Quote:
Originally Posted by GlennD
And what kind of output will your good, passionate writers have? Someone who writes solely because they love it still has to eat. Someone who is out working a 40 hour job and is squeezing in writing on top of it is clearly going to write far fewer pages than someone who can spend that 40 hours a week writing. I like to read those big thick multi-volume fantasy epics - I don't see how anyone could ever finish one while holding down a day job.
I've been reading "Grumbles from the Grave" by Robert Heinlein recently. As far as I can tell from his own accounts, he was not a man who wrote because he "loved" it. He wrote because he wanted the income, and he was talented enough and prolific enough to ensure that he made enough to support himself. In a "free book" world, we wouldn't have any of his works. He would have probably been working as an engineer at some government base instead.
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And if he hadn't developed TB aboard ship, we never would have heard from his writing either. He really wanted to be a career military officer.
The times were different when he wrote. There was a much greater reading populace, and less competition with other media, which allowed writers to make more money because more money went into the system. All writers, relatively speaking. You also could make good money as a voice on a radio show, as well. Try doing that today. (leaving out the political hacks of all persuasions, please.) He made the modern equivalent of $18,000 for Day after Tomorrow and more for Beyond This Horizon. And that was from a pulp magazine. Lester Dent was make the current equivalent of $15,000 an issue for Doc Savage in the 1930's. Show me a current magazine that pays like that today. (And those number were for an initial sale, no royalties attached.) Heinlein made over $1,000 for each of the slicks he sold in the late 1940's to early 1950's. In today's dollars, that would be equal to $12,000 to $15,000
per 6,000 word story in today's dollars. Show me markets like that today. And it's not because of e-book piracy, because you didn't have markets like that 10 years ago, either.