Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
And again the "real world" you're talking about is a world that's rapidly disappearing in the face of a new "reality" brought on by file sharing. I do buy books, I do support authors, but the old models are crumbling. The quaint notions of copyright are all but dead in the face of the internet generations. Writers in this new "reality" will write for love, for readers, for the sheer joy of creation. The romantic ideal will become the norm when the publishers fade away, and the way they're acting at the moment, it can't be too long. A whole new culture of exciting, individual voices will rise up and be heard, maybe even subsidised by the readers. Paying the mortgage, putting food on the table, will require a real, boring job just like everyone else.
I think you hit the nail on the head with your first sentence, if a writer is treating their work as 'just like any other job' then why is said writer bothering? Christ, there's a lot of easier, less emotional ways to make money. And I hear that McDonalds is hiring year round.
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All the authors that I am personally acquainted with (and there are several) DO treat their writing as a "day job". They have a rigid routine of going to their desk and writing for a fixed number of hours a day. Anyone who writes professionally will tell you that that's pretty much the only way to do it. One difference between a "pro" and a "wanabee" is that the pro author churns out a pretty-much fixed number of words a day, regardless of whether they are "inspired by the muse" that day or not. You have to - you have a contract to deliver a book of a certain length by a certain date; you can't only write when you feel like it.
Publishers are not "going away" - whatever gives you that idea? I suspect that the majority of people who've never written a book don't have the faintest idea of what a publisher actually does. Virtually all that work applies equally to paper books and to eBooks. Books still need to be professionally edited, advertised, sold to retailers, and so on. The simple fact is that the majority of people who "self publish" do so because they aren't good enough to get published professionally. Self publishing is not going to replace "real" publishers any time in the foreseeable future, believe me!