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06-12-2009, 03:18 PM | #61 | |
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I also base this on the fact, while I am not a novelist myself, I probably count 20+ friends as novelists and have been asked to critique their work. And in most cases their dreams are to earn their living writing - not to get published alone, but to be able to write full time - and still to eat eat, pay rent, and exist. I am not saying that they are entitled to this. But if they have the talent (and some of them are published authors and some have merely agents and some just have manuscripts in a drawer) than a world in which people are saying that they should give up their labor for free and and they don't deserve to be paid because by its very nature, creativity should be a gift to the world that doesn't give back - well, the people who say that may say they care about books, but they clearly don't care about writers or their future. |
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06-12-2009, 03:23 PM | #62 |
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And, as a side note, I want to reiterate that much slush fiction is really awful. Much self-published writing is really awful. Very few pieces don't need extensive editing and rewriting before they are of quality. This instant-publish-on-demand model that seems to be envisioned by some people is one that just horrifies me, because I know hard it is to find good quality writing now. In that future, it will become a needle in a haystack.
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06-12-2009, 05:02 PM | #63 |
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06-12-2009, 05:04 PM | #64 | |
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I have so many things I'm "called" to do I don't have enough hours in the day to do them. So I have to pick and choose. If writing becomes cost-prohibitve then I'll do something else because I have to eat. |
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06-13-2009, 01:53 AM | #65 | |
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Why do so many seem to suggest that the idea that one might want to (shock, horror!!!) make some money from their efforts at writing some how dirties the noble calling of being a writer? No job in this day and age gives any sort of guarantee of an income. Sure, some may seem more secure than others, but why does that have to mean that "if you want to make money then you should not be a writer in order to do so"? Whilst I do agree that those who are "called to writing" will do so whether paid or not,(whether or not anyone wants to read their calling is another matter!) I think this idea that one should not sully the profession by admitting a desire to make money is a red herring. It is just another example of societies programming that says "money is bad, mmmmkay!" Just becacuse one feels "called to write", doesn't make that person any more worthy, or give them any more right to the moral high ground, than another who writes because they want to earn a living doing so. Cheers, PKFFW |
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06-13-2009, 04:03 AM | #66 | |
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To think that, even after you've gone through the mill of agent/publisher/long haul of waiting to get into print, that you'll actually be able to sustain a living from your creative endeavors is ludicrous. You'd get better odds playing the LOTTO. This isn't a money=bad equation, this is an expectation of money=stupidity equation. The publishing industry is only marginally less tightfisted than the recording industry when it comes to paying the creative talent. 7-15% on sales of the book after, AFTER you've made back your paltry $2000 (or thereabouts) advance. There's only two ways you'll make a living on that kind of income: 1: You become a bestseller and your advances shoot through the roof. 2: You publish 15 novels a year (doable in the old pulp days, but not any longer) So what are you left with if you're not writing for money, if money becomes such a ridiculous notion in the overall equation? Well, you're left with the reason you wanted to write in the first place - either because you want to be read or because you're compelled to write. Either of these reasons is helped along nicely by the internet that has no long-haul, that has no agents or publishers or even an idea of sustained payment. And now you, as the writer, are left with an option that was never present before the wonderful digital age. Do you go the old route, which is slow, monetarily unsure and lets face it, quite boring or do you go for the readers on the internet. Do you try and gain an audience for your writing whatever way you can. Do you take it back to the original reason for writing; to be read, or is money the real measure of success for you as a writer? Is getting paid really all you want out of this? Is payment the only way you'll feel that your 'time' is worthwhile. If so, then my advice is give up writing fiction, write a self-help book or a diet book, they sell well and its still creative writing. If money is your bottom line then there's a billion other things you can do with your 'precious' time that will make you money, that will make you a living. But creative writing isn't one of them. If you want to turn this into a business proposition then you're not a writer, you're a soulless suit -- go and start a business somewhere and stop sullying the waters of creativity with your pie-chart eyes and profit-graph heartbeat. We've had too many years of Marketing types and money-grubbers ruining the creative game, too many years of bland repetitive fiction pushed out by illiterate business-graduates because it'll appeal to the mass-market (the market, what a sickening and insulting word). This is art not economics. This is passion not pie-charts. Don't hang dollar signs on my intentions, because it won't work. For the first time in a hundred years we're freed from the shackles of traditional publishing, and all anybody can do (writers as well, which is insane) is defend the people who put on the shackles in the first place. Does everything have to have a price tag to be worthwhile? |
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06-13-2009, 05:58 PM | #67 |
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While making money by writing is now harder than ever before, it's actually not that impossible. You don't have to get on the bestseller lists.
Let's say your book sells paperback only, for $6, you get $0.60 per sale. If you sell only 20,000 copies -- a modest amount -- you'll earn $12,000. Write two books a year, and you get $24,000. Okay, that's not a lot... but you can live off that in many areas of the country. And that's just in the first year. Next year you'll have 2 more books out, and your first 2 books will still be selling. Eventually you may sell 5,000 - 10,000 copies in one week and get on the bestseller lists. This will spurn more sales, better deals, etc. 10 years down the road, and you'll have money coming in just from all the reprints and foreign rights even if you still haven't hit the bigtime. Again, Moejoe continues to offer the fallacy of false choice: either you write for a LOT of money, which is unlikely, or you write because you enjoy it, in which case you should expect no money at all. Do you think Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon are rich? No, they live modest home in Oklahoma for a reason: it's cheap. Moejoe, if you're happy with writing for free, that's great. But don't tell other writers that they're wrong for wanted to get paid for their work, or that they have to be Dan Brown to make a living at it. |
06-13-2009, 07:34 PM | #68 | |
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If so, you have gone about it the wrong way. Your entire post seems nothing more than a rant aimed at anyone who thinks that maybe they should be paid for their creative efforts rather than simply doing it for the love of doing it. If you wish to write simply for the pure joy of writing then good for you. I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you but that attitude doesn't make your efforts any more pure, any more creative or any more worthy of reading than someone else who is writing because that is how they earn their living. I'm sure that in this brave new world there may very well be better ways to get published. I'm not defending the "people who put on the shackles in the first place". Get published however you like, it makes no difference to me. Just don't go claiming you are some how more creative, more pure or whatever because you have self published for the joy of it and someone else has gone the traditional route and been paid for it. Cheers, PKFFW |
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06-14-2009, 04:21 AM | #69 | ||
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And let's address the 20,000 copies theory while we're at it. You're highly unlikely to get anything more than 10,000 - 15,000 on a print run if you're a midlist or new author, and after your advance you'd then need to sell a further 8,000 books (if the advance is in the $5,000 region) before you even start earning. Your mythical 20,000 copies sold at $0.60 profit is not what's going to happen in reality. Especially now with more and more alternatives available, and more competition coming along every day. Eric Flint - http://baens-universe.com/articles/T...ics_of_Writing Quote:
Now, I hope with all my heart that any writer who seeks the traditional route of publication can make a steady living from their writing. I really do. But I believe that approaching writing as a for-profit game in the first instance is a grand delusion when faced with the actual market and the odds stacked against the author. Why not forget about the money, write because you love to write, and then everything monetary or good that comes afterwards is a bonus on top of what you already get from writing? |
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06-14-2009, 04:38 AM | #70 | ||||||
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Again, as I said, it's hard to make much money off your first couple of novels. It improves from there, unless your stuff is simply not worth publishing, in which case you shoudl confine yourself to your artistic-soul-pleasing happy free Internet writing. Quote:
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06-14-2009, 05:17 AM | #71 | |||||
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And here we get to 'worth'. And worth as it is measured by the publishing industry. Worth = sale-ability. Worth = price tag. If publishing company X can shift Y amount of Book A at a cost of....etc, etc.. The profit game in a nutshell. Doesn't matter if the book is good or not, its whether it can make a profit. Whereas the web/internet works differently. A web hit might not make any profit at all for the writer, but it might make that writer well-known. It will elevate that writer in the community and then monetary opportunities might follow. And what has this new writer lost? A few quid, the opportunity to slave along in a dying industry? And he's gained all that loverly soul-satisfying stuff that you can't put a price tag on. What's the old saying: There's no money in poetry, but then again there's no poetry in money. Quote:
I mean, Baen has the right idea up to now (although I wince at the quasi-fascistic, war-loving titles it seems to produce, not really my cup of tea), but that can't last forever. Once print-publishing dies out (and I give it 10 years at most) then what are you left with? How do you make money in a world where your product is competing constantly with free? Things are changing, publishing has to change and it has to change rapidly to keep up with what is happening. The writer does too. If they don't, then they'll become as quaint and useless as the paper that their words used to be printed on in the unenlightened past. EDIT: and let me just add, I approach writing from a zero-money approach. I fully expect to make ZERO from my writing now and in the future. I have no cash incentive at all. I realized some time ago that worrying about payment was reducing me to a business-person, someone who knew how to use Excel (evil, nasty, soul-sucking program) and who was slanting their work toward the fabled 'markets'. My payment now has to be the writing itself. The process of writing has to give me everything I need to start off with. Everything else is secondary to that initial goal of being happy and enjoying the writing. If I gain readers, good If somewhere along the line I get some money out of all this, fine. But I won't ruin my enjoyment of writing worrying about either of those potentialities. Last edited by Moejoe; 06-14-2009 at 05:33 AM. |
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06-14-2009, 06:18 AM | #72 | |||||||||
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Good for you. Again, this is no justification for you to say others should suffer the same fate. |
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06-14-2009, 07:28 AM | #73 | ||||||||
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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. Quote:
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06-14-2009, 08:05 AM | #74 | |||||
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Why does that mean one should not hope to make a living from it? Why should one not want to make money from it? If one enjoys it, is "good" at it and wants to do it full time rather than slaving away at a job 9-5 then who are you to rant and rave at them about it? Quote:
There may be communities within the web, facebook, twitter or whatever that are doing their thing just for the fun and respect of it all but don't be fooled into thinking that if 99% of them could up and sell their community for a buckload of money they wouldn't jump at the chance. Quote:
I nearly fell off my chair laughing at this one!! You really believe the internet is where you find honest declarations of intent?? The net is more open to scams than anything else. It's biggest advantage is exactly what you are proclaiming as the biggest advantage to writers. The FREE or LOW COST scam! So easy to convince someone to part with a little bit of money, to give something a try, to take a punt on the unknown. There is a whole industry built around teaching people how to drive web traffic to their sites, how to market their sites and how to grab a few bucks from the unsuspecting. So in a way you are correct. Unpublished(and generally speaking, unpublishable) writers will make more money by going it alone on the net. However, they will generally do so by scamming people into taking a punt and parting with a small chunk of change to try something new. Quote:
Success can be measured in many ways. You may think these mass produced books are crap but obviously many disagree with you. If only "literary masterpieces" were ever allowed to be published there would be far fewer people reading today. Many people just want a bit of escapist fun. A bit of drivel that passes the time. Why should they not be catered for? Why should not someone who enjoys, and is good at, writing such stuff seek to earn a living from doing so? Quote:
Cheers, PKFFW |
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06-14-2009, 08:26 AM | #75 | ||||||
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I don't recall ever saying I don't want 'escapist fun', but I certainly don't want drivel, and anybody who wants to make a living producing drivel, well, I'm not going to stop them. Have at it, I say. Produce your shite and let the idiots lap it up. If I wanted drivel I can turn on the TV at any time of the night and watch US imported dramas or some of our home-grown crap that plagues the box. If all you want is drivel then I can't argue with you. Although I can recommend a novel by a writer called Dan Brown. Quote:
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