Quote:
Originally Posted by sbroome
How many new authors are making a living from the internet? For all the talk about democratization of publishing etc. I still just see a lot of broke people
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I know of a few. And none of them would even have been published had it not been for ebooks and self publishing. I can think of 4 authors off the top of my head who quit their day jobs (and that isn't counting Amanda Hocking since she technically is now in bookstores with at least one series). One of them is back working part time (I think. I know healthcare is an issue for all of us without insurance). And some of us might pull it off for a year, but not the next. That isn't to say we aren't broke. We'd have to define "living" as to whether that only covers the basics or whether it covers the lifestyle we're actually aspiring to...
So it definitely opened some doors and brought in income even for trad published authors who put their backlist up for e-readers. But keep in mind that being in a bookstore--well, there were still a lot of broke authors then too. So while it may have improved some things for more authors, that doesn't mean it's perfect.