Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
I disagree. J.A. Konrath is *raking* in money with kindlebooks. Most of which are also available for free on his website. And while he's potentially writing for the joy of writing, he's also very very much wanting to get paid--that's why he releases them to the world instead of to his friends. Konrath found that (1) LOTS of people will pay half the price of a double-cappucino for an ebook, if (2) the cover is eye-catching & the description is compelling, and (3) he doesn't fret over free copies floating around somewhere.
The problem isn't "writers can't get paid;" it's "writers can't expect to get paid for the same actions/products that used to be profitable."
There are more opportunities to get paid for writing than there were 20 years ago. Lots more. But they're not the same ones that used to exist, and some of the old ones are falling off, and "more opportunities" doesn't mean "more than 10% of would-be pro writers are ever going to make a living at it."
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I did go on to say that you could make money if you approached the whole thing with a pulp approach, which is everything that Konrath is doing, and more. He's got 23 books out there, some co-authored, he's pumping them out regularly and has a series under his belt also. It's the only approach that will work..for now, but as I've mentioned before (and not just because of my distrust of the object value model), I do not think the pay-up-front model has more than a few years left before it collapses.
So, yes, you can make a tidy pile of mula right now if you're willing to put in the grunt work. At 10k a week (significantly less than the old pulp writers) you can do half a million words a year. Put your work on every damn place where it'll sell (and all the places where nobody pays as well), at $2.99 (which seems to be the new average price) and you'll make some dosh. But it's not a plan for life.
