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How much of your annual $100-$500 membership dues are you waiving in the light of the difficulties you explain your membership as facing in these dire times? S

How much of your annual $100-$500 membership dues are you waiving in the light of the difficulties you explain your membership as facing in these dire times? Screw copyright and screw this rent-seeking noise. Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Copying e-books incurs no material cost and therefore charging for it is not justifiable.

dash2 7y ago
-- Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Have you got evidence for either of these claims? Are you an author?
- ddevault 7y ago
  Yes, I am. The math is obvious, though: if you distribute $X to Y people, then distributing $X to Y-1 people will result in everyone (or at least someone) making more money. With the wide availability of publishing-as-a-service, Amazon listings and personal website sales, and so on, it makes little sense for most new or small-to-mid-time authors to go through a middleman. Then the bigger authors (1) have more to gain from going through a publisher, (2) can negotiate a better deal, and (3) have enough income as to make the issues raised in this article trite.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    It's somewhat more complicated than that. There are other factors. 1.) Publishers do provide editing, etc. services that authors would otherwise have to pay for out of their own pockets. That may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff. But, between forgoing and advance and paying for services, authors are probably at least a few $K out of pocket if they go their own way. To the degree that things like book tours/promotion/etc. are relevant--they often aren't--that can add to the difference. 2.) For, especially non-fiction, authors for whom books are more about boosting their profile than bringing in money directly, traditional publishers (rightly or wrongly) have considerably more cachet than independent publishing. 3.) This becomes less and less important, but independently published books probably won't be in book stores.
    - mark_l_watson 7y ago
      My wife is my editor, so I am lucky. She does sometimes provide editing services to other authors for a modest fee; email me if you need an editor. re: 3): this is a big drawback of self publishing. When I wrote for conventional publishers it was always a thrill to see my books in Barnes and Nobles, etc. But, but.... the ability to make frequent improvements to eBooks and effortlessly push changes to readers trumps all the advantages of conventional publishers.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        I don't really disagree with any of that. I've done both ways and I'm not sure I'd go with a traditional publisher again unless doing so fell in my lap for some reason. Another thing I find for tech-related books--which is what I do--is that if I do things myself, I control the length whereas publishers generally have a minimum number of pages in mind which may be more than the topic really warrants. And a final point is that, as an individual, I have more flexibility in just giving copies away (especially ebooks) if I did the book mostly for promotional purposes.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Way back when, I wrote ten books for traditional publishers like Springer-Verlag, McGraw-Hill, etc. I switched over years ago to self publishing on leanpub.com, using a Creative Commons non commercial share license, with free updates. I don’t earn quite what I used to but the freedom to write exactly what I want with no pushback from publishers on what they predict will sell, and the ability to effortlessly push book updates to readers makes the switch very worthwhile. Writing is also a great way to meet interesting people and expand a personal network. Whenever I meet someone who has an interesting job and/or interests, I almost always suggest that they write at least one book.
throwawaynerdy 7y ago
I don't know if any of that is true. I'm a free information guy and author and despite having a million users of my website, I'm not even profitable. It's not some clickbait garbage either. It's been front page HN numerous times. What should I be doing? I have a paid book as an option. But everyone Google searches "free book", it was so bad I ended up making my own free link for SEO reasons.
- moron4hire 7y ago
  Go to book fairs and industry events for the genre of book you are writing. My wife writes sci-fi novels and is an officer in a large writers' club (I think it's one of the oldest ok the country). Pretty much all of the members talk about how they really only make sales on their own at in-person events, even the ones with traditional publishers. My wife mainly manages to cover her costs with the sales, though we don't really go out of our way to go to really big events and have yet to do any sci-fi conventions. She sees a few sales on Amazon, but the peaks are usually right after we've been to a book fair.

dash2 7y ago

-- Self-publishing is rapidly becoming the norm, and who knew - authors are seeing way higher returns on it. Have you got evidence for either of these claims? Are you an author?

ddevault 7y ago
Yes, I am. The math is obvious, though: if you distribute $X to Y people, then distributing $X to Y-1 people will result in everyone (or at least someone) making more money. With the wide availability of publishing-as-a-service, Amazon listings and personal website sales, and so on, it makes little sense for most new or small-to-mid-time authors to go through a middleman. Then the bigger authors (1) have more to gain from going through a publisher, (2) can negotiate a better deal, and (3) have enough income as to make the issues raised in this article trite.
- ghaff 7y ago
  It's somewhat more complicated than that. There are other factors. 1.) Publishers do provide editing, etc. services that authors would otherwise have to pay for out of their own pockets. That may or may not be a worthwhile tradeoff. But, between forgoing and advance and paying for services, authors are probably at least a few $K out of pocket if they go their own way. To the degree that things like book tours/promotion/etc. are relevant--they often aren't--that can add to the difference. 2.) For, especially non-fiction, authors for whom books are more about boosting their profile than bringing in money directly, traditional publishers (rightly or wrongly) have considerably more cachet than independent publishing. 3.) This becomes less and less important, but independently published books probably won't be in book stores.
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    My wife is my editor, so I am lucky. She does sometimes provide editing services to other authors for a modest fee; email me if you need an editor. re: 3): this is a big drawback of self publishing. When I wrote for conventional publishers it was always a thrill to see my books in Barnes and Nobles, etc. But, but.... the ability to make frequent improvements to eBooks and effortlessly push changes to readers trumps all the advantages of conventional publishers.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      I don't really disagree with any of that. I've done both ways and I'm not sure I'd go with a traditional publisher again unless doing so fell in my lap for some reason. Another thing I find for tech-related books--which is what I do--is that if I do things myself, I control the length whereas publishers generally have a minimum number of pages in mind which may be more than the topic really warrants. And a final point is that, as an individual, I have more flexibility in just giving copies away (especially ebooks) if I did the book mostly for promotional purposes.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

Way back when, I wrote ten books for traditional publishers like Springer-Verlag, McGraw-Hill, etc. I switched over years ago to self publishing on leanpub.com, using a Creative Commons non commercial share license, with free updates. I don’t earn quite what I used to but the freedom to write exactly what I want with no pushback from publishers on what they predict will sell, and the ability to effortlessly push book updates to readers makes the switch very worthwhile. Writing is also a great way to meet interesting people and expand a personal network. Whenever I meet someone who has an interesting job and/or interests, I almost always suggest that they write at least one book.

throwawaynerdy 7y ago

I don't know if any of that is true. I'm a free information guy and author and despite having a million users of my website, I'm not even profitable. It's not some clickbait garbage either. It's been front page HN numerous times. What should I be doing? I have a paid book as an option. But everyone Google searches "free book", it was so bad I ended up making my own free link for SEO reasons.

moron4hire 7y ago
Go to book fairs and industry events for the genre of book you are writing. My wife writes sci-fi novels and is an officer in a large writers' club (I think it's one of the oldest ok the country). Pretty much all of the members talk about how they really only make sales on their own at in-person events, even the ones with traditional publishers. My wife mainly manages to cover her costs with the sales, though we don't really go out of our way to go to really big events and have yet to do any sci-fi conventions. She sees a few sales on Amazon, but the peaks are usually right after we've been to a book fair.