Writing books is not really a good idea • Hacker News Board

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#361

Post by bluGill » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

ellegriffin wrote: post #304

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…

Yes, I am basing that off the research I did for this article: https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth "Most books peak in the first 10 weeks after their debut, then exit the market." This is "most" so of course there are exceptions. And it sounds like you are one of them. That is amazing! Did it have a big bump at front, and then decrease over time? Or have you seen other bumps later on? I do wo…

I have on my bookshelf a book written by a personal friend of mine. A fun non-fiction book, but I'm sure he didn't market it.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#362

Post by TheCoelacanth » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:02 PM UTC

> Traditional publishers are looking for a sure thing. They want an author who already has an existing platform and can guarantee an audience.

This seems factually untrue. Obviously, that's the ideal author that they will pay out big advances to, but publishers publish tons of books by unproven authors.

They publish a lot of books hoping to find a few that take off and sell well.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#363

Post by snet0 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:03 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #239

snet0 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"! Takin…

I absolutely agree, I don't think solving this problem is something that can really be considered. I do think it's a problem, though.

I think you're taking my analogy of tickets too far, though. It was simply to highlight the fact that, by reading the book without paying the author a dime, you are getting permanent access to the materials without the author being paid, which I think is an issue.

I think the only feasible solution is a kind of royalty fee on resales, but I can easily imagine this becoming a logistical nightmare. As I said, I'm not sure this problem has a workable solution.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#364

Post by mritchie712 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:04 PM UTC

peterarmstrong wrote: post #345

mritchie712 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is self promotion done well. Provide insight into the problem you solve and explain where you fit into this story. Nice job.

Thanks :) Ironically, I've been talking about the relationship between lean publishing and serial fiction for a long time (for example, this video from a conference talk I did in 2013 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozO0kOnqmyA ), but Leanpub has never hit anything close to product-market fit for fiction. We do well in our niche of computer programming / data science / business types of books, but we have essential…

My wife has toyed with the idea of writing romance novels. Do you have many romance writers on Leanpub? Her thinking is to keep the "trashiness" of most romance but improve on the story and writing. She keeps saying "I need a publisher", but I was thinking there must be a simple way to publish straight to Amazon, looks like that's Leanpub!

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#365

Post by snet0 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:05 PM UTC

matsemann wrote: post #294

snet0 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

But things I cannot resell I would pay less for. For certain items the amount I'm willing to pay is a function also including what I can sell it for when I'm done with it.

Yes, I absolutely agree. When you buy something you imagine yourself reselling, you can factor the resale price into the total cost.

I don't think this is a counter to my argument, though. I'm not saying it is wrong to be able to resell books, I am just pointing out that reselling books without the author receiving any money strikes me as morally improper. As I mentioned in another comment, I'm not convinced that there exists a decent solution to this problem, and I imagine that it's at least in part factored into RRPs, but I just thought it was something to consider.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#366

Post by Rerarom » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:07 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #343

jbay808 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's increasing because of a growing number of readers, then that's a winner take all scenario where Harry Potter sells more and more copies as each new reader hasn't read it yet. If it's growing because of one extremely voracious reader buying up every book they can get their hands on, that's a scenario that favours more obscure authors.

Closer to the later for most authors. Though every few dozen years there is another Harry Potter that everyone in the world buys and reads. For most you need to target those voracious readers and what they are willing to pay for - but be ever on the lookout as to how you can jump to the Harry Potter world where everyone buys your books. Harry Potter was good (in the first few anyway), but if you like that type of thi…

Please name one.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#367

Post by selimthegrim » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #305

matsemann wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Martian was released one chapter at the time. Same with Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. As for the last one, it's felt that it was written as it was going along, with certain changes the author normally would have gone back to fix. Like stuff ending up not mattering, or certain inconsistencies in the world building. But even for larger book series this happens. Like Wheel of Time, one can in an earli…

The Martian is probably the best example of an author really embracing the 21st century. You give the text of the book away for free on a website and make money off the people who want the audiobook, the movie rights, the kindle, etc. In the 21st century, entertainment is free, attention is expensive, so you have to give away your free entertainment to get attention and then sell the entertainment in more rarified me…

Peter Watts does this too.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#368

Post by bluGill » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #214

greedo wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

but what is the social impact of star wars besides spawning sequels?

A ton of cheap plastic light sabers at birthday parties. And millions of Yoda one-liners all over.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#369

Post by snet0 » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:09 PM UTC

ellegriffin wrote: post #318

ghaff wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes! Exactly! Right now the ebook library model is based off the physical book library model where the library purchases a certain number of ebooks (say 10) and the author only gets a portion of the royalties on those ten copies, and then the library loans those copies out to an unlimited number of people. It should be managed more like Spotify- where books can be read unlimitedly, but the author gets paid royalties…

This is what I think the best course looks like. I know there are issues with Spotify's model (at least, I have heard people make this claim), but given that music had to transition to a streaming-based model (and considering that written text looks to be slowly going this way, too) the per-consumption royalty looks good to me.

Of course, instantiating this in the real world is another question. For ebook libraries, it certainly seems plausible, but for regular libraries?

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#370

Post by bluGill » Mon, May 10, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

rikroots wrote: post #197

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.

Do you finish anything though? A lot of writers find that the effort of finishing the story is a lot more work than writing the early parts and so they have half-finished novels in their files that realistically they will never finished.

I'll leave it to the reader to decide if that is okay or not. For me, I know I have too many unfinished projects and so my stories will remain dreams that never get written down.