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Old 03-09-2014, 03:09 PM   #211
Catlady
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Quote:
Originally Posted by speakingtohe View Post
So you are saying that someone who is only published after death and makes no money while alive was not an author when alive? A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is one of thousands of examples, and maybe Stieg Larsson? of posthumously published authors or are/were they as the made no money themselves?

I don't think making money is the best criteria although I think a good or great author should.

Helen
I said there are exceptions.
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Old 03-09-2014, 03:21 PM   #212
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Here's what authors think of this:

http://www.thepassivevoice.com/03/20...alled-authors/
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Old 03-09-2014, 04:22 PM   #213
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Originally Posted by LovesMacs View Post
If trad. publishers' only goal was to educate people, they would be giving away books for free or minimal cost.
Except for the occasional free sample, such as you'll see from the University of Chicago Press, that wouldn't work. This is because educational books take money to create.

A publisher can have a primary goal of education, as do many of the non-profits. But to achieve that, they also must help their staff and authors financially. A lot depends on their strategy for educating people, and what they see as educational.

Bertelsmann, parent of Penguin Random House, is controlled by a nonprofit foundation with a largely educational mission. When I described them as non-profit a few months ago, a German poster responded that this is a tax dodge. I don't know enough about German tax law to say how true this is. But Random House does seem to release a lot of heavily researched nonfiction with medium to low commercial potential. The prices they charge libraries for their eBooks are high, but at least they do seem to offer, through Overdrive, every title that might be considered educational. This is more than you can say for the Ivy League non-profit publishing houses.

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Originally Posted by LovesMacs View Post
So in effect you are arguing for less choices for readers, not more.
After a publisher declines to market a title, it is still a choice. The author is free to print on his/her own and/or put it up on a web page.

When a commercial publisher declines to continue marketing a book because it was found to have an unusual proportion of falsehoods, while Amazon keeps on pushing it (by taking all negative customer reviews off the page, as in my last link), you can see that educational priorities vary. One publisher, in this case Simon & Schuster, has a closer-to-educational mission than does Amazon.

Am I going to read a book because it was published by Random House? No, that has nothing to do with it, at least directly. But I'm sure that Random House has a bigger educational component to its mission than does Amazon Direct Publishing.

On the OP topic, yes, having written a book makes you an author. Even if you had a ghost-writer, you are an author. This means that most of our leading politicians are authors. I base this not on right and wrong, but on how the words are used most commonly.

If you spend most of your working hours on it, you are a full-time author.

As for the phrase "professional author," it is a synonym for full-time author, with a slightly more positive connotation.

Maybe fifty years from now, usage will have changed, but right now author doesn't have anything to do with how your book is funded, edited, or distributed.

Last edited by SteveEisenberg; 03-09-2014 at 04:53 PM.
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Old 03-09-2014, 05:35 PM   #214
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An author friend of mine posted a link on twitter to an article at Good E-Reader about this subject; after reading it I'm inclined to believe that moonshot is the (dare I say it?) author of the article.

Last edited by MarciaCat; 03-09-2014 at 06:56 PM. Reason: Fixed bad link.
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Old 03-09-2014, 05:43 PM   #215
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MarciaCat View Post
An author friend of mine posted a link on twitter to an article at Good E-Reader about this subject; after reading it I'm inclined to believe that moonshot is the (dare I say it?) author of the article.
The link doesn't work for me.

Edit. got the link to work after editing the url
http://goodereader.com/blog/commenta...called-authors

I agree it does look like moonshot is the author or he just quotes a lot from that article.

Last edited by alanHd; 03-09-2014 at 05:52 PM.
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Old 03-09-2014, 06:10 PM   #216
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I can only imagine the amount of work through the years that has never seen much of an audience. I think most written works have never seen much in the way of an audience, and not because they were necessarily bad, but they didn't know how to market their work, or it wasn't in the 'flavor of the month' genre the publishers thought would sell or for other reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of their work.

Just because it's not published doesn't mean it's not good.

Nor does it mean that because it's published that it is good. I think we've all seen examples of that.

Because of all that unseen/unread work, I don't think that it's correct to limit the simple word 'author' to someone who has had some paid success at it. I think the term 'author' only really works as 'someone who has written/done something creative with words'. It's a simple word, covering a broad band of people who may or may not have had any success with that creative work.

I think that people making any money at it are the exceptions, all the way around. Then calling them a Published Author, or Sucessful Author is the correct way to talk about those few who can actually make a living, or even get paid for their work.

Otherwise, the word 'author' itself belongs to everyone. Not just the exceptions.
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Old 03-09-2014, 06:21 PM   #217
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Seriously. Could it be we have become the target of a bit of astroturfing?

So, Mr/Ms Moonshot, any comments (though he/she seems to have disappear from the thread)
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Old 03-09-2014, 06:28 PM   #218
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I think most people on this thread agree that you cant draw a line on who can be classed as an author and to be honest why would anyone want to, unless it was to make themselves feel better/superior.

I don't profess to be an author - what starts out in my mind isn't always what get written. but I do claim to be a photographer even tho I do not earn money from it.
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Old 03-09-2014, 06:36 PM   #219
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Quote:
Originally Posted by alanHd View Post
The link doesn't work for me.

Edit. got the link to work after editing the url
http://goodereader.com/blog/commenta...called-authors

I agree it does look like moonshot is the author or he just quotes a lot from that article.
Sorry about that; I've fixed the link.
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Old 03-09-2014, 07:15 PM   #220
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Originally Posted by MarciaCat View Post
An author friend of mine posted a link on twitter to an article at Good E-Reader about this subject; after reading it I'm inclined to believe that moonshot is the (dare I say it?) author of the article.
You could be right that Michael Kozlowski is moonshot.

There are several arguments made in this thread that "author" does not mean anything with regard to status. These arguments (including some by myself) are used in this article, some almost verbatim. The article tries to point out that if "too many people" / self-publishers are using the term "author", the value of the word will diminish.

I call bullshit. It's the other way around. Everybody can use the word "author" *because* it has no intrinsic value.

edit: see the last paragraph of the article. It is an almost exact copy of one of my own posts here. The words "Some people will say..." actually link to said post, where I point out that drawing a line in the sand to define authors is useless; it can't be done because everybody has different opinions on what exactly an author is.

The poster of that article uses that post out of context to cement his opinion that the the word "author" has lost or is losing it's status, while I made that post trying to point out that the word "author" has no status to begin with.

Last edited by Katsunami; 03-09-2014 at 07:35 PM.
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Old 03-09-2014, 07:29 PM   #221
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Wow. If moonshot thought he got bashed in this thread, then read the comments under that blog post. Kozlowski gets burned into the ground and stomped on for good measure.
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Old 03-09-2014, 07:42 PM   #222
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Thank you and CatLady..... here am I with my bow and arrows and they are coming at me with machine guns.
Just coming out with facts and reason. And we aren't even charging tuition.

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Old 03-09-2014, 07:46 PM   #223
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Really? No matter how deluded a person is, you'll just accept his self-perception? There's no objective standard to judge by?
There is an objective standard: that they have written a book. That is objective. You are the one attempting to apply subjective standards. We can all agree that a person who wrote a book has written a book. Getting away from that objective meaning is what makes the word meaningless.

Last edited by QuantumIguana; 03-09-2014 at 08:04 PM.
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Old 03-09-2014, 07:47 PM   #224
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Except for the occasional free sample, such as you'll see from the University of Chicago Press, that wouldn't work. This is because educational books take money to create.
I know that. I was trying to make the point that whatever goals a publisher has, making money is one of them.

No publisher, not even university presses, is a purely educational and charitable enterprise. Publishers have responsibilities to their employees too. Commercial publishers have shareholders.

This was left out of the original post, which said, "In order for unique voices to be heard it always required unique publishers with taste who were wiling to raise that author on a platform for all to see no matter the risk. Now its harder to educate people and fight through the noise to see the great."

Nope, money is an important goal for most publishers too. There's nothing wrong with that, but let's not pretend that publishers work solely to enlighten the world.

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After a publisher declines to market a title, it is still a choice. The author is free to print on his/her own and/or put it up on a web page.
I am well aware of that. I was annoyed at the original post, which said that "Of course Virginia wouldn't exist without Amazon and Bigfoot would never have crawled out of the forest without such support."

That statement makes it sound as if Virginia's work should never be read by anybody else. She clearly has the right to write, a publisher has a right to accept or decline the manuscript, and I have the right not to purchase her book.

As for the whole author/writer distinction...good luck trying to establish a corresponding board certification.
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Old 03-09-2014, 08:10 PM   #225
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