Quote:
Originally Posted by David Welch
Interesting question. I would tend to lean towards quality too, but lately I've been reading a lot of old pulp stories/authors. You get guys like H. Bedford Jones or Max Brand, who churned out thirty million words over their lifetime with remarkably consistent quality...makes me wonder if we might see that again in the self-publish age, with so many authors and so few gatekeeprs.. Maybe some of the more prolific self-publishers might reach that level where they can play both sides of the quality/quantity question. Will be interesting to see.
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Ah but in the days of the old pulp writers you had a very unique set of circumstances. 1)It was during the depression when at least half the country was out of work. 2)Most editors at most paid .01 or .02 a word and sometimes not even that 3) Things were literally hand to mouth for many writers back then. Many vanished without a trace or died young of alcoholism. So in some cases at least (if not most) if you were a pulp writer you had to write if you were going to eat. There is also the fact that they had ready markets (the pulp magazines) which are mostly gone now. So where they might maybe make $40.00 (at .02 for 2000 words) right from the magazine now you can't be sure how many people will buy your work. Also that $40.00 for that 2000 word story might be the only money that that author might ever see for that story. While you might see more in the long run today there is still a lot more uncertainty about seeing any than back then.