My experience writing and selling a short story • Hacker News Board

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#131

Post by _glass » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 7:41 AM UTC

munificent wrote: post #56

keyle wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These figures are interesting for me. One day of contracting dwarfs that. You'd have to be absolutely passionate and have another income to do this, which is a shame. I think every craft should have its place. Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays. I hope you get a breakthrough though; because if you keep doing this, you're clearly passionate about your craft!

> Clearly the market is terrible for writers; a bit like indie game makers nowadays. See also: musicians (recording, less so live performance), DJs, photographers, journalists, documentarians, etc. Essentially any creative pursuit where: 1) Making it carries high prestige and gratification. 2) The product can be reproduced digitally and appreciated by a large audience. 3) Technology to produce it has become cheaper.…

I grew up with this assertion. But right now through my spouse and a lot of friends, I see, that you can earn good money by specializing in a not that popular instrument, e.g. piano (!). And then be just advanced+reliable+do the effort of networking. The money is comparable to a software job.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#132

Post by _glass » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 7:42 AM UTC

ivraatiems wrote: post #12

It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author. OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!

That's nothing, I write for academia, and pay for getting published.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#133

Post by scaglio » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 7:47 AM UTC

pipnonsense wrote: post #34

superamit (or anyone else who writes fiction really), would you publish your stories on a "substack for fiction"? I already built it, although it is in Portuguese. https://www.confabulistas.com.br It would be easy to translate to English and try it in the US market. Is there any interest for that? It is just like Substack. You create your page, people subscribe and get your fiction by email. The main difference is th…

In my opinion, that's an interesting idea.

I started writing short stories a couple of years ago, and I created a Hugo website to host them: https://crooked.ink. The main issues with a blog are that it's hard to get an audience from scratch, and it's hard to be found with all the SEO effort you can do.

I also tried to submit a couple of stories to webzines and I got published once for free, but I really don't think I'll ever do it for a living.

What I wish more and still didn't get, though, it's a _feedback_ for my stories. So maybe the project could be intriguing for this, if it can get you closer to an audience.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#134

Post by madaxe_again » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 7:55 AM UTC

paulpauper wrote: post #2

writing has to be among the worst ways to make money, sorry to say you need top .5% talent and work ethic to maybe earn a lower-middle class salary A labor of love, as it's said

I write, purely for my own pleasure, as as you say, it’s absolutely no way to make a living. I’ve hundreds of shorts, a few dozen novellas, and a couple of novels - with which I have precisely zero interest in doing anything. Writing them was the point.

This, unfortunately, has been the case practically for as long as literature has existed - very, very few authors make anything more than a pittance from their work in their lifetimes, and historically a majority of authors were the scions of wealthy or at least comfortably middle class families.

Now, thankfully, the publishing landscape is substantially more democratic, however the financial hurdles to being an author remain very real - it’s a side job, out of necessity, until you get published - and then it’s still probably a side job.

So, yes, it’s a labour of love. I don’t think anyone goes into writing to make bank, but rather because they have an insatiable urge to write, or to convey an idea, or whatever it may be - but financial success doesn’t weigh into it - in fact, for most, it’s an expensive hobby, insofar as it’s rather time consuming. Me, I just write whilst babysitting my telescope through the nights. Keeps the fingers warm.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#135

Post by gizajob » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 8:05 AM UTC

corrral wrote: post #48

gizajob wrote: post #22

It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing. Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the seco…

> Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. I'd love for fiction writing to be better, generally, but if you're looking to make a career of writing—which of those made/makes the most money? [EDIT] Incidentally, I'd put Stephenson on about the same level as Crichton. Worse in some respects, better in others.

I wasn't recommending Tolstoy or Shakespeare for a reason...

Why does "making money" have anything to do with producing art or working on a craft you love? Virtually every fine artist we now regard as a genius didn't make real money in their lifetime. The people selling their art retroactively make the money.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#136

Post by gizajob » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 8:09 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #55

gizajob wrote: post #22

It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing. Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the seco…

Neal Stephenson is a very poor storyteller. Most of his books are excuses for writing encyclopedic entries on certain topics, and packaging it as a story to make money.

https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

Mother Earth Mother Board is a great example of storytelling. I was using him as a sidestep from Crichton, given that's where the author is saying he's at.

HG Wells or Margaret Atwood would also be good places to start, when looking for examples of the craft of short-story writing.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#137

Post by gizajob » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 8:15 AM UTC

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #110

gizajob wrote: post #22

It's a pretty terrible, hackneyed, non-story, now I've read it. Flag me down all you like. Seems like the author is more interested in the stats about writing than the actual writing. Some simple advice would be to read some Neal Stephenson, Paul Auster, and China Mieville for starters, not Michael Crichton. Good writing is a serious art and craft. It's irrelevant how many hours a specific work takes down to the seco…

I imagine it took the author much longer to write, revise, etc. the work than it did to write this measurement blog. Where are you getting the notion the author prioritizes measuring their writing time investment vs the writing itself? It’s okay to just not like a story you know.

It's clearly not ok, when you get flagged down to invisibility in a forum like this.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#138

Post by shubb » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 9:12 AM UTC

f17 wrote: post #49

ivraatiems wrote: post #12

It's worth noting that Tor's pay for authors is in the absolute top tier. I've had a short story published in a smaller publication, and they paid me $50 total - $25 for the first six months exclusivity, then $25 again for inclusion in an anthology. That is more typical for a starting out author. OTOH, getting published in Tor at all is a much much bigger achievement - congratulations to the author!

Short stories don't make a lot of money. $100 is a huge accomplishment. The goal is usually to have them spike sales for a novel, but even there (a) it's iffy, and (b) most novels only sell a couple thousand copies. Writing, unfortunately, remains something you have to get financially comfortable to be able to do... not a way to become financially comfortable. It's surprising that even in 2022 we haven't fixed that.

I read a lot on online fiction platforms - AO3 and Wattpad are popular platforms but I mostly read Royal Road which seeks to copy asian web novel platforms.

Most of the writers are amateurs but they have diverse means of getting paid - some platforms like Wattpad and Webnovel help writers paywall later chapters, some writers do manually with a paid blog. Some ask for donations on kofi or patreon.

The thing is, speaking about someone who is putting in the effort and skill you'd need to publish for $100 in an anthology magazine - I wonder how much a writer like that makes on these platforms. $100 is only 25 five dollar doners. Maybe "1000 fans" is more profitable.

Here is a top writer from Royal Road - you can see they are pulling $1000 a month. This is surely unusual but it isn't bad https://www.patreon.com/MonroeByJahx

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#139

Post by karatinversion » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 9:21 AM UTC

foota wrote: post #114

munificent wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's only so much time people can spend consuming entertainment, and so the market for it is somewhat fixed. It's even worse than that, actually. Because existing entertainment can still be consumed long after its produced, and even consumed more than once by the same person. When you write a book today, you aren't just competing with other new novels, you're competing with every novel written all the way back t…

True, but there's sufficient distinction between contemporary and classical works that I think the effect may be limited.

On the other hand, Spotify’s most streamed song has been Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of you” since October 2017.

Re: My experience writing and selling a short story

#140

Post by dageshi » Wed, Jul 13, 2022, 9:27 AM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #129

dageshi wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more options than the past depending on genre niche and whether you're trying to entertain or write "literary works". For various genres of the fantasy genre there's a fairly well trodden road nowadays of going from royalroad.com (with patreon) to Kindle/Kindle Unlimited. royalroad.com lets people build massive followings and then translate them into patreon and other monetisation. The audiences in the litr…

Fascinating stuff. I had no idea people were reading (or producing) “literary RPG”. It’s like peeking into an alternative world: > I… finally did it! And I also leveled as a [Demon Larva] thanks to the experience gained from leveling [Identification]! It was a total success! > I could distribute my Stat Points and Skill Point later. For now, I focused on what was important. I glanced at the pebble closest to me and a…

Yeah, it's a rapidly expanding an evolving genre with its own conventions and quite a bit of influence from Chinese webnovels and anime. Your average litrpg usually involves a System Apocalypse or an Isekai Protagonist.

System Apocalypse - God like Magical Computer "System" that tracks peoples stats/skills, recognises their feats and rewards them arrives on earth and integrates the world into "The System" usually in the form of a magical cli gui that appears in peoples vision as they go about their day.

Isekai - Average person going about their business dies in an accident and is reincarnated on another (magical) world with memories of their past life intact.