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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

#231

Post by ska »

munificent wrote: post #220

> Not to mention, an author would have to come out with one book a year to maintain that salary. Your math looks odd to me. You look at the amount a book earns in a single year and extrapolate that to the author's annual salary , but seem to assume that once the first year is up, the book stops earning. Does books earning passive over multiple years affect the numbers? For what its worth, my single non-fiction book h…

True - in order to do this analysis properly you need some idea of the distribution of royalties, and publication intervals, etc.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#232

Post by coliveira »

> Even on the high end, there were only 11 books that sold more than 500,000 copies—which is paltry when you consider that the 10 best-performing Netflix films saw more than 68 million views.

So, this really means that the problem is not with writing, but the medium (book). Because all these Netflix films were written by someone. Instead of concentrating on the 11 books, the writer who wants to make money should concentrate on writing movie scripts for Netflix or similar.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#233

Post by snet0 »

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…

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is that buying second-hand books gives no money to the author.

I don't know, morally speaking if this should be the case. It does feel wrong for people to get the experience without paying the price of admission. Can this be solved logistically, though? And do publishers factor this into their RRP?

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#234

Post by cafard »

coliveira wrote: post #225
ellegriffin wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pay…

But these authors were the 19th century version of Dan Brown. They made far less than a modern writer of similar success would make.

Balzac, Dumas, Gautier, and Sand? They turned out some hack work, no doubt, but also a fair bit that is still read.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#236

Post by eslaught »

I've seen this type of analysis show up in a couple places, and I think it usually misses one critical factor:

The vast majority of books frankly suck.

I say this as an aspiring writer and as someone who (as part of that) has critiqued a bunch of books and parts of books. Even published books can be mediocre or bad. And this is even more true now in the days of self-publishing, where there's basically no barrier to pressing "go" before you're ready.

What I see in the central table in the post (a couple paragraphs down from the top) is a power law distribution: at each successive level, roughly 10-30x more titles are able to get there. Sure, some percentage of those successes are due to a pre-existing platform. But how many writers are truly writing at the level of quality of the best-selling authors? I know, for my part, that after doing half a dozen or so major passes on my book, I still get critiqued for a variety of issues, some of which are embarrassingly basic.

Look, I'm not saying writing is a great way to make money if that's your primary goal. But I do think there's more correlation here between quality of writing and sales than most people give credit for. It takes a lot of work to get there, so most people just don't. But that's not to say that the opportunity doesn't exist.

I do appreciate the thoughts on alternative platforms though. Just because the journey is hard doesn't mean I shouldn't be trying to maximize the money I can make along the way. :-)

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#237

Post by goopthink »

Specifically for technical books, reaching a niche audience is perfectly fine and these things tend to grow an audience over time as they become reference material.

Perhaps more importantly, writing a technical book is professionally akin to doing a PhD: you show a depth of subject matter knowledge and ability to sustain a long form project.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#238

Post by gcatalfamo »

eslaught wrote: post #236

I've seen this type of analysis show up in a couple places, and I think it usually misses one critical factor: The vast majority of books frankly suck. I say this as an aspiring writer and as someone who (as part of that) has critiqued a bunch of books and parts of books. Even published books can be mediocre or bad. And this is even more true now in the days of self-publishing, where there's basically no barrier to p…

I would anecdotally counter argue that brand/audience/community building drives far more sales than the book quality

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#239

Post by jrochkind1 »

snet0 wrote: post #233
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…

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is that buying second-hand books gives no money to the author. I don't know, morally speaking if this should be the case. It does feel wrong for people to get the experience without paying the price of admission. Can this be solved logistically, though? And do publishers factor this into their RRP?

Once you go down that path, it starts getting kind of dystopian. Should it be illegal for me to lend or give a book to a friend without paying a fee, because then they are "getting the experience without paying the price of admission"? I'm reading a book to three kids, should I have to pay more than reading the book to one kid? That's three times as many kids "getting the experience", same "price of admission"! Taking the book to my brothers house to read to his kids -- nope, that's illegal unless you buy another copy?

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#240

Post by ghaff »

snet0 wrote: post #233
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…

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my assumption is that buying second-hand books gives no money to the author. I don't know, morally speaking if this should be the case. It does feel wrong for people to get the experience without paying the price of admission. Can this be solved logistically, though? And do publishers factor this into their RRP?

That same logic presumably applies to libraries. Books are physical objects at the end of the day just like a piece of pottery someone made. First sale doctrine explicitly allows the owner to lend or resell it to someone else.
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