Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Writing books is not really a good idea

ellegriffin.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 630 posts

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#111

Post by GekkePrutser »

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #97
GekkePrutser wrote: post #73

> 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 don't think this'll work. Authors tend to have phases of inspiration, and lulls in between. The pressure of the next episode would lead to 'phoned in' chapters. 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 lo…

Yes exactly, I don't like this at all either.. I know I will get less absorbed in the story if I have to wait a month in between each chapter and in the end I'll just give up.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#112

Post by Mauricebranagh »

GCA10 wrote: post #12
mxcrossb wrote: post #3

I wonder how serializing a novel would mesh with most author’s work flow. I guess most would want to write it first and release monthly an already finished product?

A lot of 19th century fiction was done this way. Authors (Dickens, etc.) tended to work from a loose outline and construct the details as they rolled along. Peer at those books closely and you can see some odd detours that were shut down. Also some padding to get more segment-by-segment payments. But it's workable

Which is why there are page long descriptions of horses and carriages in the count of mote cristo.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#113

Post by TchoBeer »

ghaff wrote: post #89
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #47

It would be interesting to have a timeseries plot of this sort of information. Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? Presumably there was some point at which the ease of making a living as an author peaked. This article suggests that time is in the past, but how far in the past? Has the absolute number of people who can make it as an author decreased, or just the relative fraction of the human popul…

>Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? My assumption is almost certainly yes-- provided you made it through the big publisher gatekeepers. (And were able to parlay that into shelf space at the store.) - People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to. - There was…

>People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to.

I'd imagine the number of books sold per year is strictly increasing.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#114

Post by ellegriffin »

salamandersauce wrote: post #87
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #47

It would be interesting to have a timeseries plot of this sort of information. Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? Presumably there was some point at which the ease of making a living as an author peaked. This article suggests that time is in the past, but how far in the past? Has the absolute number of people who can make it as an author decreased, or just the relative fraction of the human popul…

Yes. Needs comparison to past years to be useful. Would also be helpful to compare books that came out in past year or few years to see how their sales trends. We also need to know what those books that are tracked are. Are they just in print titles? Or does it count 60 year old used biology textbooks for sale on Amazon no one wants? Or dated romance novels long past their prime? Because if those are included I'm not…

I did mention Alexandre Dumas as a case study in a previous article. Here's a snippet:

"But there used to be another way. When Alexandre Dumas debuted The Count of Monte Cristo it was published as a feuilleton—a portion of the weekly newspaper devoted to fiction. From August 1844 to January 1846 his chapters were published in 18 installments for The Journal des Débats, a newspaper that went out to 9,000 to 10,000 paying subscribers in France—and readers were rapt by it.

In the forward to a 2004 translation of the book, the writer Luc Sante wrote: “The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled… is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.”

It was basically “Game of Thrones.” Readers could not wait to get their hands on the next chapter and that bode very well for the writer who was not only paid by the newspaper in real-time for his work (by the word), but also grew the popularity of his work over the entirety of the time it was being published.

“The ‘Presse’ pays nearly 300 francs per day for feuilletons to Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, De Balzac, Frederic Soulé, Theophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau,” Littell’s Little Age, Volume 10 wrote in 1846. “But what will the result be in 1848? That each of these personnages will have made from 32,000 to 64,000 francs per annum for two or three years for writing profitable trash of the color of the foulest mud in Paris?”

That “profitable trash” earned those writers an annual salary of between $202,107 to $404,213 in today’s dollars—and the obvious disdain of that Littell writer who, even then preferred the merits of a bound and published book. The same volume goes on to say that Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment when he was poached from The Presse by The Constitutionnel in 1845."

https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#115

Post by kingsuper20 »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #86
kingsuper20 wrote: post #72

One thing that has bound to affect new book sales, especially on the tail, is the increasing ease of buying used books online. It's kind of like the way that eBay altered the music store instrument business. Pirated e-books probably have chiseled away some of the business. Having said that, the book business looks to have been in a slow decline for some time. I don't doubt that social media and internet reading gener…

Pirated ebooks have definitely chiselled away at the business. I haven’t paid for a work of fiction in nearly a decade thanks to ebook-sharing communities. Just 2–3 years ago LibGen was something known only to a niche of torrentfreaks, but it seems like suddenly all of my bookish friends know about it and use it. (The exception is when I like a classic work of literature enough to want to buy a hardback copy that wil…

I agree with everything you've said here. I haven't bought a paperback for years (decades?).

Now that I think of it, practically every book I have any interest in is OOP or there is a nicer version of it available from some time ago.

In terms of ebooks, it'll be interesting to see if we continue to live in an increasing land o' plenty in terms of copyright violation (also including music and video) or if the hammer will come down on that. It's easy to imagine a legion of paratroopers outfitted in Disney uniforms doing a bit of digital axing on servers throughout the world.

One implication might be that this is the time to become a data hoarder.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#116

Post by bluGill »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #85
KittenInABox wrote: post #71

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…

Don't forget the population difference. There are a lot more people now than back then. (I intentional didn't specify world population of some subset - interesting to think about each)

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#117

Post by kpwagner »

sidibe wrote: post #62
AS_of wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you get older, you should read fewer new books, and revisit the ones that have you the most joy. Vacation sounds like a great place for that! Edit: why? Because you believe in the leverage algorithms can provide https://www.amazon.com/Algorithms-Live-Computer-Science-Deci... There are probably a lot of single people here that would benefit from that book as well (the stopping problem) We all "know" the algos. But…

I'm always surprised when people talk about rereading books. I get absolutely nothing out of books I've already read. Do you also rewatch TV series?

I think this really varies from person to person.

I re-read maybe 5% of books, and I tend to get a lot out of re-reading. Nassim Taleb said something like "if it's not worth re-reading, it was not worth reading in the first place".

My re-watch rate on movies and TV series is much higher, probably 85% of movies I will watch more than once. TV series, maybe 50%.

Some people just read or watch and never care to think much about it after. That's cool too; doesn't hurt me any.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#118

Post by cafard »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #47

It would be interesting to have a timeseries plot of this sort of information. Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? Presumably there was some point at which the ease of making a living as an author peaked. This article suggests that time is in the past, but how far in the past? Has the absolute number of people who can make it as an author decreased, or just the relative fraction of the human popul…

Recently in Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, I noticed the passage

He asked me whether he had mentioned, in any of the papers of the Rambler, the description in Virgil of the entrance into Hell, with an application to the press; 'for,' said he, 'I do not much remember them'. I told him, 'No.' Upon which he repeated it:

  Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus orci,
  Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
  Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus,
  Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas,
  Terribiles visu formae; Lethumque, Laborque.
  [Footnote: Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,
  Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell;
  And pale diseases, and repining age;
  Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage;
  Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep,
  Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep. DRYDEN.]
'Now,' said he, 'almost all these apply exactly to an authour; all these are the concomitants of a printing-house.' I proposed to him to dictate an essay on it, and offered to write it. He said, he would not do it then, but perhaps would write one at some future period.

(entry of Thursday, 14th October)

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#120

Post by Saturdays »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #73

> 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 think most readers would scoff at those price points, especially when comparing to the plethora of content available from streaming services such as Netflix, which is at $8-9/month for individual use.

That being said, is there a model for a group of authors/publishers that is $8-9/month for a growing large selection novels (a la Netflix catalog)? If there is, it probably won't 'solve' any of the issues the article and others are bringing up here.

Post reply on HN