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Writing books is not really a good idea

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Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#121

Post by crumpled »

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?

The complexity of A Song of Ice and Fire... You get a lot out of a second read-through. There the density of the plot development is so thick that you don't even know what you're supposed to focus on. Some things that are mentioned in the first few hundred pages can resonate much stronger after reading the last few hundred pages.

That's just one example. It obviously depends on the book. Getting "absolutely nothing" out of something seems more like a choice.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#122

Post by KittenInABox »

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…

Writing novels isn't comparable to writing video games outside of very niche genres, which are probably in a similarly sad state to fiction overall.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#123

Post by canadianfella »

sremani wrote: post #68
sidibe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Re-reading Pop-Psy and Airport literature is not the recommended reading. How about reading Hayek, Strauss for second time? How about reading man's search for meaning for the third time? You re-read great works, not NYT best shiller! (sic).

Gatekeeper

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#124

Post by ssully »

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?

Rereading (or "reexperiencing") something can be very valuable. Since you already know where the destination is going to be, you get to focus your attention on more of the little details you might not have picked up on the first time through.

With that said, I only occasionally do it for books because of the time commitment. I have a large list of books I want to read, and only read about 25 books a year. So if I am going to reread something, it's usually for a specific reason or I am was in a specific mood.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#125

Post by dovrce »

joebob42 wrote: post #108
dudul wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most new books aren't very good I don't know if this is true, but I do struggle with finding recent interesting books. The choice is often "Do I take a chance with this thing published last year? Or do I just pick up one of the 'classics' that I haven't read yet?" I usually end up going with the latter simply because I don't want to spend many hours reading something that ends up being "meh" and I assume that going…

Plus, for whatever it's worth the classic is already guaranteed to be culturally significant. Other people will have read it and you can talk to them about it, which can be a fun exercise and may not be true for whatever random book you could otherwise read.

Exactly, anything that has survived 100 or 1000 years is most likely worth your time

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#126

Post by wccrawford »

kpwagner wrote: post #99

In the month it will take me to finish reading Storm of Swords, I will watch ~10 movies. Plus, I'm reading Storm of Swords, which needs no additional support from readers to be discovered or validated--though I still want to read it. Plus, I digitally loaned it from my local library. 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…

A lot, but it's not just people like you.

I buy quite a few books. Almost all digital now. I probably buy a book every other month now. It'd be more, except that...

I also subscribe to Amazon Unlimited and read a lot of books on it.

I never buy movies now. If the theatres were open, I'd see 2, maybe 3 movies in a year with my wife. The rest I watch on Netflix/etc when they come out for free. I watch maybe 6 movies a month, and 4 of those are because we have a virtual movie night with a lot of friends every week since Covid started.

We watch a lot of TV, but again, Netflix/etc. We don't even pay for cable. We never buy TV series unless it's something really special.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#127

Post by kingsuper20 »

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

Serialization was quite common in science fiction pulp magazines also.

It's interesting to consider the meta-version of serialization..novel sets. Nothing new here, the Oz books being an obvious example, but it's funny how it plays into a human need to both read about familiar characters or places and to have physical sets of books that match.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#128

Post by moksly »

andrewzah wrote: post #10

I feel like I'm one of the few people that still does purchase books. In 2020 & 2021 I bought music theory books from amazon + jazzbooks.com, and I had some Korean books imported by a friend. I have the space and bookshelves to house them though.

I’m not sure where the author got the whole “people don’t read books” either, unless it is meant to be taken literal, this excluding audiobooks.

I’m on 20+ books read in my good reads challenge for 2021, all paid for, many through audible but some directly from the black library (yes it’s very stupid warhammer fiction), but all of them have been audiobooks and the ones I didn’t get through audible cost me 33 euros a piece. So you’re not the only one buying books, there is at least two of us!

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#129

Post by asgraham »

These are two completely different statistics: 1) last year, new releases sold poorly, perhaps unexpectedly (NYT article's claim); 2) last year, a relatively small portion of all currently released titles sold a lot of books, and most titles sold few books (linked article's data).

Pulling from the central table, last year: one title sold over 1 million copies; ten titles sold a collective 5-10 million copies; 267 titles sold a collective 26-133 million copies; 7,294 titles sold a collective 70-700 million copies; and 2.6 million titles sold between 0 and 2.6 BILLION copies. My guess is that last number is way closer to zero than 2.6 billion, so I'll exclude it when I say: the table the author cites shows that last year sold 100-840 million copies. Digital copies! Nearly double that when you include print books. So there's no support for the author's claim, "Books as a medium just don’t have an audience—or rather, they have a very niche audience."

Was last year bad for new release sales? Seemingly, according to NYT. Was last year relatively bad for all book sales? Maybe, I don't know. Does the data support the implication that 0.0001% of new authors will make a living? No. It says that 0.0001% of all currently selling books will single-handedly earn a living for their author in that year.

My wild guess is that authors make most of their money from new releases, so we'd really need to see the data underlying the NYT article on new releases, not this article on all online book sales.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#130

Post by bombcar »

The "revenue earned self-published" is the key take-away - if you can sell 10k books a year (either 10 1k books or one 10k book) you can have a moderately comfortable income, especially if you have other work (or your book can come out of other work - thing books that are mainly compilations of blog posts or articles).
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