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But exposure in the form of publishers costs money. Therefore publishers try to find authors whose work will sell, meaning that skill also makes exposure easier

But exposure in the form of publishers costs money. Therefore publishers try to find authors whose work will sell, meaning that skill also makes exposure easier. And once your books sell your skills are validated, so you will have even more opportunities. But if the books doesn't sell enough then you are thrown away, and the publisher lost money. If you used your own money then you lost money betting on yourself, money didn't help you earn money here it just gave you more leverage to lose/earn more. This is why people say "The first million was the hardest", because after you have used their skills to make a million others will trust your skills and thus give you more exposure and opportunities. So winning a million on the lottery wouldn't help much, it gives you capital but it doesn't validate your skills which was the most important part. Of course I am not saying that luck doesn't play a part, just that earning power doesn't follow a Gaussian distribution.

vannevar 7y ago
This is why people say "The first million was the hardest", because after you have used their skills to make a million others will trust your skills and thus give you more exposure and opportunities. It is precisely advantages like this that drive the "trickle up" effect. To use your original example, let's say one author legitimately wrote a book that was 10% 'better' than the next best effort. As a result, many more people bought her book (let's leave aside for now the notion of winner-take-all markets, which is another factor in the skewed distribution), and now she (and her publisher) are enriched. On her next book, they can afford a lot more promotion, and with her name recognition, her next book is a huge success, even though it is 10% worse than her nearest competitor. Now they've both written two books, and they're both 1-1 in terms of quality. But the one with the first good book has two best-sellers, and the second is a failure who will probably drop out. No one is saying that the first author is morally wrong, they're simply saying that if we, as a society, want to reward people according to their skill and effort, the current system fails in numerous cases because it is heavily biased in favor of existing wealth over talent.

vannevar 7y ago

This is why people say "The first million was the hardest", because after you have used their skills to make a million others will trust your skills and thus give you more exposure and opportunities. It is precisely advantages like this that drive the "trickle up" effect. To use your original example, let's say one author legitimately wrote a book that was 10% 'better' than the next best effort. As a result, many more people bought her book (let's leave aside for now the notion of winner-take-all markets, which is another factor in the skewed distribution), and now she (and her publisher) are enriched. On her next book, they can afford a lot more promotion, and with her name recognition, her next book is a huge success, even though it is 10% worse than her nearest competitor. Now they've both written two books, and they're both 1-1 in terms of quality. But the one with the first good book has two best-sellers, and the second is a failure who will probably drop out. No one is saying that the first author is morally wrong, they're simply saying that if we, as a society, want to reward people according to their skill and effort, the current system fails in numerous cases because it is heavily biased in favor of existing wealth over talent.