> Now a new generation of writers are confronting ever lower and less reliable payment for articles, stingier advances for books, fewer jobs, and smaller royalt

> Now a new generation of writers are confronting ever lower and less reliable payment for articles, stingier advances for books, fewer jobs, and smaller royalty checks. A host of new threats to writers’ livelihoods, from internet piracy to the slow-motion collapse of the academic job market, means ever fewer writers are making a middle-class wage. I'm not sure I buy the premise. I think there are a lot more wannabe writers now, because anyone can publish online for free. There are far, far more writers getting paid today than there were decades ago, when there simply wasn't as much media in general. I'm sure the average payment per work product has gone down, if you're including all the new media. But do writers really get paid less for high-quality content now? Does a bestselling book author today make less (inflation-adjusted) than a bestselling book author did decades ago? Does a weekly New York Times columnist make less? The starving artist cliche is older than dirt. If an artist isn't successful, it's usually because they're simply not good enough to attract a paying audience. There's nothing wrong with this, and I think the only thing that's changed is that the ease of publishing online means that everyone fancies themselves a writer now.