Quote:
Originally Posted by starrigger
All of which goes to say that the phrase "earn a living as a writer" is an oxymoron for way too many good writers.
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I think this phrase cuts to the heart of the matter. What is a "good writer"?
Consider the explosion in publishing in the last several years - of course as Mr. Carver pointed out most of those titles are pod's that may sell a hundred titles and make the author happy - I think that 75 sells is the new break-even point in the Amazon POD's world as I saw in an article documenting the price structure
To me the publishing crisis as it is - I do not believe that there is that much of a crisis overall - is due to uncontrolled supply, whether by easy 4$ used books - .01 p +3.99 sh - or tons of new titles, or tons of POD's...
So how do you control the supply? Many people write for other reasons than profit - our society being wealthy, it affords to support that - and now they can put out their work cheaply for them if POD, sometimes even relatively free- there are still server costs and so on - if only e
Think of us here and in so many forums/blogs around the world - we write for free too, because we enjoy this or that subject and while from blog/forum posts to novel writing there is a large gap, it's much smaller than not writing for fun - which for example I never did before the Web - to writing.
So overall, I think that while more and more material will be available, the revenue pie will split much wider and much more unequally without increasing noticeably.