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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

#561

Post by NoOneNew »

atseajournal wrote: post #536
NoOneNew wrote: post #290

I have one big issue with the book industry... many actually... but related to the article, all this whining is self imposed. Literary books are marketed far heavier than genre. This is the equivalent to arthouse films vs what actually makes money as a movie/show. Let's take one similar plot. A chemistry teacher is diagnosed with cancer, cant get treated and eventually dies. Literary and arthouse will do a discovery…

I know the following will sound like something only a sock puppet would say, but I created an account just to agree with the level of rancor you've got towards the boring-by-default literary world. I got serious about writing as a teen, and being a serious writer meant aping the great literature I was reading -- ie an emphasis on fine prose and emotional weather reporting -- which led to an acute lack of juice in my…

So... out of curiosity, what are you looking for out of a blog? A few people have commented I should over the year. I dont have one, but I've thought about doing one.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#562

Post by f1refly »

paxys wrote: post #534
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.

> Books are physical objects at the end of the day Disagree with this. There has been a very short period in human history (roughly from the invention of the printing press till the rise of ebooks/audiobooks) where books were primarily physical objects. Stories were told and preserved orally for thousands of years, and who knows where the future of the medium is.

Stories aren't books though, there's a reason we differentiate between the two. It's like saying a vinyl equals a song; it's merely the container that holds a song in a static form. It's not the song itself.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#563

Post by elcapitan »

ghaff wrote: post #240
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?

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.

It's actually fairly normal in many countries that libraries compensate authors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lending_Right

The amount is probably not very large though, the German Wikipedia page says ~11 Mio Euro for 2010.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#564

Post by lbriner »

But writing really good books surely is?

The numbers are quite frightening but honestly, it is a crowded market with millions of professional, semi-professional and hoobyist authors all trying to stand-out.

I have read a few books recently, that are quite well-known, and didn't really find the quality very high. These are books that have gone through the high barrier of publishing and distribution so they can't be "garbage" but yet, they were underwhelming.

On the other hand, I have read some books which are outstanding and unique. They have a USP over other books, which is why they should and could succeed.

In such a crowded market, one should not expect to make a good full-time salary, just like most footballers and musicians would be lucky to make enough to live on, let alone a good salary.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#565

Post by benibela »

Siira wrote: post #325
andi999 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a scalable product there is usually no middle ground. Either you are getting rich or just getting by, or even not getting by (last one the most likely one)

Isn’t software a big exception to this?

Software is the worst. After 15 years of open source development, I have basically earned nothing

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#566

Post by notahacker »

coliveira wrote: post #326
notahacker wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The medium (movie) requires getting someone to spend millions on crew and actors to shoot your script This is not necessarily any easier to achieve than writing a bestselling book, especially for a first-timer, and by the time the Hollywood accountants have finished calculating your share of the revenue, not necessarily any more lucrative.

But it was never easy for someone just starting. You'll probably have to write books for close to free until something becomes successful. The equation is the same both for books or movie scripts.

The first book you self-published or practically gave away to the publisher will be a book, if not a bestselling one. On the other hand the first movie script is vanishingly unlikely to get turned into a movie, and the fact you've written movie scripts that weren't developed won't help you get your next script taken more seriously.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#567

Post by MereInterest »

OldTimeCoffee wrote: post #557
nearbuy wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I really don't see any good argument why copyright should last longer than, say, 20 years. Would any potential authors decide it's not worth it to write books if copyright only lasted 20 years? What benefit to society does ~100 years of copyright provide?

How do you solve the Mickey Mouse problem? E.g., you have a character that has created an "empire" that an organization has the means (cultural/monetary) to prevent their creation from entering the public domain. You have to figure out what to do about those rare situations because they're the driving force for extending copyrights. My ideal is like the old system (initial registration plus fixed term renewals). That…

I don't really have a good solution. My gut reaction is that having a system that rewards the same companies that pushed for infinite copyright duration, rather than removing their hold over our shared culture, isn't a good solution. That isn't the most pragmatic of me, but I'd rather not reward Disney for breaking the public domain.

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#568

Post by d0100 »

peterarmstrong wrote: post #315

One thing to consider is royalty rate. If you sell 5000 copies for $20 and earn a dollar per copy, you've earned $5,000. (This math is based on 10% royalties on the publisher's portion, which is about half of retail. And no, fiction books don't sell for $20 typically, but I'm using this number to make the math easy.) Now, if you sell 5000 copies of an ebook for $20 and earn 80% royalties, you earn $16 per copy, and e…

> the dream combination is probably publishing in-progress with subscriptions

If you are into Chinese webnovels you'll be familiar with the subscription predatory practices that big companies like Qidian have, where the real cost of a whole 1500-chapter novel (inflated because of the perverse incentives of subscription-based revenue) ends up being close to 500USD

It is sad watching the transition from fan translations' funding trough donation pooling into predatory big-novel subscriptons/per chapter "tokens"

Re: Writing books is not really a good idea

#570

Post by Dylan16807 »

d0100 wrote: post #568
peterarmstrong wrote: post #315

One thing to consider is royalty rate. If you sell 5000 copies for $20 and earn a dollar per copy, you've earned $5,000. (This math is based on 10% royalties on the publisher's portion, which is about half of retail. And no, fiction books don't sell for $20 typically, but I'm using this number to make the math easy.) Now, if you sell 5000 copies of an ebook for $20 and earn 80% royalties, you earn $16 per copy, and e…

> the dream combination is probably publishing in-progress with subscriptions If you are into Chinese webnovels you'll be familiar with the subscription predatory practices that big companies like Qidian have, where the real cost of a whole 1500-chapter novel (inflated because of the perverse incentives of subscription-based revenue) ends up being close to 500USD It is sad watching the transition from fan translation…

What's that in word count, and how often are the chapters coming out?
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