5 ms·

A couple of key bits: “If somebody can actually get their kids through college writing for screens, for e-books, then the thing is working,” said Lanier. “If t

by rst 16y ago

A couple of key bits: “If somebody can actually get their kids through college writing for screens, for e-books, then the thing is working,” said Lanier. “If they can’t, it isn’t.” Well, it's working for Joe Konrath[1], Randall Munroe[2], Felix Salmon[3], and others. They've got very different models, but each has company for theirs. (Not that it's easy to break in, but it's also really hard to break in to traditional publishing.) It's very strange to say that people can't make a living writing on line, while ignoring the folks who are actually doing it. Worse is this: "If the future is one in which writers are not paid, then it also is one in which writers lack clout. And if it’s a future in which writers lack clout, then what we have is a lack, basically, of an intellectual middle class. Instead we have a sort of volunteer intellectual class, which in terms of clout starts to resemble peasants." What gives writers clout, at a social level, is that people are reading their stuff, and taking it seriously, for reasons that may have nothing to do with the size of their paycheck. In the tech corner of the world, The GNU Manifesto and The Cathedral and the Bazaar are both essays that had a huge influence, and not because of how much either author got (belatedly) paid. Or, to be a bit of a homer, for a minute, you can't really judge pg's influence by his royalties on Hackers and Painters. I'm not sure he could live well off the royalty checks --- but I'm pretty sure no one cares. What is a future like in which most authors of book-length texts need a day job? More like the present than one might think. Most authors need one already. [1] http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ --- online novelist; paid content [2] http://xkcd.com http://xkcd.com --- online cartoonist; free content, paid swag [3] http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/ http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/ --- the blog is his job

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
buzzblog 16y ago
The fact that some are managing to make a put-their-kids-through-college living doesn't undermine his point in the least. The fact of the matter is that the number of content creators who can meet that threshold continues to plummet at an alarming rate. Those who speak so glowingly of the promise of "the new models" are almost inevitably either succeeding with one already (at least temporarily) or not at all personally dependent on doing so. Not only are new models needed, but they need to scale or the number of content creators sending their kids to college will continue to dwindle.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Is the number actually plummeting? Breaking into the traditional publishing industry (or the art-gallery scene) has always been notoriously difficult, which is why aspiring authors spent years mailing out manuscripts, publishing pieces in literary magazines for very small fees that weren't enough to live on, waiting tables while living in garrets, etc. And then even once you got published (a tiny minority of writers), you didn't necessarily get enough in advances and royalties to actually live on it unless you were in the top tier of sellable writers. It's possible it's even worse now, but I haven't seen figures.
  - neutronicus 16y ago
    I think you have to consider journalists as well as "people looking to sell books". I don't have anything constructive to add about the number of professional journalists, but I think they belong in this discussion as well as the "trying to sell books" crowd.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      I don't think they do. Print journalists compete directly with the 6am/12pm/5pm/10pm news on radio and TV in that they're providing exactly the same material. An author isn't competing directly with Radio, TV or Cinema, in fact the three are generally seen as complimentary markets. I've barely seen a good/great movie in the past decade that hasn't come from a book. From these films made from books, they explode the sales of the books. Movies and TV is never going to replace literature, the cost->outcome ratio is far too big for movies than it is for books. I'm a writer, I'm currently working on a novel and I only have to do a couple of hours a night to be doing 1,000 words a day. Supposing I'm hitting only 250 words an hour (about 1/2 of what I usually do and I'm by far from the ideal writing situation that I used to have when I was working as a reviewer; this would easily factor in editing and other work for sale) it would take about 320 hours to write a novel length book would cost me as an author about 3300 dollars (as I'm unlikely to get paid any more than ontario minimum wage if I get a second job), which would more likely be 2500 after taxes. That's 2500 dollars for a book you could publish. Worst case, self-pub an eBook on Lulu at $0.99 with their 50% royalty rate and you'll only have to sell to 5,000 people to break even. If you actually sold the book, you're likely to see between $2,500 to $5,000 for a first-time advance at a genre imprint, which means break-even or profit from the get go. Break even for a movie is in the millions of dollars. Survivability for most TV shows is in the millions of viewers. There's such naivety, yes traditional publishing sales have diminished and hasn't been immediately translated into eBook sales of the same figures (no shit sherlock the books cost a lot less, meaning there'll actually be market for more books for the same dollar value). In the 1940's 60% of the US population went to the cinema weekly. Since the late 1960's it has been steady at 10%. IIRC Nielson reported a 6% decline in TV viewership between 18-34's during the 2010 summer months. Markets change, which is a fact of the free economy. The written word isn't going to die off because the paperback declines. Video isn't going to die off just because we stop going to the cinema or watching TV. Just look at webcomics and the dozens of artists who are self-sufficient because of it. Look at Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade, they employ eight people besides themselves because of a webcomic and this is before the traditional medium (comic books) are seeing the kind of declines that newspaper comics are.
GHFigs 16y ago
I think Lanier's point (better articulated in the book) is not that there are no examples but that what examples there are don't scale up to match what is (arguably) being lost. How many opportunities are there to replicate those examples, and how independent are they really from earlier models? It's like when people talk about technological disruption in the music industry and point to Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails pricing experiments as evidence that everything is going to be OK: it's a positive sign, but it's not really proof of anything. Disruption works to the benefit of some and the detriment of others, but it's still unclear that this balances out in a desirable way. Would literature suffer if authors had to sell t-shirts to survive? Without some relatively reliable model the future looks like one where everyone who wants to eat has to scramble to find a new business model and pray that it doesn't get devoured by an established player, a mob of pirates, or one of those pesky "disruptive" startups. To the HN crowd, this seems like business as usual. From the perspective of content creators of any kind this looks like a giant content-devouring blob that occasionally ejects a nickel if you utter the right incantations.
- wladimir 16y ago
  But was it really ever different? Throughout history, writers, painters, artists, have always had a hard time coming by. Even the ones that are very popular now, retrospectively. It was never a "reliable business model" to rely on creative persuits. If money is your sole incentive, it's better to chose something else. Surely, there are some that get really popular (either because they are talented or get noticed some other way) and can live from the proceeds. Some even get crazily rich (write an Harry Potter). But those are a small miniority. Technological disruption, or different capitalization models haven't really changed this basic fact.

by rst 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

buzzblog 16y ago

The fact that some are managing to make a put-their-kids-through-college living doesn't undermine his point in the least. The fact of the matter is that the number of content creators who can meet that threshold continues to plummet at an alarming rate. Those who speak so glowingly of the promise of "the new models" are almost inevitably either succeeding with one already (at least temporarily) or not at all personally dependent on doing so. Not only are new models needed, but they need to scale or the number of content creators sending their kids to college will continue to dwindle.

_delirium 16y ago
Is the number actually plummeting? Breaking into the traditional publishing industry (or the art-gallery scene) has always been notoriously difficult, which is why aspiring authors spent years mailing out manuscripts, publishing pieces in literary magazines for very small fees that weren't enough to live on, waiting tables while living in garrets, etc. And then even once you got published (a tiny minority of writers), you didn't necessarily get enough in advances and royalties to actually live on it unless you were in the top tier of sellable writers. It's possible it's even worse now, but I haven't seen figures.
- neutronicus 16y ago
  I think you have to consider journalists as well as "people looking to sell books". I don't have anything constructive to add about the number of professional journalists, but I think they belong in this discussion as well as the "trying to sell books" crowd.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    I don't think they do. Print journalists compete directly with the 6am/12pm/5pm/10pm news on radio and TV in that they're providing exactly the same material. An author isn't competing directly with Radio, TV or Cinema, in fact the three are generally seen as complimentary markets. I've barely seen a good/great movie in the past decade that hasn't come from a book. From these films made from books, they explode the sales of the books. Movies and TV is never going to replace literature, the cost->outcome ratio is far too big for movies than it is for books. I'm a writer, I'm currently working on a novel and I only have to do a couple of hours a night to be doing 1,000 words a day. Supposing I'm hitting only 250 words an hour (about 1/2 of what I usually do and I'm by far from the ideal writing situation that I used to have when I was working as a reviewer; this would easily factor in editing and other work for sale) it would take about 320 hours to write a novel length book would cost me as an author about 3300 dollars (as I'm unlikely to get paid any more than ontario minimum wage if I get a second job), which would more likely be 2500 after taxes. That's 2500 dollars for a book you could publish. Worst case, self-pub an eBook on Lulu at $0.99 with their 50% royalty rate and you'll only have to sell to 5,000 people to break even. If you actually sold the book, you're likely to see between $2,500 to $5,000 for a first-time advance at a genre imprint, which means break-even or profit from the get go. Break even for a movie is in the millions of dollars. Survivability for most TV shows is in the millions of viewers. There's such naivety, yes traditional publishing sales have diminished and hasn't been immediately translated into eBook sales of the same figures (no shit sherlock the books cost a lot less, meaning there'll actually be market for more books for the same dollar value). In the 1940's 60% of the US population went to the cinema weekly. Since the late 1960's it has been steady at 10%. IIRC Nielson reported a 6% decline in TV viewership between 18-34's during the 2010 summer months. Markets change, which is a fact of the free economy. The written word isn't going to die off because the paperback declines. Video isn't going to die off just because we stop going to the cinema or watching TV. Just look at webcomics and the dozens of artists who are self-sufficient because of it. Look at Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade, they employ eight people besides themselves because of a webcomic and this is before the traditional medium (comic books) are seeing the kind of declines that newspaper comics are.

GHFigs 16y ago

I think Lanier's point (better articulated in the book) is not that there are no examples but that what examples there are don't scale up to match what is (arguably) being lost. How many opportunities are there to replicate those examples, and how independent are they really from earlier models? It's like when people talk about technological disruption in the music industry and point to Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails pricing experiments as evidence that everything is going to be OK: it's a positive sign, but it's not really proof of anything. Disruption works to the benefit of some and the detriment of others, but it's still unclear that this balances out in a desirable way. Would literature suffer if authors had to sell t-shirts to survive? Without some relatively reliable model the future looks like one where everyone who wants to eat has to scramble to find a new business model and pray that it doesn't get devoured by an established player, a mob of pirates, or one of those pesky "disruptive" startups. To the HN crowd, this seems like business as usual. From the perspective of content creators of any kind this looks like a giant content-devouring blob that occasionally ejects a nickel if you utter the right incantations.

wladimir 16y ago
But was it really ever different? Throughout history, writers, painters, artists, have always had a hard time coming by. Even the ones that are very popular now, retrospectively. It was never a "reliable business model" to rely on creative persuits. If money is your sole incentive, it's better to chose something else. Surely, there are some that get really popular (either because they are talented or get noticed some other way) and can live from the proceeds. Some even get crazily rich (write an Harry Potter). But those are a small miniority. Technological disruption, or different capitalization models haven't really changed this basic fact.