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Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

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Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#41

Post by asdfman123 »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #2

My partner is a freelance copywriter / editor. Despite all the talk about how AI is going to take her job, she’s more in demand than ever. She has companies begging her to come on full time, but makes good coin freelancing and gets to set her own schedule that way. One of the challenges I observe is that a lot of people get hired into marketing roles because they are high-energy project managers - but they don’t know…

My partner is an editor too and ChatGPT is a force multiplier for her. Read in an AI-transcripted interview, paste into ChatGPT with the instructions to word it as an article, and then rewrite it checking for accuracy.

I think AI chatbots will do much like what, say, engineering modeling tools have done for engineering: do 80% of the grunt work for you, and only require human supervision.

It's ultimately a good thing for writing, because writing will be less expensive to produce. The downside is probably SEO spam, but it is what it is.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#42

Post by coldtea »

j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Notice how they're always some FAANG guy in these kinds of discussions saying something like:

"so you've earned 50K for a year work on writing that book? dude that's like $x/hour, I earn a $300K wage + 1 million in stocks per year, and they have a private cook and gymnast at the FAANGplex for me and everything".

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#43

Post by asdfman123 »

markdestouches wrote: post #27
hbrn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You should only write when you feel within you some completely new and important content, clear to you but unintelligible to others, and when the need to express this content gives you no peace. "

This moment will never come if you just sit and wait for it. Practice in writing is just as important as in coding. Unfortunately, as many great arts of the past, writing is dying due to the publics' interest shifting away from reading (reading fiction in particular) to something else.

The trick is getting started pursuing a hobby because you feel some mission, and practicing every day despite losing the motivation.

Then, when the motivation returns, you'll have the skill to express what you really want to say.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#44

Post by asdfman123 »

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #21
paulpauper wrote: post #13

Funny how people keep saying writing is a terrible career yet so many want to do it. Most careers are not that good, tbh: low pay, bad work conditions, and or lots of hours. Top Substack authors earning salaries comparable to STEM execs, but have a platform (which is also worth a lot), full autonomy, as well as extra income from books and affiliate links etc. Not bad work if you can get it.

>Everybody want to be a bodybuilder but nobody want to lift no heavy ass weight - Ronnie Coleman Everybody wants a high or cool status job, but few truly want to suffer what it takes to get that job, and in the case of writing, as with many things, there's too much luck involved, too strong a power law.

Even people who get the jobs suffer from them. I've met a lot of journalists and I live in fantasy land compared to them. In exchange for a small amount of meaning, they take on a lot of extra suffering.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#45

Post by fredgrott »

j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

You are not exactly outliner as I had calculated that it would take 11k copies to make a living assuming that you are selling a weekly newsletter to the same audience.

There is also that myth-might-be-true thing of selling to developers book-wise means that you are targeting two groups those who cannot afford 2nd screens and those who can...i.e. print copy and electronic copies should be at different prices.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#46

Post by hammyhavoc »

batmaniam wrote: post #35
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Do you only sell e-books? Or you self publish physical books too?

He sells physical too, which you can see if you click through to purchase.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#48

Post by bitL »

j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

Regular publishers have a bit different approach: they contact like 5 potential authors at the same time, ask each to write a book, pay small advance payment (~5k) then wait 1 year and pick 1 book to publish. 1 author maybe gets paid something, 4 authors just wasted 1 year of their time.

Re: Writing: Good career move, terrible career (2018)

#50

Post by WalterBright »

fredgrott wrote: post #45
j2kun wrote: post #5

For the HN crowd there's probably a more realistic path toward writing as a career: self-publishing technical books. [By one year after publishing my first book]( https://jeremykun.com/2019/12/01/a-good-year-for-a-programme... ), I had sold 11k copies, and with self publishing you get a much bigger royalty from each copy, drastically lowering the bar for financial success. I expect my second book to do even better, b…

You are not exactly outliner as I had calculated that it would take 11k copies to make a living assuming that you are selling a weekly newsletter to the same audience. There is also that myth-might-be-true thing of selling to developers book-wise means that you are targeting two groups those who cannot afford 2nd screens and those who can...i.e. print copy and electronic copies should be at different prices.

> those who cannot afford 2nd screens

You can pick up an extra monitor at a thrift store for around 10 bucks. My 2nd monitor came from a thrift store. I use it for displaying the manual while I'm working.

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