Quote:
Originally Posted by BillSmithBooks
I think that's the wrong question.
The better question might be, "Has there ever been a good time to be a writer?"
And the answer to that is unquestionably, "No."
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Yep that's exactly it.
Writers have always survived by delusion. I also think that there is a certain amount of arguing about apples and oranges here.
I mean, for someone like Nick, the "Long Tail" model is not that attractive. He writes literary stuff that has potential for breakout. (Edit: I see that Nick has written genre stuff under aliases - so I would have to amend this to say "someone like I imagined Nick to be.") IMHO, odds are very much against people in that area to ever hit it in traditional publishing - but they do hit it bigger than genre writers. And more important, they tend not to do as well on the midlist. And with Indie pubilshing, you even lose the shot at critical success.
But I don't think that part of traditional publishing is being killed off by ebooks. At least not yet.
I also think that an awful lot of people have forgotten what the midlist really was. It's been pretty much dead for forty years. But it is the more natural way for readers and writers to engage. The midlist is where most writers used to make a living - with a slow, long buildup of a loyal audience. The midlist never had a publicity push from the publisher. It was often hand selling at first.
So I'll modify what I've had to say on this question: for midlist genre writers, this is a good time to be a writer and getting better. For people with very niche audiences, this is a great time to be a writer.
For literary and many mainstream authors... I don't think anything has much changed yet. It's about as sucky as it has ever been.
Camille