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Writing books is not really a good idea

ellegriffin.substack.com

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Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#191

Post by nixtaken »

lacker wrote: post #173

I feel like the article glosses over a key point: Even on the high end, there were only 11 books that sold more than 500,000 copies. If I can spend two to three years writing a novel and my best case scenario is having it sell a couple hundred copies Isn't the best case scenario here that you are the top -selling author, selling over a million copies? I feel like the author of this post is just assuming that they are…

You are assuming that the top 1% got there based on merit and not money laundering -- a major feature of the business these days.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#192

Post by ellegriffin »

yoru-sulfur wrote: post #183

The writer of this article seems to be unaware of existing communities of exactly what they are taking about. They mentioned Jemisin's patreon as if she's invented the idea or is the only one who's had success doing it, which is simply not true. Go to https://royalroad.com , view top rated stories, click on basically anything and you'll see patreon links of authors making thousands of dollars per month/chapter.

Yes, I totally understand that there are authors earning money from their AO3, royal road accounts. But, very few are making a living doing it. Jemisin was an exception. Of the fiction writers that currently have a Patreon account: "only 25 earn more than $1,000/month, only six earn more than $2,000/month, and only one earns more than the $5,000/month (and she’s already a bestselling author)."

I hope that there are more, and if you can find them please let me know!!!

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#193

Post by leephillips »

sumtechguy wrote: post #106
arsome wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but I find marginal joy drops exponentially by repetition.

It has been about 15+ years since I had watched TOS star trek. I recently started watching them again. I recently went back and am watching 1 a week, same with Stargate. I find them very enjoyable again. Some books/movies/shows work better at a particular pace. I found that binge watching them makes them decidedly less enjoyable. Other shows are basically designed to be 10 hour movies. So those are OK to do that with…

I also recently went through the TOS. It really holds up. The best episodes are timeless. TOS has an energy and drama that I don’t see in any of the shows or movies that leach off of that world. I’m probably biased, as TOS is part of my childhood, but it’s the only one I like.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#194

Post by meowkit »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #176
obviouslynotme wrote: post #154

Computers and the Internet have democratized culture in a way never seen before. This is both good and bad. Newspapers are dying. Television is dying. Hollywood is dying. Books are dying. Now we have people co-creating on blogs, YouTube, self-publishing, and fan-fiction websites. The production quality is certainly down from the peak of professional culture, but software tools are helping individual creators gain an…

I can see this going round in another circle. The key skill for creatives (in any medium) will be marketing. Being good at the thing you do is table-stakes. Being good at marketing to create the audience will be the key divider between profitable artist/musician/writer/etc and aspiring amateur. So there's an opportunity for a good marketer to find a great creative (or vice versa) and strike a deal that allows the cre…

If instagram is a model, then its already started. My feed is basically just guitars/bass/drums and motorcycles. There are these instagram pages who “promote” other pages who pay them. Once the creator is large enough they can decouple and let the feed algorithm work.

Same goes for meme pages, actual models/actors. My guess is this is nascent stage before it really becomes a dominant force for filtering/promoting content.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#195

Post by gpm »

KittenInABox wrote: post #161
obviouslynotme wrote: post #154

Computers and the Internet have democratized culture in a way never seen before. This is both good and bad. Newspapers are dying. Television is dying. Hollywood is dying. Books are dying. Now we have people co-creating on blogs, YouTube, self-publishing, and fan-fiction websites. The production quality is certainly down from the peak of professional culture, but software tools are helping individual creators gain an…

The scariest part about the latter model is how the hell are we going to find any more Susanna Clarkes, J. D. Salingers, and any other author that doesn't want to or isn't able to buy into the parasocial nature of patreon and similar platforms? What if the author isn't hot, charismatic, or pleasant to listen to?

I don't look at Patreons that often, but if I think about the dozen or so that I have (maybe half of authors) none of them have had pictures of themselves on it, or audio recordings of themselves.

So, I mean, it takes being somewhat charismatic in writing, but of the other properties you list... I don't seem them as important at all. Moreover, being charismatic in writing seems to be practically a requirement for being a good author.

Nor is it like the previous model did not have biases, you needed to be good at selling yourself to publishing houses and the like instead of to readers directly, but you still needed to be good at selling yourself.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#196

Post by failwhaleshark »

ska wrote: post #134
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…

> I don't know if this is true, but I do struggle with finding recent interesting books. Sturgeons law definitely applies. Reading (or watching, or whatever) only older stuff is basically using survivor-ship as a curation filter. It's a viable approach, although will definitely miss good stuff. If you don't do this, you need some other way to discard most of the crap.

Absolutely.

Popularity and taste rarely coincide because most people have no taste.

(Me covets a The Doors of Perception / Heaven and Hell first edition.)

The other thing is to read books that are important, not just ones that are preferred or pleasant for a wider perspective:

- Mein Kampf

- Capital (Das Kapital)

- Technological Slavery

- The International Jew

- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 1-6.

- (ones by ideological opposites)

- America: The Farewell Tour

- Sorrows of Empire

Also, people who don't own any books, paper or Kindle... that's a big "nope."

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#197

Post by rikroots »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #91

> perhaps it’s time to face the music and realize that writing books—like knitting or playing the harp—is nothing more than a hobby 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.

I agree. When I started to treat my writing endeavours as a hobby rather than as a path to fame, glory, riches and world domination, I also started to enjoy the writing process a lot more. Nowadays I only write when I want to write, and I only write what I want to write. It's a freedom I've come to cherish.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#198

Post by greedo »

paulpauper wrote: post #188
lacker wrote: post #173

I feel like the article glosses over a key point: Even on the high end, there were only 11 books that sold more than 500,000 copies. If I can spend two to three years writing a novel and my best case scenario is having it sell a couple hundred copies Isn't the best case scenario here that you are the top -selling author, selling over a million copies? I feel like the author of this post is just assuming that they are…

a great book can have much more social impact than any movie, tv show, or other medium. Books allow for detail and development that is unrivaled by other mediums

I think this is very open to debate. How many people in the world have seen Star Wars? I would argue that no book short of the Bible has had a higher impact.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#199

Post by ghaff »

blululu wrote: post #159
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…

100k is not that unreasonable of an expectation as the necessary base for a freelancer. Keep in mind that you will need to cover additional taxes that your employer would normally cover, and you will need to plan on variability so you need more cushion than a salaried employee. Add in the fact that an author would need to be in the top 10% of a competitive field and you need to start considering the opportunity cost…

And no benefits, including insurance. That $100K for a fairly to very successful author starts to look a lot like a pretty middling $60K or so income in an office job.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#200

Post by ellegriffin »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #176
obviouslynotme wrote: post #154

Computers and the Internet have democratized culture in a way never seen before. This is both good and bad. Newspapers are dying. Television is dying. Hollywood is dying. Books are dying. Now we have people co-creating on blogs, YouTube, self-publishing, and fan-fiction websites. The production quality is certainly down from the peak of professional culture, but software tools are helping individual creators gain an…

I can see this going round in another circle. The key skill for creatives (in any medium) will be marketing. Being good at the thing you do is table-stakes. Being good at marketing to create the audience will be the key divider between profitable artist/musician/writer/etc and aspiring amateur. So there's an opportunity for a good marketer to find a great creative (or vice versa) and strike a deal that allows the cre…

I fully agree. In fact, I think (hope) that most of the writers who are selling only hundreds of copies of their books are actually just bad marketers. I think this is why the myth of the Big Four publishing house exists, because those publishing houses used to come in and scoop the writer out of obscurity by marketing their book. Now they look for a writer who already has a big platform so they don't have to spend the marketing budget and can wind up with a "sure thing."
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