Quote:
Originally Posted by dmaul1114
But you're ignoring the already successful authors who may see a pay cut. You'd likely be pissing and moaning and saying your company are dirty rat bastards if they tell you to take a 5% pay cut and keep doing the same high quality work you've been doing for years.
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Lots of people see a pay cut, especially in sales-based jobs (look at the price of computers---the first laptop I ever bought, people felt like anything sub-$2000 was a deal. Now, a $1000 mac is considered high-end and a cheap Dell can be had for $300 and change. There is no real that says prices have to stay the same forever, and some things have gone up in price while others go down.
Even a job like mine, we have two staff who went on mat leave and were not replaced so all of us are doing extra duties. And yes, we do grumble and complain. But I have a *lot* of friends in my field who do not have any jobs at all, or who have to go to very remote communities to find them. That's life. I may not think it's fair when it happens to me, or fair when it happens to authors or whomever. But that's *life.* My complaint is with authors who think that being 'writers' somehow makes them the special cases that should be immune from these market forces and/or that the public should feel sorry for them in their victimization. They can moonlight with commercial work, they can increase their marketing efforts, whatever. It's not like they have zero options. Yes, it takes time away from the 'writing' but you know what, having to do three extra playground duties a week gives me less time to spend on my teaching stuff, and that's just the way it is when you have a *job* instead of a hobby. If all I wanted to do was teach, I could get a part-time job where I am paid by the hour and all I have to do is work with kids. With my contract at my present job, which is full-time, I have to do this extra stuff. Similarly, a writer who just wants to write for fun can pay no heed to marketing, commercial jobs etc. But if they choose to sign a contract, and make this their livelihood, they are going to have to hustle a little to make it work, and they should not expect me to feel sorry for them.
With that said, I do pay for my books, and I do support the authors whose work I enjoy by other efforts as well. If I didn't "care" about the authors, I would be downloading off the darknet
But publishers and authors need to be more realistic and work out a fair process (for example, matching the lowest paper prices so we don't have $6 mass market paperbacks selling in ebook for $20). I am okay with windowing and such as long as they really do play fair and lower the prices later. But they are not doing that yet, so people don't believe them when they say they really will lower the price later.