Writers Are More Prolific When They Cluster

In the lower value bucket, they typically have a trade or product with no scarcity, and no market. They try to sell based on a multiple of their effort. This is everything under $1,000. Prices adjust based on volume sold and desperation of the artist, by artist. So therefore yes prices are more arbitrary at the beginning of an artist's career, and at an art show there would be no rhyme or reason between artists. Perhaps some competition and a race to the bottom at a bazaar. This is the same as pretty much any other trade or contractor that is always testing their market. These artists aspire to be in higher tiers, but largely don't act like they understand what drives the value in those tiers. If they do understand and realize they aren't eligible either way but still spend their time on trying to monetize art, then that is a good objective lens. People with other marketable skills will just resign their art to a pasttime and forget about the monetization goals.

In the middle value bucket, it is mostly fine art with low worth, and a very different market. The market forces to create the arbitrary prices are different and mostly correlated to the artist's network when they were alive. Typically there is something undermining the scarcity of these works, but that can also be just demand. Galleries arbitrarily raise the prices over time until a private seller undercuts them.

In the high value bucket, it is mostly fine art with high worth. The market forces to create the arbitrary prices are different and mostly correlated to the artist's network when they were alive. Here it is rarely about the aesthetics or the discipline involved in a piece, but the eligibility of a piece even appearing in this market is again based on the artist's network while they were living. Most of the high value bucket is a product of monetary policy and there are whole books about it.

It also means it attracts a lot of less serious writers. People who are more into the fantasy of writing than the actual doing of it (or at least the putting it out there in the world, which admittedly I'm somewhat guilty of myself, I only have a few short stories out there).

Basically it's headed by one stubbornly persistent guy in the area, who puts a lot of time into it, for free. He works with local libraries and municipalities to secure meeting spaces, sets up meetings, comes up with activities, etc. We tend to get an influx of new members every Nanowrimo, which he hosts the local chapter and then invites people to join the year round group (how he got me).

It has decent attendance, and can get up to 40 people at a meeting at times. The Nanowrimo-specific group is pretty strong and usually has 100+ people participating each year.

But yeah, I'm pretty sure without him at the helm, everything would have drifted off a long time ago and the group wouldn't still be there. If he ever decided to move on, I don't think the group would last more than 6 months to a year.