[Moejoe]

Originally Posted by sirbruce

Because the quality of those FREE novels is generally quite low. It's like your saying people will stop paying for movies or cable television because there's all this stuff you can get for free on YouTube made by people who aren't getting the big Hollywood deals. Yes, there's an impact, but it's a minimal one.

I'd have to respectfully disagree. Just take Boyd Morrison, who you seem to reference a lot. I've read his novel 'The Ark' and I can say, hand on heart that it's better than most of the best-selling Thrillers I read last year (including the ridiculously hyped Dan Brown).

If your first book doesn't earn out and you can't sell another book, then likely your writing isn't good enough anyway. But again, that's not the analogy here. Of course, if a good writer CAN'T GET PUBLISHED AT ALL, then you might as well go the self-published or free routes. But IF YOU CAN, you'll make more money being published, generally. Again, the existance of failed commercial authors is not justification for your conclusion that all writers should therefore not get paid very much.

This is patently laughable. Selling has nothing to do with good writing. If quality was actually a measure of success the Movie/TV/Music charts would look a whole lot different. You wouldn't have any Britney Spears or CSI: Miami, or Eddie Murphy in Norbert 2 if quality meant a God-damn thing when it comes to sales. And I never made the assumption that writers shouldn't get paid very much, that's your assumption. My assumption was that writers going into writing as a for-profit career are deluded. That the industry now, and in the past, does not support that notion apart from the lucky few (talented or otherwise).

Yes, and I was there when news sites and blogs began killing newspapers. But guess what? Your average writer for a news magazine still makes more money than your average blogger. (They probably blog, too, but that's another story.) And it's not like the web is all free; there are websites that pay 25 cents a word, far more than any print publication ever did, reporting the same news about video gaming or tech stuff that other people write for free on another website.

And yet again you bring up the NOW of all this, when as writers we should at least be looking toward the FUTURE of our creative endeavors. Your average writer for a news magazine may make more money than your average blogger, but that's not sustainable. Neither are the pay-for-writing professional gaming sites and the like in the near future when they come up against FREE and knowledgeable communities. The web community is about respect, its about, for want of a better word 'doing the right thing' and sociability. Why do you think Twitter is so big? Why are Facebook and all the rest of the social networking sites so buzzing with activity? It's all about respect and community, about your standing within any particular niche. And I'll tell you one thing for certain now, and definitely in the future, the 'love of money' is not going to gain you any respect or readers (Unless you're Harlan--sue em all-- Ellison).

Eric never made the point that writer's don't make money for the most part. Instead, he made a very compelling case at how offering ebooks for free on the web help you make MORE money off your printed books. But ONLY offering your ebooks for free obviously isn't going to make you anything.

He did make that point, not overall, but he made that point exactly in the sentence that I quoted. That was a great deal of his argument, that writers don't make much money. The rest of his argument, as you pointed out, is solid, but he most certainly did say that the majority of writers don't make enough to earn a living. And if you think that's going to get any better over the next few years, well, I don't know what I can say to you.

This is only true if you accept your a priori assumption that such a transition will occur and make it impossible for writers to make money the old fashioned way. If all of these great new writers are free, then why would people continue to PAY Eric Flint? If some of these great new writers are so great, they could also get PAID.

Actually I believe that writers will cease to be paid in traditional methods, and that all creative products will be free in the first instance (supported possibly by donation or value-added products in the near-term) And I very much doubt anybody (except DIE HARD fans) would pay Eric Flint when they get their reading material free elsewhere, especially newer, web-savvy audiences that are growing up now on FREE and ZERO COST culture.

Again, false dichotomy. A writer who gets paid also gets all of those things, and yet gets paid via a working mechanism, not some vague "monetary opportunities might follow". Any opportunities available to the free writer are going to be available to the paid writer. Yes, obviously, IF YOU CAN'T BREAK IN AS A PAID WRITER, then going free is better than nothing -- again, look at Boyd Morrison. But that's not the argument you're making.

Your assumption is always leaning toward the PAID writer, as though that's what a modern writer wants or needs from his writing. As though payment is THE BE ALL AND END ALL of writing. It's not, it never was. But yet again you bring up Boyd, who can write the pants off most stuff in the best-seller charts. Do you honestly think Boyd had any more or less fun writing his thrillers than someone who's paid to do the same? I have no doubt that he'd love to get paid and make an income for his writing, but you know what, by offering up his work and that work being good enough, now he has fans - like me - who WILL buy his work, who will follow what he's doing on his blog and his webpage. Who will DONATE money if need be. I very much doubt I would have ever heard of Boyd Morrison if he hadn't taken a leap and offered his work for free. And if he'd gone the traditional route, I can guarantee you that I would have passed him by completely. The web, and the communities that it forms, are more open to honest declarations of intent than any other place.

Boyd comes along and says - here's my novels, I really enjoyed writing them and I'd like you to read them free of charge, or at very low cost. And he's going to get fans just because of his attitude. Because he's open and not trying to play some marketing game (which everybody on the web can see through anyway when it happens). Do you know what would have happened if Boyd had come on here as part of a publishing drive, as part of a marketing push? He'd be ignored. Yes, that's right, if he was part of the traditional publishing world he would have had less impact on this website and across the rest of the web because marketing is, for the whole part, seen as dishonest.

Considering that lots of people still make buttloads of money from "major record labels" and the "TV networks", yes.

And the vast majority, pardon my french, is unutterable shite. Bland, insipid, paint-by-numbers, bottom-line, dull mass-produced crap. If money is the measure of success, then I don't want any success at all thanks very much.

And you're back to your self-referential logic again. Look, we all GET what you're saying. But it's not necessarily true, and it's not necessarily going to kill off traditional publishers. But you simply CAN'T say that "Because I think publishing is going to change, then authors who want to make money should stop wanting that." You're like the crazy homeless guy with carrying around a sign that says "THE END IS NIGH." You may be right, but it's not reason for me to sell all my posessions.

The end is nigh, sorry to say, and if you're a for-profit writer in the next few years then you've got a big shock coming as the web opens up even further to free and near-free publication. Content is no longer king, but context will be. There's a really interesting talk linked to in this thread https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48877 about the future of publication and publishers. It only confirms what I've been saying all along about what's going to happen in the coming years and why money is a bad motivator in writing. Especially when it comes to the web and the communities that are built upon the web.