Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemurion
The impression I'm getting from your posts is that you think Canadian writers start by submitting to Canadian publishers and once they reach a certain degree of success they move into the US market with US publishers. That's not how it works there. People who write a certain kind of literary fiction (what's generally called CanLit) go to Canadian publishers. Just about everyone else starts with the US publishers, and there is very little crossover between the two groups. If a Canadian writer wants to sell to the mass market (in Canada) they go to the US publishers. The structure of the market is such that a Canadian writer looks at the US and Canada as essentially one market. So does the industry, that's why all the mass market paperbacks display both prices.
As a codicil, I managed a bookstore in Canada for a few years.
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No, I don't think that. My points were simple. The Canadian market is not large enough by itself to support a writer solely on sales. Any writer that wishes to do it
full time must qualify for government grants, sell to publishers outside of Canada, or both.
Writing for a living as a freelancer is a challenge in
any market. For example, the late James Blish did not feel comfortable in going full time freelance till the income from royalties on books in print equaled his salary from his day job. (Ironically, he was a publicist for the tobacco industry, and lung cancer killed him.)
I know an assortment of writers, and most of the folks I hang out with are connected to publishing one way or another. I can think of half a dozen off hand from my immediate circle of friends who are published authors with an established track record and books in print. Four of them still have day jobs of one sort or another. The two that don't have spouses with steady incomes that cover the inevitable periods while waiting for a contract to be signed and an advance to be paid, or a royalty to arrive.
I know a couple of others less well for whom writing
is their day job: they work in TV. That's a different sort of insanity, where it's possible to make a good living writing stuff that never gets
produced.
But meanwhile, the Canadian market is a lot smaller than the US market, and I suspect Baen's sales there are a smaller percentage of their total volume than the percentage differences in the market themselves. (IE, if the Canadain market is ten percent of the size of the US market, I doubt it makes up anywhere near ten percent of Baen's sales) so no big surprise that Baen makes more money from Webscriptions than from Canada: their margin on Webscription's sales will be a good bit higher, and I don't think they had all that much in sales to Canada to begin with.
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Dennis