense to start setting an ad budget, and using ads
| successfully is a whole other learning curve to dive into.
| taopai wrote:
| It makes sense.
|
| Do you have any advice to someone who would start writing
| fiction books?
|
| I write a lot but only for myself. I don't care about money
| but I would like to persevere to some day be able to
| produce quality works in my own language.
| drakonka wrote:
| I suggest starting by deciding what you do care about,
| since it's not the money. What does "producing quality
| works" mean to you? How do you measure it? If you write
| only for yourself you can be your own judge of quality.
| Or do you intend to measure your success in readership,
| or reviews?
|
| If you decide you care about getting people to actually
| read your work, the next step would likely be narrowing
| down your genre and checking out what is doing well in
| that genre and niche. Look at Amazon top 100 lists for
| your categories, for example. What's selling? What's
| getting good or bad reviews? Open the Look Inside
| previews of the books. What POV are the stories written
| in, are there any patterns you notice in successful
| covers or blurbs, etc?
|
| If you don't already read in your chosen genre, you
| probably want to start. At the same time, you can start
| writing. I'd personally suggest starting with short
| stories or novellas. Something you can finish and put out
| there asap to get the feedback loop going. Self-
| publishing is low barrier to entry, but there are a lot
| of balls to juggle. Each thing you put out will provide
| more information for your next book.
|
| Before publishing your first book, decide if you want to
| go into Kindle Unlimited (Amazon exclusivity) or "wide"
| (publishing to all retailers). There are huge pros and
| cons of each, and some genres are better suited for one
| or the other. KU can be easier to get traction and start
| seeing page reads with, but it has its cons as well.
|
| Also, decide if you want to use a pen name.
|
| Try not to get too attached to the first stories you
| publish. They will probably suck. Personally I would not
| bother spending money on an editor or cover designer when
| you start out, but it depends on the genre and your own
| budget/priorities.
|
| From there it's basically about iterating on what you
| have with every new book. There's way too much to cover
| in one comment and more specific genre-based strategies
| depending on what you're writing, so this is more like a
| dump of my general thoughts for someone starting out.
| taopai wrote:
| Thank you a lot.
| dlx wrote:
| This is great advice! As someone who also is starting out
| writing fiction and _does_ care about making money in the
| long run (let 's say I have about a year of runway) would
| you add anything else to the above advice?
| bodantogat wrote:
| Also, its very difficult to make money on just one book. Most
| indie authors start seeing better sales after 5-10 books,
| having built up a loyal reader base.
| x0x0 wrote:
| I will say that I think succeeding as an author requires
| business skills that most of them appear to lack.
|
| Amazon has started getting better at notifying me that there
| are new books available by an author from whom I've
| previously purchased books, but for a long time, and even
| now, I'd say most authors that I read aren't even getting me
| on an email list to eg tell me there's more stuff of theirs
| that I can buy. That's really business 101 and they're just
| not doing it. It's weird.
| boznz wrote:
| Not just higher profits, but if you are self-published or
| have no reviews yet then your book is usually on the 400th
| page on anyone's search.
|
| I have still told nobody I know about my book, it's kind of
| an experiment, because it would be easy for me to email blast
| everyone I know to like it, but I really want people to read
| it without pre-conception and so far no sales, even though it
| is free! (or 0.99 cents on Amazon as that's Amazon)
| drakonka wrote:
| Not telling anyone you know is probably smart. _If_ you
| write outside of the genre your friends group usually reads
| and a bunch of them visit and buy your book out of
| curiosity on Amazon, it can negatively impact the
| categorization of your books.
|
| "oh these people who usually read historical fiction are
| buying this new medical thriller. We will show this medical
| thriller to other people with the same buying habits!"
|
| Only readers of historical fiction who aren't your friends
| probably won't bother picking up a medical thriller.
|
| Regarding reviews, this is why many authors build ARC
| teams. Reviews are really important, so they send out
| advance review copies.
| satans_shill wrote:
| OT Do you have examples of self published authors that you feel
| really stood out.
| drakonka wrote:
| Check out the romance top 100 on Amazon:
| https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Romance/zgbs/digital-
| tex...
|
| I point out romance because that's what I write, but it's
| just one example. At a quick glance through the first few
| product pages there, most of those books appear self-
| published.
|
| To get to #1 in these general categories on Amazon (Romance,
| Contemporary romance, Paranormal romance, etc), you need _a
| crapton_ of sales or page reads (if you are in Kindle
| Unlimited). These authors all stand out because they are
| making bank right now, as indicated by their presence on this
| list.
|
| (Of course this does not reflect expenses like ad spend, but
| that's a whole other story that is near impossible to measure
| without info from the author themselves.)
| turkeygizzard wrote:
| Really appreciate you sharing your perspective. I recently
| wrote a book as a passion project and have been sitting
| anxiously on a contract. I'm not concerned about the money (I
| don't think my book will be a huge thing). My main motivation
| for going trad is the credibility as you somewhat alluded to.
| Do you think this is misguided on my part? Basically just so I
| can point at it in the future and say "a professional in the
| industry thought my book was worth printing with their name on
| it"
| drakonka wrote:
| First, congratulations on finishing your book and getting a
| contract! That is a huge achievement.
|
| I do not think your reasoning is misguided at all. If you
| think a traditional publisher affords you more credibility
| and a sense of satisfaction, that is reason enough to go with
| trad - _especially_ since as you say you're not concerned
| about the money, so there is no reason to worry about a
| traditional publisher's royalty rates compared to other
| options.
|
| I believe your reason for wanting to go with a publisher is
| perfectly valid.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I have a question for you both (drakonka and
| turkeygizzard): Would you ever sell all or a portion of the
| rights to future earnings for your already published books
| to a third party? We've seen in the music industry PE firms
| basically acquiring known catalogues for the residuals and
| I'm wondering why that doesn't seem to happen in the
| publishing industry.
| drakonka wrote:
| It happens quite a bit! I mentioned it in another comment
| here, but one thing that publishers can be very useful
| for is audiobook rights and translations. These are very
| costly to produce and it sometimes makes more sense to
| offload that part to a publisher. That is definitely
| something I'd consider doing if the opportunity came
| along.
| krisroadruck wrote:
| I wonder how much longer this will remain true.
| Audiobooks and translations seem like near-term target
| for AI.
| drakonka wrote:
| That's a good point. I'm already in the process of using
| voice synthesis to narrate one of my books. It is still a
| huge time outlay to get to the quality bar I want, but
| much cheaper than paying for a narrator.
|
| One thing working in favor of human narrators is the
| fans. Audiobook listeners can get very attached to
| certain voices, to the point where they'll read
| _anything_ that narrator works on regardless of the
| book's author or genre. If I had the budget for it, I'd
| definitely favor a well-known human narrator over AI for
| the visibility aspect of working with that person. But
| most authors don't have the budget to hire popular
| narrators, which is where less popular or entry-level
| narrators may find themselves losing work to AI
| alternatives. The narration quality is still higher with
| competent humans at this time as well, but that'll
| change.
|
| For translations, I don't think I'll ever trust AI
| entirely (just like I don't trust myself as a human
| writer entirely!) I'd still be hiring a native-speaking
| human editor and proofreader if generating AI
| translations. Or more likely, I'd be hiring a human
| translator who is able to charge competitively by using
| AI in their workflows (and is also able to handle the
| quality checks etc for me).
| AlbertCory wrote:
| True. On this
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGchbES0DhU
|
| 100% of the commenters are Matthew's fans. Did that lead
| to any sales for me? Not clear.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Interesting! Do you have an email or way to get in touch
| by chance? I'd love to connect and ask more as I'm both
| writing a book and considering trying to build some stuff
| in this space. Alternatively, I'm at jb2956 at
| georgetown.edu!
| drakonka wrote:
| Sure! Feel free to reach out at me at liza dot io.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| get on Reedsy. You can put work out for bid, and the
| quality is quite high, IMHO.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Yes! I just used an editor from there who gave some
| phenomenal feedback for a very reasonable price
| johnrgrace wrote:
| Audiobook natation isn't that expensive - the same
| narrators being used by publishing houses can do it for
| $200 an hour with it being 10-12k words per hour.
| Audiobook production is a few thousand for most books
| under the current system.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Accurate. Go on ACX and audition narrators. Also
| Voices.com.
|
| The "per hour" rate usually means "per finished hour" not
| "per hour that they spent doing it."
| drakonka wrote:
| For most self-published authors, a few thousand dollars
| is a lot to drop into a project that may never pay out.
| And in many cases if they do have the money, it makes
| more business sense to spend that budget on editors and
| cover designers across multiple books.
|
| But there are definitely people who fund their own
| audiobook production. And narrator royalty share options
| exist too, which some use (I would personally not). It's
| just not the default option or choice for many.
| spookybones wrote:
| Congrats. Is it fiction or non-fiction?
| borg16 wrote:
| can you link some of your work? I'd like to give it a try :)
| drakonka wrote:
| Afraid not! I write under a pen name. It's not a huge secret,
| but not something I advertise either for various reasons (the
| main one being that I'm still not as good as I'd like to
| be... but I'll get there).
| blockwriter wrote:
| Yeah, I wish not only self-publishing one's own work, it also
| creating a small journal for publishing other writers was the
| first instinct of young writers, especially young writers of
| fiction, rather than seeking publication through more
| traditional outlets. I think small collectives of dedicated
| writer and self-publishers and self-producers is literature's
| best hope for a new epoch of great writing.
| comboy wrote:
| So how do I find you guys? Because that's the biggest problem
| between the two of us. It should be based on my reading
| history, but goodreads is pretty useless, storygraph is better
| but still not that great.
|
| I've been recently finding most good books by lengthy talks
| with GPT4 since I can explain in detail what I want, what I
| enjoyed and what I didn't, but that only works for books which
| are already popular (and even with old books, there are some
| great ones which are niche enough to never become really
| popular).
| drakonka wrote:
| Unfortunately discovery still usually comes down to some
| manual sleuthing. It really depends on the genre, but I think
| you'll find that many ebooks on distributors like Amazon,
| Kobo, etc are self-published, so we're pretty easy to find!
| Check out the top 100 category in your favorite niche and
| you'll _likely_ find a good number of self-published titles
| there. If you come across an author you really end up liking,
| most have newsletters and/or a social media presence.
|
| You can also sign up for ebook deal sites like BookBub, which
| send out deals for books in your preferred genre. They often
| feature self-published works. BB tends to be quite selective
| with what books they work with, so hopefully you'd find some
| nice quality work there (but of course it can always be a bit
| hit and miss).
| AlbertCory wrote:
| On Substack, someone gave me "Legends & Lattes" which is a
| recent book I'd never have known about.
|
| fyi: it's a "high stakes / low conflict" book. Yes, there
| _are_ orcs, elves, and so forth, but they 're kinda
| incidental to the plot. Not really sci-fi IMHO.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I've found myself enjoying more and more self published books.
| I wish a LITTLE more care was put into cover art and small
| details though. The cover art and book quality seem to be the
| two things that stick out like a sore thumb on self published
| works.
|
| Even knowing that a lot of my favorite reads every year are
| self published, I am sometimes skeptical of a new book because
| the cover art looks like it was done poorly by someone in 15
| minutes in photoshop. I guess I'm quite literally judging a
| book by its cover here but... In a world where you get a cover
| and a 2 paragraph blurb about a book... That is a significant
| factor.
| jrmg wrote:
| I don't think your impressions are entirely off-base here. If
| the author is so bad at judging the quality of the cover art
| (or, for me, the typesetting) I think it's possible that it
| suggests a similar lack of judgement of quality for the
| writing (or, perhaps, editing) itself.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| I would disagree - those skills (cover art, typesetting)
| are orthogonal skills to writing. These are some of the
| things (I assume) publishers would do for you.
| zippergz wrote:
| Also, there are many things that I can judge to be good
| or bad, but that doesn't mean I can produce high quality
| examples myself. And getting high quality work from
| others isn't cheap, so it might be out of reach for self-
| published authors. Even if they know that the cover art
| isn't good, they might still use it, if they can't do
| better themselves and can't afford to hire someone who
| would do better.
| allwein wrote:
| Anything is possible, but I don't think judgement of visual
| aesthetics maps at all to quality of writing.
|
| I'm a damn good technical writer and can break down complex
| ideas into clear and understandable prose, but I don't know
| the first thing about fonts or typesetting.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Sure. But only to a point. If it looks laughably bad, then
| sure it probably doesnt bode well for the quality of the
| writing. But if the cover is fine/good enough but clearly
| not something that would come from a trad publishing
| house... That is when the cover might not be reflective of
| the work but still hold people, myself often included,
| back.
| drakonka wrote:
| This is actually a huge factor - both the covers and the
| blurbs are hugely important. Self-published covers in
| competitive genres now have to be on-par with trad covers for
| a reader to bother clicking on them.
|
| Niches where there may not be much trad coverage can be more
| forgiving. If you're writing in a small niche that not many
| other authors cover, you have more wiggle room with the cover
| art. But very popular genres with a high ceiling really
| benefit from a professional cover designer (or a
| professionally-designed premade).
|
| Luckily, there are budget designers out there who are decent.
| I started out publishing short stories and doing my own
| covers and editing. My first works _sucked_ and I'm glad I
| used them more for practice and did not put money into them.
| Gradually as I started making more, I began investing those
| royalties in peripheral services: editing and covers. I now
| pay for covers, developmental edits, copy edits, and
| proofreads for each new book. I've improved a lot and am
| steadily building a readership, but my books still barely pay
| for themselves with the outlay required.
| yojo wrote:
| Not sure what your standards are, but a notably bad cover
| also shows the author has invested essentially $0 in their
| book. You can get passable quality work from sites like
| GetCovers for ~$10-$30 (I think I paid $25). Though it's
| possible these are the kinds of covers you're reacting
| negatively to.
|
| "Real" covers from US-based artists start at more like $300,
| which is a more substantial outlay for a project that's
| unlikely to pay it back.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Yeah I guess the issue is that there is a huge gap between
| notable bad, good, and what seems to come from trad
| publishing.
|
| I dont think most of the covers are that BAD. They just
| stick out and its clear this book is self published.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I've advertised on Reedsy and gotten an excellent
| illustrator. It costs. You can query "Albert Cory" on Amazon
| and judge for yourself.
|
| All the designs I got on 99Designs were crap.
| leephillips wrote:
| They look good to me.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Inventing the Future is you?
|
| Yeah these are right on the cusp. Maybe I'm too discerning
| here. The font seems to blend into the background a bit
| more than one would expect and, "a novel" is way more faded
| than you would ever see in trad publishing.
|
| But tbh most people might not even notice that. I don't
| really know. It's hard to put a finger on exactly what
| stand out sometimes.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| that's me.
|
| Trad publishers use offset printing, I believe. I'm not
| enough of an expert to know what effect that has. In
| self-publishing, you just provide a PDF.
| boznz wrote:
| 100% this. I would so love someone artistic to have created
| my book cover, but the book was a passion project for me to
| make a Sci-fi book my daughter would have liked, and is being
| sold for $0 so paying anyone was outside my budget. I have
| since talked to an artist and we may do an illustrated
| version together.
| grecy wrote:
| A few years ago I had beers with a NYT best selling author
| using trad publishing. Millions of copies sold on multiple
| continents, translated into many different languages, etc etc.
| You've heard of him, or at least his one big hit.
|
| He said, at best, over his entire lifetime he may make $200k
| from that book. He basically has to write a book every single
| year just to make his mortgage payments, and its a grind.
|
| When I told him I make $8/book self published he nearly fell
| out of his chair.
| leephillips wrote:
| A typical royalty is 10% of the retail price. If the book is
| $30 (cheap these days), then a million copies sold (an
| extremely rare feat, even for a best seller, but...) is $3
| million dollars. How does this story add up? (Foreign rights
| are often a lump sum rather than royalties, but still...?)
| grecy wrote:
| > _A typical royalty is 10% of the retail price._
|
| For WHO? What publisher is offering 10%??
|
| The best I've ever heard is a fraction of a cent per book,
| and you don't get a single cent until AFTER all the
| expenses have been earned back (advance, editing, promotion
| of the book, flying you all over the place, hotels, staff).
| leephillips wrote:
| The standard rate from reputable publishers is 10 to 15%.
| It's what I've gotten from three different publishers
| (Hachette, No Starch, Packt). The rates for paperback,
| discounted books, ebooks, audio books, are all a bit
| different, but that's the ballpark. All these publishers
| also paid me advances. That's an advance on royalties.
| You start getting paid more when your earned royalties
| exceed the advance. There is no deduction for any other
| expense whatsoever.
|
| This thread is full of utter nonsense about the worlds of
| publishing and writing.
|
| [Edit: minus the 15% for your agent, if you're
| represented by one. But as your agent also made sure you
| got a good contract, you probably come out ahead.]
| Maro wrote:
| For people in this thread, I strongly recommend Rob Fitzpatrick's
| book on how to write a book as a business, "Write Useful Books: A
| modern approach to designing and refining recommendable
| nonfiction":
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Write-Useful-Books-recommendable-nonf...
|
| Even though I'm not an author I found the advice very useful, it
| can trivially be applied to building and marketing any product.
| graphe wrote:
| Most of what they talk about is fiction, romance novels. No
| wonder it's still popular to be sold, I'm the wrong
| demographic, to me they're the generic rags with the generic
| tall strong man and falling woman on the cover. They give them
| away at the library and nobody wants them still.
| ryanbigg wrote:
| Been writing tech books now for over a decade, got about 8-10
| under the belt depending on if you count 2nd and 3rd editions as
| new books.
|
| Definitely not writing them for the money -- that's about $300 a
| month usually. Enough to buy a few knick knacks and some meals.
|
| It's more the notoriety of being a "subject matter expert" that
| counts.
|
| I work full time and then put what I learn from the job into the
| books to share it with the world. No point hanging onto the
| knowledge and hoarding it all dragon-like.
| chris-orgmenta wrote:
| Incidentally I have, sitting next to me, a freelance publishing
| contracts manager who works contract rights for Hachette and
| other big players.
|
| Anyway, the problem in the industry, from my point of view (very
| opinionated):
|
| - The market has-not-priced-in-demographics! Still! Blinkered to
| the aging readership.
|
| - False expectation of revival or sustaining market size.
|
| - Often the wrong channel/medium. Much non-fiction & fiction
| simply doesn't need or benefit from traditional publishing
| houses.
|
| - Industry is still in the process of acknowledging (or is hiding
| the fact) that brands are so dependant on celebrity names.
| Celebrity authors are bolstering statistics and making it look
| more lucrative to the average Joe than it really is.
|
| - Clinging on to old worldviews on IP, to the detriment of
| innovation.
|
| - Very much haven't got their head around LLM / prior art changes
| that are forcing us to be less litigious in the coming years.
|
| My associate is more conservative than me, and is also far more
| knowledgeable than me of course.
|
| I also note the consolidation of publishers was at full throttle
| this past decade.
| jviotti wrote:
| I'm in the process of releasing my first book, with O'Reilly,
| this year (https://learning.oreilly.com/library/view/unifying-
| business-...). I didn't do it for the money (but for the
| recognition), but I'm very interested to know how it will
| economically fare.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Creating is a tough way to make a living. Writing books, writing
| short stories, music, apps, videos, and the list goes on and on.
|
| And while it's never been easier to create - the tools are
| plentiful and their prices falling - there's never been more
| noise to claw through and standout from. Add in shorter and
| shorter attention spans and more creators produce more quantity
| because they feel they have no choice.
|
| On the other hand, look at an artist like Banksy. Enigmatic and
| drops are randon. When Banksy drops people take notice. Aside
| from a eye / mind for quality and creativity, I think there might
| be a lesson in the somewhere.
| nprateem wrote:
| The lessons are:
|
| 1. Low barriers to entry drive down prices
|
| 2. Be first (Banksy)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| 3. And if you can't be first, at least try to stand out in
| some way. As in - FFS - if the internet got any more beige*
| it would be invisible.
|
| * I use beige as a metaphor (?) for the ultimate bland color.
| Some (late) nights, I'd even argue it's so bland it doesn't
| deserve to be recognized as a color.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| ~99% of the published writers i know have a full-time job to
| support their book writing.
| max_ wrote:
| >Lawmakers, publishers, and the public must recognize authors as
| professionals deserving fair pay and dignity. We urge collective
| action to build a system that properly values the essential
| contributions of writers to society. The Authors Guild will
| continue this fight until the stark income disparities revealed
| in our survey are remedied by overdue reforms
|
| Do these people really think they can come up with an actual
| solution to these problems?
| graphe wrote:
| When I read that I was thinking of changing authors to any
| other "perceived useless job". Their demand is fit more money
| because they produce value somehow? What value?
| max_ wrote:
| Well, I have learnt alot from some books.
|
| The entertainment value is also value.
| graphe wrote:
| The books they mostly mention are romance novels and all
| fiction. I have and mostly continue to avoid them because
| honestly most of them are rags and it's not worth checking
| out from the volumes of garbage unless they're recommended
| by a person I know of esteem.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I wonder if this will get better as the book market seems to get
| increasingly fragmented (Booktok, Bookshop.org, the resurgence of
| bookstores in the U.S. and UK, etc.) and as there is more
| competition in other mediums like with Spotify now competing with
| Audible. But it does seem like writing is an extremely hits based
| business -- some books/authors that publishers sign are absolute
| home runs and make 99% of the money out of any given cohort of
| books and the rest likely don't return the cost of the advance
| and investment from the publisher's side of things. Maybe
| technology will also increase the potential for author earnings
| here, if today you have to hire someone to record an audiobook or
| do a translation, maybe that gets automated away in a few years
| and you can more easily publish in every format and language
| potentially reaching a larger audience.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| One thing that I've found interesting about Iceland is that it is
| the country with the most authors per capita:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24399599
|
| https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/444296-mo...
|
| But of course most of these authors aren't full-time authors
| whose income comes chiefly from their books. In fact, the
| Icelandic Prime Minister recently released a novel:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/28/iceland-pm-rel...
|
| Having a small and sparse population, Icelanders seem to have a
| tradition of wearing multiple hats rather than sticking with one
| specialization. When the men's football team made their first
| World Cup, the head coach wasn't just a football coach, he also
| happened to be a dentist:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimir_Hallgrimsson
|
| It seems like a lot of people lament that more folks can't make
| it as full-time authors, but I don't really have a problem with
| that if the demand for their writing isn't there. But if the US
| were more like Iceland and typical "real" jobs paid a livable
| wage with reasonable hours, maybe those passionate about writing
| could still manage to take a shot at it without it being a big
| deal if their book turned out to be a commercial flop?
| gloryjulio wrote:
| > But if the US were more like Iceland and typical "real" jobs
| paid a livable wage with reasonable hours
|
| That's the key issue in general, not just for US. When the
| system is designed to extract maximum efficiency, there is
| little room for other stuff
| tw235346nmolk wrote:
| Maximum efficiency in regards to what metric? (Before you say
| 'money/the economy', inequality seems to be bad in that
| respect [1], and that's about the only thing in regards to
| which US system seems to be highly efficiency ;)
|
| [1] https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/sdn/2015/sdn1513.pdf
| burnished wrote:
| I believe that is what they are referring to, 'the system'
| being highly efficient at allocating process
| improvements/efficiency improvements to the owners of
| capital leading to the income inequality you note
| TimPC wrote:
| The US is fairly good at creating high GDP per capita. They
| are 8th behind: Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Norway,
| Qatar, UAE and Switzerland.
|
| Of those nations: Norway, Qatar and UAE are highly
| dependent on oil profits and Luxembourg is an outlier as an
| unusually small affluent nation. Ireland is also known to
| have an inflated GDP due to it's tax hub status resulting
| in corporations reporting high revenue numbers there even
| though that revenue is often disconnected from the country.
|
| I think most nations would be thrilled to have a GDP per
| capita of $76,399 USD. When the proceeds are that much
| higher it takes an awful lot of inequality to make the
| outcomes worse. One of the biggest issues in the US is that
| health care is not covered by the government so it costs
| nearly double compared to most comparable countries and
| access is subject to all the inequality constraints that
| universal government programs mostly erase.
|
| For example in Canada which has a GDP per capita of
| $51,987, the split between wages and capital is
| approximately 90-10 meaning that the average wage
| (including non-working population) was $46,788. For the US
| to have the same type of average wage of only $46,788 the
| share going to capital would have to be 38.8%.
| huytersd wrote:
| It's more than that. In Iceland you're allowed to just stop
| working and the government will give you a basic income (along
| with a recreation stipend!) indefinitely. This gives people so
| much time for pursuits they're passionate about.
| coredog64 wrote:
| As usual, I will allow Han Solo to critique your argument.
|
| > There's not enough life on this ice cube to fill a space
| cruiser.
| huytersd wrote:
| That's why it works I get it and most people wouldn't want
| to live in an icy hellscape but if you like spending all
| your time indoors it's not so bad.
| dahart wrote:
| Contrary to the name, Iceland isn't an icy hellscape at
| all. Haven't you heard the quip about Iceland being green
| and Greenland being ice? Icelanders like spending time
| outside, and Reykjavik and most cities and towns are on
| the coast so they're not all that cold. https://www.timea
| nddate.com/weather/iceland/reykjavik/climat...
| hattmall wrote:
| I think by most people's standards that's pretty cold.
| Summer high in the mid 50s. 8 Months of the year with
| near freezing nightly temps.
|
| What inhabited place would you be comparing it to to get
| "not all that cold"?
| hydrok9 wrote:
| an average low of 0 celsius in the winter is a LOT warmer
| than Canada, except maybe on the west coast. It's
| probably warmer than the Nordics too, and maybe Russia.
| dahart wrote:
| It's not very icy, with an average high above freezing
| year round. That's warmer winter conditions than a lot of
| the US. Greenland, Alaska, Canada, Siberia, Finland,
| Mongolia, Svalbard, Norway... there's a pretty long list
| of inhabited places that are colder than Iceland.
| jrmg wrote:
| Do you have a source for Iceland having a universal basic
| income like that? How much is it? I'm not finding anything
| about it with Google searches, and it seems kind of hard to
| believe.
| huytersd wrote:
| It's not universal. It's basically indefinite unemployment
| payments.
| grecy wrote:
| Australia has that too. $1500/mo for a single person.
| zthoutt wrote:
| As someone who has a full time job and has self-published a
| novel I wrote in my spare time, I do not think that supply of
| books is the issue. In fact, as I went through the process of
| learning how to self publish, I met many people who write in
| their free time, including people I know and friends of friends
| I don't know. I was actually surprised by how many people there
| are who have either already self published or who have an
| unpublished book they work on in their spare time.
|
| From my experience, the issue in the US is on the demand side.
| People here hardly read, and when they do read, it's usually a
| super popular book all their friends have read or that Tim
| Ferris talked about. When I published my book, I was surprised
| by how many close friends and family bought the book to support
| me, but have never opened it. And it wasn't until after I
| published my book and became more aware of the reading habits
| of those around me that I realized how little most people read
| these days. There are a handful of people who read 30-50 books,
| but if you were to take the median so those people don't skew
| the average, I'd estimate that it'd come in around 1-2 books.
| Probably half of the people in my life don't read a single book
| in an average year.
|
| While I never wanted to make a living off my book, I'll admit
| it was discouraging to see how few people read it cover to
| cover. I took Mark Dawson's course and got all of the social
| ads, lead magnet, etc. setup. The ads did work, but I quickly
| found out that of the subset of people who do read a lot in the
| US, most are 60+ and want self-published books to be either
| $0.99 or free. I had multiple angry old ladies reach out to me
| through my Facebook ad complaining that they weren't going to
| pay $2.99 for a self-published book and that it was upsetting
| I'd even try.
|
| It wasn't all bad and I did find readers who genuinely enjoyed
| my book and supporting self-published authors, but these type
| of people are a very small percent of the population. If the
| average person read 15 books per year and was ok paying $10 per
| book to support authors, I think you'd see a lot more self-
| published books. From my anecdotal experience, there are plenty
| of people who aspire to write, but we lack a supportive reading
| culture to fully cultivate authors (even part-time authors).
|
| EDIT: I'll also add that among the people in the median reading
| 1-2 books per year, most are listening to those books as
| audiobooks. I'm not one of those people who say listening to
| books isn't reading, but for the average full length novel it
| costs about $10k to get an audiobook made, which is way outside
| the budget for anyone trying to publish books as a hobby. I
| paid for an audiobook to be made because I have the income and
| thought it'd be a fun experience (which it was!), but I will
| never make enough from the book to cover that expense
| TimPC wrote:
| The demand side is also that for people who do read their
| spending may be down. I used to buy roughly $400 in books a
| year. I now buy maybe 1 book a year and subscribe to kindle
| unlimited for everything else. I don't think I'm reading much
| less but authors are certainly making less per read,
| especially since 30% of my spend on KU goes to Amazon and any
| book that has a publisher still needs to give the publisher
| their cut out of the remaining 70%.
| dageshi wrote:
| I think your $400 a year might be a bit of an outlier.
| Personally I would say the $140 I'm spending per year via
| KU is probably more than I was spending before. If you
| multiply this out by the number of people with KU
| subscriptions it wouldn't surprise me if that's actually
| more money flowing directly to authors than before.
| TimPC wrote:
| I guess it depends how much you like paperbacks but they
| were fairly good at getting me to buy hardcovers because
| I wanted something right when it came out and didn't want
| to wait for a paperback. At $40/hardcover $400 is less
| than a book a month. A KU subscription is less money
| flowing into the system than someone buying 1 hardcover
| per quarter.
| hx8 wrote:
| After graduating college at the age of 22, I've read between
| 20-50 books every year.
|
| I'm often surprised at how far ahead of the bell curve I am.
| I am very rarely able to have a conversation about literature
| with people in real life. If I'm lucky enough to find someone
| that's read a recently published book I've also read then
| they often haven't read anything else by the same author. Or
| they haven't read the influences the author had for the book.
| Or they aren't aware of the genre trends the book took part
| in.
|
| Reading in America is a lonely hobby sometimes.
| ghaff wrote:
| I maybe used to read 30+ books a year. (And subscribed to a
| lot of magazines.) I'm not sure I read many fewer words
| these days but I read far fewer books--maybe 5-10.
| Tanoc wrote:
| When I was younger I would read ten to twenty books a year,
| of all genres. As I've gotten older it's dropped to one to
| two, entirely history books. Part of the problem is
| discoverability. There's too much stuff, and places like
| Goodreads aren't good at sorting through them. Since most
| things get limited physical releases these days you don't
| find them at book stores or libraries like you used to. I
| also refuse to support Amazon in any way because I'd rather
| give the money to the authors directly. Problem with that
| is the only way to do that most of the time is with pre-
| orders or drops, and by the time I found out about these
| authors or that particular work those are long since over.
| jdriselvato wrote:
| Goodreads discoverability seems pretty good to me. I'm
| constantly finding new books through their recommended
| algo, front page, curated lists and search. What else
| could they do to improve that?
|
| For example, if I wanted find more beatnik related books
| (after reading On The Road) I search lists and find this
| fantastic community scored collection with more books
| than I'll ever want to read on the subject:
| https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/89976.Beatniks
| tayo42 wrote:
| > the issue in the US is on the demand side. People here
| hardly read,
|
| I got back into reading, but its been an effort. Books are
| big and expensive, my library actually doesn't have stuff
| available often so I'm always on a wait list. Its hard tough
| to find time let alone quiet time to focus on a book. So many
| distractions around, roommates, city noise, neighbors making
| noise.
| ghaff wrote:
| The thing is when I read more books, I'd pull out a book if
| I had a dead 15-30 minutes more or less anywhere. Nowadays
| it's easier to default to Facebook, random links, etc. in
| those sorts of slots.
| wharvle wrote:
| Most men, at any rate, wore a jacket almost everywhere
| (as in: suit jacket, sport coat, blazer) in the heyday of
| pulp fiction, when quite a few could make working-class
| wages pounding out words on a typewriter.
|
| What do those jackets have? Big hip pockets. What fits
| perfectly in those, hardly even affecting the drape, with
| enough room to spare that they can slip in and out
| effortlessly? Slim little pulp fiction books. Hell, many
| are even big enough for a volume of Magazine of Fantasy
| and Science Fiction to fit OK. Can't cram a glossy in
| there, but pulps? Yep.
|
| Plus, yes, there were no cell phones, but if you want to
| carry a book today, where do you put it, if you don't
| have a bag (and even if you do, that's not convenient, is
| it?)? Well, on your phone, as an ebook, since that fits
| in a jeans or trouser pocket, and practically no dead-
| tree books or e-readers do... oh but look, you have some
| notifications! And there goes the 15 minutes.
|
| Women often carry purses. And who still reads? It's
| largely women. I'm sure there are other reasons, but--
| hmmmm.
| ghaff wrote:
| I read a lot of books when I wasn't wearing a jacket so I
| don't know.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Less reading imho, is a symptom of increasing hours worked
| (which is also linked to lagging livable pay). The US has
| been increasing the hours worked. Less leisure time and less
| disposable income drives a host of negative effects.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_a.
| ..
| hattmall wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's just more options, mainly social
| media. Everyone I know has plenty of leisure time to
| browser stuff on their phone, but book reading is a distant
| thought for most.
| nprateem wrote:
| Self publishing causes a huge increase in noise since there
| are no barriers to getting published. So there's a big risk
| you'll pick up some garbage, but also vast supply which
| drives down prices. It also means new books on popular
| subjects can be quickly written, so unless you have some
| credentials the odds are stacked against you. So i think it
| comes down to marketing one way or another.
|
| I plan to write a book one day, but mainly as an aid to
| establishing my credibility for courses I'll run, so
| marketing from the other direction.
| netman21 wrote:
| I feel this. I write non-fiction in the tech industry. I
| start every project estimating the potential number of
| readers. My second book is the only one written for a
| particular profession. I calculated there were at least
| 20,000 people in the profession. Over 13 years it has sold
| about 2,000 copies. I have also written the only history of
| the IT security industry. I update it every year. It too only
| sells 2,000 copies per edition. Definitely not a way to make
| a living.
| gadders wrote:
| Post a link to your book here as well. I'm intrigued to see
| what it was about.
| Kaytaro wrote:
| As much as I dislike publishers gatekeeping what gets read,
| It's a big ask to commit several hours to a self-published
| book. This is one thing I like about Japanese light novels, I
| can look up the release calendar and pick out a few that look
| interesting. They are a relatively quick read and only around
| $7 (about half that if you live in Japan).
| dsubburam wrote:
| While there may be less demand for books, I am less sure of
| the corollary that there is less reading. I remember when
| Harry Potter was having its hey day, and the Amazon Kindle
| was first announced, there were stats showing that worldwide
| reading blipped up.
|
| I suspect folks these days read faster, and read more words,
| than people past. Except it might be content like Hackernews,
| YouTube comments, X/Twitter and other doom scrollers, that
| make that up.
| pjlegato wrote:
| > in the US ... people here hardly read
|
| This is not true at all. The empirical evidence shows the
| exact opposite: Americans tend to read far more than almost
| all other countries.
|
| This "we Americans are a bunch of ignorant louts who don't
| read" narrative is a distressingly persistent misconception
| illustrating self-hating biases popular with certain segments
| of Americans. Fortunately, it is entirely false.
|
| What does the data say?
|
| * According to the chart on page 14 of [4], the US is ranked
| about #8 or #9 in the world (of 200+ countries) in terms of
| "books published per capita."
|
| * The US "title production per capita," or "books published
| per 1 million inhabitants," is about 1,000 -- not the very
| highest in the entire world, but pretty high.[3]
|
| * Over 25% of all books sold _in the entire world_ are sold
| in the United States, which has about 4% of the world 's
| population. [1]
|
| * More books are published in the US than in any other
| country but China, which has about 4x the population of the
| US. [1][2]
|
| * In 2016, the US was by far the largest book publishing
| market in the world by market value, larger even than China.
| [4]
|
| [1] https://wordsrated.com/global-book-sales-statistics/
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/chart/12358/which-countries-
| produce...
|
| [3] https://internationalpublishers.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2023/... , page 17.
|
| [4] https://masterenedicion.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/11/BookM...
| BenFeldman1930 wrote:
| Your data does not answer: how many of these books are
| actually read (in the US)?
| eslaught wrote:
| I've been reading about 5-10 books a year for the last 10
| years or so, after having not read anything of substance
| (outside of school) for some years prior to that.
|
| Since my reading time is limited, I want to read books that
| are really good. I have to say, quite frankly, that many
| books just aren't that amazing (and I'm including both
| traditional and self-published in this). That makes me
| reluctant to pick up a book unless it's from an author I
| already know, comes with a really strong recommendation, or
| just has a superb opening. If a book doesn't have at least
| one of those three (or ideally two), I'm just not going to
| pick it up.
|
| This is all anecdata, but my point is the demand side is more
| complicated. Even given the competition, the vast
| availability of both traditionally and self-published books
| doesn't guarantee that quality goes up, at least in
| aggregate.
| wharvle wrote:
| At 5-10 books a year, there's also the "problem" that
| you've got _more than_ a lifetime supply, just sticking to
| time-tested, very-likely-to-be-excellent classics. That 's
| even true for relatively-modern genre fic and such, these
| days--it's not the 1960s anymore, you can fill shelves and
| shelves with good-reputation sci fi and fantasy. This is
| all true even if zero new books are published... ever.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >People here hardly read,
|
| I feel it's not so much that people _don 't read_, it's that
| people _don 't read books_ anymore in lieu of other mediums
| (most prominently social media) or methods (eg: watching
| television, playing games with a story component).
|
| We all do plenty of _reading_ in our lives, after all.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| It would be so great if more professions in the US had part
| time options. I could make a zillion dollars as a dev for a big
| tech company, but there's nowhere that pays 80% of that for 80%
| of the hours. Hell, I don't think I have the option to make 50%
| of that for 80% of the hours. Salaried careers seem to only
| have full time positions, and it sucks.
| ses1984 wrote:
| Specialization is at the core of economic profit. Damn you,
| economics!
| dingnuts wrote:
| if you have the soft skills (I sure dont lol) I -think-
| contracting/consulting can be a solution to this? It's not
| exactly part time, but you work your contract and then take a
| break before you pick up the next one, which does give you
| more flexibility with your time. You could eg work six months
| on, six months off, that way.
|
| Maybe. I knew a PE who did this years ago, but I wonder if
| there's any software engineers on this board who have
| successfully done this
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I usually negotiate my contracts to be 20-30 hours per week
| of work. This gives me ample time to work on side projects
| (aka playing ck3) and run my Etsy shop.
|
| The soft skills aren't much, you have to remember your boss
| is also just as social awkward as you, because, they are
| usually cut from the same software developer cloth. But
| remaining on good terms with past managers helps a lot. I
| still have annual dinners with almost everyone I've ever
| worked with, even if we are all scattered across the US.
| scarecrowbob wrote:
| "It would be so great if more professions in the US had part
| time options. "
|
| I agree with this, and I've personally led a life that has
| had many different kinds of occupations (I've been a
| musician, a teacher, and a programmer- usually all three at
| once).
|
| I've come to the conclusion that a lot of the reason for
| "full-time" employment has to do with making workers
| unavailable for other projects.
|
| Or, if you prefer, full time jobs aren't there because
| 40-hours-a-week is how much can be gotten out of a worker,
| but because that's how much time is necessary to keep someone
| from getting another job that might interfere with the "real"
| job.
|
| Many folks, especially folks who do weird stuff that
| requires, if not great intellect or training, familiarity
| with a specific system (as is the case with software, for
| instance) aren't actually working a full time load. That's a
| really common observation, I think. But the way to understand
| why that continues to happen is that their employment ensures
| their availability.
|
| That may see strange, and on some levels it's simply not
| correct and certainly not how most folks are thinking about
| full time employment.
|
| But if you push an employer to give you fewer hours, that
| understanding might make a lot of sense out of why they
| generally won't allow part-time work- if you've got a side
| gig, they can't have that take priority over their tasks.
| prosqlinjector wrote:
| Your value to your company is also not a linear function of
| your time there. There are high fixed costs to training,
| liability, insurance, etc. They are paying you to always be
| available, etc.
|
| With that said, I think it's very possible to find a much
| more easier development job with a lower salary. You should
| be able to meet performance expectations in very little time.
| j2kun wrote:
| The company Galois notably supports this sort of arrangement
| (you pick your hours and your pay is scaled accordingly). I
| think their corporate structure could be applied more widely.
| jrmg wrote:
| Iceland is an affluent western nation with its own language,
| but a population of less than 375,000 people - fewer people
| than many cities in other countries. And yet these people want
| books just as much as any other people - perhaps given the
| nation's culture even more so.
|
| For supply (and selection) to keep up with demand, it requires
| a far higher percentage of the population to write.
| graphe wrote:
| > By far the largest percentage of respondents, 79%, were white,
| followed by 8% Black, 4% Hispanic, 2% AAPI, and 2% Native
| American. Twelve percent identified as LGBTQIA+ and 11%
| identified as disabled, meeting the ADA's definition. The survey
| did find that diversity efforts were beginning to bear fruit--
| Black, AAPI, and Hispanic authorship has increased the most since
| 2019, and LGBTQIA+ and nonbinary authors were also above average
| among new authors. Sixty-one percent of respondents were women,
| 34% men, and 5% nonbinary.
|
| What diversity efforts did they do?
|
| >The median book-related income for survey respondents in 2022
| was up 9% from 2018, adjusted for inflation, with all the
| increase coming from full-time authors, whose income was up 20%,
| compared to a 4% decline for part-time authors.
|
| Whatever was to increase income worked. The books they talk about
| are mostly what I'd consider trash I wouldn't read: generic
| romance novels and fan fiction with changed names. Low ceiling.
| Procrastes wrote:
| I've published traditionally and it was a great experience. The
| publisher (O'Reilly) was great to work with, and the editors made
| a tremendous, positive difference in the finished work. That was
| many years ago.
|
| Since, I've moved to fiction and self publishing, and that's been
| hard, but rewarding. It's hard and expensive to build a following
| on your own with just books and ads.
|
| Now I have moved to web serials and subscriptions. I'm convinced
| this is the best time to be a writer. The hardest part, finding
| an audience, is as easy as sticking to a publishing schedule and
| engaging with readers.
| OliveMate wrote:
| Not in response to the article but the general vibes in the
| comments.
|
| Writing a published book and having it out there is a thought
| that really resonates me. I wonder what I'd write if I had more
| time to myself, a clear mind, and /if I was a radically different
| person who wanted to do it/.
|
| The thought of having written something, put it out there, and to
| have someone enjoy it is lovely - I'd be happy writing schlock if
| it came straight from my heart. But in terms of being the sort of
| person to sit down every day, concentrate, and slave away at
| it... That isn't me. Props to people who manage to put anything
| on a single page, let alone finish a whole book.
| paxys wrote:
| I get that this is the authors guild and activism and lobbying is
| literally their job, but statements like "survey finds that
| median book and writing-related income for authors in 2022 was
| below the poverty level" are meaningless.
|
| What makes one an "author" exactly? Publishing a book? I can do
| that in 5 minutes online with 3 clicks. Does that mean I qualify
| for the survey? Well, I made $0 from my writing last year, so I
| guess that means I'm being exploited and the government isn't
| properly valuing the essential contribution I make to society.
| I'll expect my weekly check in the mail.
|
| It's like saying the average software developer makes below-
| poverty wages from their work...if you consider everyone in the
| world with an idea for an app in their head to be a software
| developer.
| spencerflem wrote:
| No, it would be like counting everyone who made an app as a
| software developer
| paxys wrote:
| Go through any of the app stores and look up all the trash
| that is published on a daily basis that gets single digit
| downloads. Look at all the new websites registered. Millions
| of people follow "create a React to-do list" tutorials and
| write their own. These are all software developers who make
| zero income from their craft. Yet no one is arguing that
| software developers as a whole are underprivileged. You can
| apply this same logic to actors, musicians, real estate
| agents and a hundred other professions. There's just the
| understanding that if there are zero barriers to entry you
| have to have _some_ test that sets the professionals /serious
| practitioners apart. Otherwise your surveys are always going
| to tend towards 0.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Tangential, but do any authors apply the same techniques promoted
| by software developers for honing their craft? e.g. instead of
| trying to write the next great American novel you focus on
| writing a lot of short stories and then analyze them for market
| fit and expand on the ones that have legs?
| ghaff wrote:
| I think writers as a whole are far less inclined to concern
| themselves with market fit than many developers are.
|
| Short stories haven't historically been very lucrative relative
| to longer works. Although there were some genres, eg SF, where
| they were a natural entry point.
| throwuwu wrote:
| Maybe they should be? I suggested short stories as a way to
| practice and test the waters since they would work well with
| social media and aggregator sites, people are willing to read
| a short story they find on reddit or hn but much less likely
| to read a whole book. Keeping your "demos" short also
| requires less commitment and takes less time so you can do
| more of them. The idea isn't to earn money from short stories
| but to do analytics on them in order to decide which to turn
| into a novel.
| diamondap wrote:
| Actually, one software-developer-turned-writer did something
| close. Check out Chris Fox's book "Write to Market" on Amazon.
| He sat down and analyzed sales figures for different book
| genres on Amazon then chose a genre where he thought he could
| squeeze onto the top ten bestseller list. He's been cranking
| out books for years and selling pretty well. If you check his
| author page, you'll see he has quite a few titles out.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| It IS near-impossible. I have two books on Amazon (search "Albert
| Cory") which are actually _about our industry_ , and I've
| mentioned them here many times. Fortunately I'm retired and don't
| need the income.
|
| One data point for you: I've been taking various angles on my new
| book, looking for books with that feature, and then finding the
| agent who represented them. Sounds smart, right? Hasn't worked so
| far.
|
| One fallout of that is, I've been checking these books out of the
| library (less $$$ commitment there!) and at least starting them.
| What dreck people read!
|
| If the main character isn't solving a murder, connecting with
| their long-lost lover, fighting terrorists, or engaged in other
| TV-worthy plots, the book will never make it onto bookshelves.
| Since I don't have to care about people's lousy taste, I don't.
|
| Lastly, the figure of $10K for an audiobook that someone
| mentioned is way too high, in my experience.
| ffitch wrote:
| Worries me a bit that an established "natural selection" process
| pivoted towards quick turnaround. Thirty years ago publishing
| house would decline 99% of the manuscripts, the rest they will
| heavily edit, print in somewhat large numbers, and extensively
| promote. Today they accept more stuff, print in small 3,000-5,000
| batches, then throw away forever. To me, feels like a young but
| promising author went from a 1% chance of getting recognized to
| 10% chance of getting printed and 100% chance of getting
| forgotten right after.
| CM30 wrote:
| It's the same with most creative fields really. The vast majority
| of people earn very little from their work, and a few really
| skilled/lucky folks at the top of the field earn a fortune.
|
| See also music, art, game design/development, content creation on
| sites like YouTube and Twitch, blogging, etc.
|
| Part of this is simply due to competition; there was stacks of it
| before the internet got big, and there's probably a thousand
| times more now the internet has become normalised. The barrier to
| entry to writing a book or becoming a writer is extremely low in
| the grand scheme of things (well, if you have the
| determination/patience to finish), so enough people do that
| you're spoilt for choice there.
|
| Add this to how challenging the marketing/sales side of running a
| business is by default, and how trying to make a sustainable
| income as an author or creator is basically being a sole
| trader/entrepreneur, and well, it's not too surprising that most
| people don't do particularly well from it.
| cruano wrote:
| On the competition aspect, I think it's also important to look
| at the consumer side. For me it was wild knowing Mission
| Impossible struggled at the box office because of
| Barbie/Oppenheimer, especially because it was such a big budget
| film and it was actually my favorite of the three. The reality
| is that most people would maybe go once a month to the cinema,
| so they have to prioritize what to watch.
|
| To make matters worse, you are also competing with all of
| history. If you want to read 12 books this year, when are you
| going to get to the small creators with years-worth of classics
| to go through?
| PsylentKnight wrote:
| Agree with your overall point, but the Mission Impossible
| thing isn't that surprising to me. I think a lot of people
| are tired of endless reboots/sequels of action-adventure
| movies. Also I think Tom Cruise can have the opposite of star
| power these days, a lot of people feel kind of ick about him.
| leephillips wrote:
| I don't watch movies with certain actors in them. He's one
| of them.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's a lot like picking a career as an artist, a musician, or an
| athlete. A very small percentage makes a lucrative living, and
| the rest wander in the desert.
|
| > unconscionable contracts
|
| Self-publishing has never been an easier option than today.
|
| > book bans
|
| As far as I can tell, these are only for R rated books in schools
| and libraries. Isn't it the same as R movies? Nobody thinks of R
| movies as being banned.
|
| > action to build a system that properly values the essential
| contributions of writers
|
| They're valued by the free market, i.e. people freely paying what
| they believe the book is worth to them. I'm curious how the Guild
| expects to change this. Have government regulations that mandate
| payment per word? Government subsidy?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Many types of books have ancillary results for the author than
| can be lucrative. For example, writing a solid academic book
| can get you a job or more pay in an academic setting, or a top
| job in a technical position.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Substack is better, imho, if you can serialize it . Monthly subs
| is recurring revenue, compared to one-time book purchases.
| sleepydog wrote:
| Anecdotally I have found the amount of books I read has
| skyrocketed since I got a library card. I used to hesitate at
| book stores trying to decide if a book was worth $30 and the
| space on my (already full) book shelf. Now, if I hear about a
| book that's even remotely interesting, I check it out from the
| library almost impulsively. If I don't like it, I don't finish
| it. If I really like it, I buy a copy. The checkout deadlines
| also provide a nice motivation for me to finish a book.
|
| I went from reading less than 5-10 books a year best to reading
| 40 books in 2023. And the more I read, the more I want to read.
|
| I am spoiled, living in NYC, as the NYPL and Brooklyn PL between
| them have a pretty extensive catalog, and it's rare that they
| don't have a book I want, even recently published books. There's
| often a wait list though. It's also easy to get a lot of reading
| done during my commute on public transit. We still don't get cell
| service on the MTA between stations, so books are the best form
| of entertainment.
|
| Of course, I suppose if everyone used the library exclusively,
| writers would make very little money. But I like to think it
| works out. I bought more books last year than I did before using
| the library, and attended a few book talks & signings at my local
| book store.
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| Piracy did the same thing for me. If would read more than 50
| pages in a book i would buy a copy, if not i would delete and
| move on. I think i fully read 21 in 2023, and ditched probably
| about as many before 50 pages. I absolutely bought and read
| more books than in 2022, not even close.
| pstorm wrote:
| Couldn't you do the same with Kindle samples? Seems lower
| effort.
| jjice wrote:
| I may be wrong, but Kindle samples are often much shorter
| than 50 pages in my experience. Usually too short for me to
| make a choice as to whether I want to read the book or not.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Pulp will be almost completely replaced by AI, no doubt, within
| the next couple years. I don't see how anyone could possibly
| consider that a viable career path anymore. The people who
| consume it couldn't care less or notice, and they'll have it
| tailored precisely to their own tastes based on advertising data
| collection. It was never about quality, just sheer quantity of
| the same thing over and over again (but _slightly_ different),
| which LLMs are phenomenal at. Same goes for pop music and
| mainstream cinema on a slightly further timescale.
| fredgrott wrote:
| A few weeks back one of the VCs now attached to newline co
| attempted to sell me on becoming dev author through their
| program.
|
| I of course pointed out that as I market upfront I am getting
| paid via my substack so essentially I solved the problems his
| startup is still trying to solve.
|
| And of course he ghosted me.
| donald_piano wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/Across-Silicon-Bravely-Stan-Stevens/d...
| Evenjos wrote:
| I have a 6 book contract with Podium, my debut was in the top 100
| books of 2023 by Kirkus, and I am nowhere near quitting my day
| job.
|
| I've paid attention to the publishing industry for years. Like
| all of the arts, it's oversaturated and there's a lot of churn.
|
| IMO, writers who earn a full-time living as authors fall into
| three basic categories. They either a) established themselves as
| blockbuster bestsellers with the Big Five before Amazon
| democratized the marketplace, circa 2010 and earlier, b) they
| established themselves as blockbuster bestsellers as early
| adopters of the Amazon Kindle marketplace, circa 2011 to 2016, or
| c) they own an advertising agency, are married to someone who
| owns an advertising agency, they are slick marketing gurus, or
| they are major social media influencers.
|
| There are exceptions. I see interesting innovations in the web
| serial space, where I play around. I sell advance chapters on
| Patreon. Some authors do earn a full-time living that way.
|
| But in general, yes, it is very tough to be a professional author
| or an artist or a musician or an indie game developer these days.
| Everyone wants to be one.
|
| I also see cynical authors and artists using AI to 100x their
| content production so they can nickel and dime their way into top
| seller spots. The algorithms boost anyone whose works
| consistently sell and bury everyone else.
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