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I've approached every creative endeavor in this way. I see no reason writing should be any different.
I'm not trying to be overly cynical, I'm just not surprised that writing is any different than music, painting, etc.
1. Leisure reading is at an all time low and declining [1]. I think reading books will go the way of live theater and classical music performances. It won't go away, but instead of a common, "every-man/woman" type of outing, it will be more niche/special occasion. I.e. whereas tons of people used to read often for pleasure in the early part of the 20th century, it is heading more towards a "only on vacation" or other special-occasion type activity for most folks.
2. Publishing has always been a hit-driven business, but my thought is that, like many other industries affected by the internet, it has consolidated even more (i.e. it's much easier to search and buy just based on "top" lists than it was previously - a popular book can reach a ton more people, but it's much harder to be popular in the first place).
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/06/29/leisu...
> As the going wisdom states: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year—and there are 83,397 books every year that have at least 1,000 true fans. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with ea…
> As the going wisdom states: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year—and there are 83,397 books every year that have at least 1,000 true fans. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with ea…
The series is fantastic and the latest book was great, but £8 for something that I finished in less than an hour felt a bit steep. Especially for an ebook with literally 0 marginal cost.
[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Martha-Wells/e/B000APZA1O?ref=sr_nt...
> As the going wisdom states: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year—and there are 83,397 books every year that have at least 1,000 true fans. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with ea…
It's strange to see people speculating about whether this is possible, since it's already here.
> As the going wisdom states: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year—and there are 83,397 books every year that have at least 1,000 true fans. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with ea…
Not just from the author's side. From a reader's perspective this would also not work. I don't want to start reading a book a chapter at a time. I don't even like reading books that are part of an unfinished series.
For me, as someone who reads quite a lot of books, there is nothing more satisfying than finding a new series that you are interested in and discovering the entire series is already finished. You can then just binge through the whole thing.
The worst is when a series is 5-6 books in, you binge through them in a couple of days and when the next part is released you can't be bothered because you have forgotten what it was about.
I wish authors would take the Netflix approach and just finish the entire series before releasing it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know offhandedly that at one point it was possible to live on one's short fiction but now that's been entirely squeezed out. (Unless you're Ted Chiang.)
That is sad. :( In happier news, I wonder if you can look at things in terms of "creators of entertainment" rather than just authors and get a happier picture. Like, for example, let's just consider authors and video game creators. Let's suppose that in the fifties, before video games, there were, say, 100,000 full-time fiction authors in the US. (That number sounds awfully high to me, but maybe.) Today, according to…
I own a number of books (~200) and have probably owned x4 that total in my lifetime. Maybe 1/3 of those I paid full price for new. The rest I sourced either cheap on Ebay or about free from second-hand stores. I've spent probably less than $4,000 total on books, not counting textbooks, while being in the minority of people who buy and read books.
I don't really know where I'm going with this, but the question that comes to mind is something like this: how many people like me does it take to support one professional writer?
Non-fiction writers are way more likely to have other income sources than fiction writers. For example, I'm reading Marketing Made Simple (Donald Miller), which was free with Amazon Prime. I'm quite sure Donald Miller and his company are not sweating how much money they get from a Prime reader: getting anyone to read their book strengthens their overall sales funnel.
> As the going wisdom states: it only takes 1,000 true fans spending $100/year for a creator to earn a salary of $100,000/year—and there are 83,397 books every year that have at least 1,000 true fans. Theoretically then, an author could release a new chapter every week, charge subscribers $8 or $9 a month, and earn $100,000 a year—from only 1,000 readers. She's basically proposing an episodic model for books, with ea…
- I've paid $50 for an e-book with content that I thought was really valuable (and it was worth every penny).
- In the 2020s the book could be accompanied by supporting material (webcasts etc) which would increase the perceived value.
- Some people would be prepared to pay more for early access and to support an author they really like.
I think that part of it is a change in focus of the book's content: rather than being accessible to as wide a range of readers as possible make it really valuable to a subset.
Frankly too many (non fiction) books are essays spun out to book length. A series of chapters with more dense content would be, in my view, be much more valuable (counting the cost of my time).
And of course as others have noted that many great books have been published as serials (albeit in magazines and newspapers).