[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Okay, so, let me ask you this:

My business competes pretty head-on with all the comparable firms (so to speak) in India. My rates are suppressed, due to that; John Doe author can go to India and get someone to make his book that is paid $0.99/hour.

Now...in my humble opinion, our work is superior--but much of that is not visible to the buyer. Most authors couldn't care less if every word in an ePUB is surrounded by a span, or made using Calibre instead of hand-coded, etc.

Should authors pay me more? If they genuinely cannot see the difference, between the end product, because it's in the code, should they pay me more--out of what sense of what, exactly? Because in this country, I can't make a living, charging what the Indians charge, $0.99/hour for bookmaking?

Why should they pay me more? What, should I call myself an "artist" so as to warrant more money? They need to keep their costs down, just like a greengrocer, because they are then selling that product. Lower costs=more profit for them, right?

Perhaps I've misunderstood what you've said, but you seem to be saying that if John Doe author can't earn his daily bread as a writer, we should "pay more" so that he can. I say to you that either John needs to up his game, or like most (for all time, not just recently) John needs to keep his damn day job so that he can feed himself and his family. If he can't, then he's obviously not meant to be a full-time author.

How is this different than what we tell people generally? We tell kids, "go to college, get a good education so that you can get a good job, have a family, buy a house, etc." yes? We do that because some gigs pay more than others. We do that because greater education, generally, yields more dough. Them's the breaks.

Why is this different for writers, if that's what you're saying? They start out, they make X if they're fortunate and they work hard and their work is worth reading. They persist, write more (move up the ladder), they grow a fan base, they sell more through WOM, and raising their prices. For writers, generally, that added experience = greater education. So...they move up the "writer's ladder" and earn more. If they're good enough, they make a living at it and can quit their day job.

This is no different than many occupations. Authors, actors, singers--certainly, anything in the "arts" or "creative" arenas. It's the same in any business--the guy who starts on the factory floor won't be guaranteed that someday, he'll sit in the corner office. He has to work at it to do that. The woman in the pink ghetto, the secretarial pool--she has to work at it to move out of that and into the executive offices. Not everybody gets to the top of their chosen profession, whether it's glorified, like acting, singing, writing, or mundane, like being the CEO of a garbage-collection business. The few make it to the top, more don't. There's an entire middle group of writers, that used to be called "midlisters" that make some, but not quite enough money, to quit their day jobs. They've been around forever, and they are now in even greater numbers, the KDP Journeymen, right?

Or have I completely misunderstood your meaning, which is routine in the world of (ha!) written forum posts? If I have, my sincerest apologies for rambling on so...

Hitch

Yea, you are pretty much misunderstanding my meaning.

Ok, let's take Larry Correa as an example. Larry Correa started as an indie and was picked up by Baen. He likes to dabble in specific genres and publish those books via the indie/micro publisher route.

His first book, Monster Hunters International, is free. The rest seem to settle somewhere between $5 and $10.

I happen to like Larry Correa and think he's a very good author, so if I want more of his books, it behooves me to buy them at the market rates, rather than hold out waiting to get the books on special or get them at the library. If I don't buy his books at the market rates, then I have only myself to blame if he can't make a living at it and goes back to accounting and I have to find something else to read. From that stand point, I tend to buy the albums of my favorite musicians in iTunes rather than just listen to them for $10 a month via Apple Music for the same reason. It's pure selfishness on my part.

There is another indie author who I think is ok, but his books tend to run together and he has a real tendency to string out the story too much trying to milk it for all he can. Like a lot of mid list type authors, the first couple of books in a series can be interesting, but it quickly meanders into uninteresting fairly quickly. I'll buy one of his books if I find it interesting, but feel no particular obligation to keep my eye out for his books. If he can't make a living at it, then well sorry but he isn't good enough in my opinion for me to want to support.

As far as your business goes, I think that quality matters. Some people just care about cost. I don't understand that mindset, but that's how they think. You can never win getting into a race to the bottom with someone who thinks that $10 a day is a good wage. I sympathize with you on that. If I were an author, I would want the best I could afford, because as an author, you usually only get one shot to impress any potential readers.

As far as other businesses go, well I keep clicking on the donate button when I download Calibre even after all these years. No idea how much I've actually given to Govid, but I really like his product and I know that part of the reason Calibre is still being updated after all these years is that enough people click on the donate button.