8 ms·

A huge percentage of the population wants to write a book. For many it's an innate desire, much like making music. If people who write books for financial gain

• phone8675309 4y ago
  That seems incredibly short-sighted to me. Sure, there might be a lot of people who want to _write_ a book and may do it for free or very little, but the people editing books still need to eat.
  • deleted 4y ago
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• remus 4y ago
  > If people who write books for financial gain decide to quit, I'm not sure it's a big loss. Plenty of people write software for free. Why don't we just use all software however we like? If people who write software for financial gain decide to quit would it be such a loss?
  • MichaelCollins 4y ago
    If software copyright ceased to exist, there would still be work for professional programmers: I want software that does X. There is no free software that does X. What are my choices? Write it myself, or pay somebody to write it for me.
    • 6510 4y ago
      Then you release it, get modest praise and you've contributed to the future of humanity - which should be good enough for anyone.
      • MichaelCollins 4y ago
        If I pay you to write software for me to use, then you release that software to the public, then I got the software I wanted and you got paid for it, by me. Everybody is square, everybody comes out ahead.
        • 6510 4y ago
          It is never good to explain something in terms of what it is not and it is better to travel towards some place new than to travel away from something. If you build your philosophy or movement on [say] anti-capitalism success can be glorious as always but in the long run you will need real life examples of capitalism for any of your arguments to make sense. One might dream of all software and books being free from copyright in the same way but it works even better the other way around. If we take the natural order of things. [say] plants replicating themselves with mammals grazing on them or birds dropping delicious eggs all over the place... What kind of complete imbecile would attempt to control that? The topic most worthy of debate isn't the events, it might not even be the discussion about people who desire to reap the benefits from forcing others to behave against their own interest. The real topic is people who desire to accomplish something that is not and will never be possible. They have been at it not since 1790 but FOREVER! People have always attempted to deny access to knowledge and stop technological progress. Even other peoples entertainment must happen on their terms. The copyright circus is not about authors getting paid. It is marketing slang for the Spanish inquisition. We can massage the words to make them sound more appealing but the purpose of technology is what it does. This is every bit as terrifying as it sounds. The purpose of splitting the atom is to erase all life on this planet over primitive mammalian territory disputes. Even the most sophisticated things we do can be traced back to supper primitive instinctive behavior that (in its defense) took 4 billion years to calibrate. It is not that we don't know how to care for others but it is hard to balance it with reproduction. If we make life easy and comfortable for everyone they are going to reproduce until non of that remains. Thus we have this drive to make others miserable while completely unaware of why exactly we do this: I got a good thing going for myself - fuck everyone else! We've build giant automatons to make ourselves miserable! yeah, we just duplicate and share all of those books that you like to think of as your personal property. Sucks to be you doesn't it? It was not like your motivations were honorable or even reasonable. Imagine how we created the rule of law and how all that had to step aside so that inspectors can search your home for a radio or TV because you didn't pay for a license. Out of the way, we have illegal books to burn!... and scholars! Piracy? Surely you mean heresy? In conclusion I think, in an argument between barely civilized men, you choice of methods for winning the debate shouldn't sink as low as your opponents but it is fair to meet them half way. No need to torture them into a confession, burn them at the stake or the horrific censorship of their dialog. We can just mock them while copying the books and the movies and rewriting the software from scratch. After all, we are the nice people, its so nice from us that we allow these neo-inquisitors to talk their little talk in public. How they want to do just a little bit of infringement by searching your property, perhaps not burn the heretic today but at least fine little jimmy a few hundred thousand. We can just laugh behind our hand when they talk their little talk. How dare we have bigger things to worry about: Preserving the ecosystem, infesting other worlds and we should eventually be able to fix the population issues by extending life by just a few hundred years. Go read a book about it, its free!
  • __david__ 4y ago
    No? I think you're trying to be clever, but literally, no, it wouldn't be a massive loss.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • _Algernon_ 4y ago
    >If people who write software for financial gain decide to quit would it be such a loss? When this happens we will finally have the Year of the Linux Desktop, and it will be a good year.
    • blowski 4y ago
      A lot of Linux is built by people on salaries from big tech.
      • yencabulator 4y ago
        And a lot of worst of modern day Linux & Open Source is those big tech corporations pushing their own agendas... Linux might even be better off being a hobby again.
      • kybernetikos 4y ago
        Which is great for this conversation, because it proves that it isn't absolutely necessary for software copyright to exist in order for people to get paid to write it.
• kasey_junk 4y ago
  But a very small number of people want to edit, copy edit, fact check, type set, market and fund writing for no pay. The publishing industry is a whole lot more than someone drafting in word…
  • 6510 4y ago
    That we can put under wage slavery. People don't have time for it.
  • pessimizer 4y ago
    Academic publishing says this too, and for them at least it turns out not to be true, because they insist that typesetting be done before they see it. The value-add from the publishing industry in general is payment advances and marketing. Same as the music industry. They're both a whole lot more and a whole lot less than somebody drafting in word. Anybody can hire an editor.
    • tptacek 4y ago
      Anybody can indeed hire an editor, but you have to hire them. Nobody edits (or copyedits) for free. Which is Kasey's point.
      • autoexec 4y ago
        > Nobody edits (or copyedits) for free. They absolutely do and would do more often without copyright laws holding them back. Every person who finds a book they want to share with others would be free to make improvements as they saw fit, and that would certainty include edits and correcting errors. Even today we have rouge editors who take copyrighted works, then illegally edit and distribute them along with their changes because they feel it improves the works in question. Examples include fan edits of films to improve the narrative and streamline edits of mythbusters to remove obnoxious repetitive cruft. Other examples of free editors can be found in Wikipeida articles, fanfic projects, fan translation projects, and video game walkthroughs. Even mods/patches for video games can be a form of "free editing". There are very few forms of media where I haven't seen people providing some form of editing services for free. (I can't say I've seen it for oil paintings yet I guess)
• tzs 4y ago
  > A huge percentage of the population wants to write a book. But only a tiny percentage of the population is any good at writing books. If those people stop doing so or greatly cut back on doing so it is a big loss even if that doesn't change the total number of books written each year by a noticeable amount.
  • more_corn 4y ago
    Writing gets better the more you do it. And many writing styles people have initially complained about turned out to be wildly successful. See Karl Ove Knausgaard.
    • ekianjo 4y ago
      > writing gets better the more you do it. Ed wood made a lot of movies, they were not any better after he had gained a lot of experience. The assumption that there is significant improvement on what you with time only occurs if there is self reflection and feedback loops and an incentive to progress.
• ajmurmann 4y ago
  Writing a book takes a long time and will take even longer or never get finished at all if you also need to work at McDonald's to make rent and keep the electricity on.
  • vlunkr 4y ago
    Plenty of people have produced great works of art while working day jobs. It’s hardly a new concept.
    • ajmurmann 4y ago
      When it comes to populations it's about statistics, not about what is possible at all. If we want many great works, we need to make it possible for more people to succeed with that not make it harder. Same fallacy as saying that discrimination or poverty don't impact success, since some people have pulled it off despite those.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    You have no idea what you are talking about. The greatest books were written by people having other occupations and full time jobs aside.
• saiya-jin 4y ago
  Sorry but this is such an american trope, that people need to write themselves off to prove something to somebody or themselves (not sure what exactly, there are other ways to gain respect but maybe some folks struggle to find other, more effective means of deeper introspection). Few times this has been mentioned by an american in some group of people somewhere I managed to be too, puzzled looks from all others followed (few times also from other americans). That's literally the only time I ever heard anybody mentioning wanting to write a book (well apart from doing children's book made just of illustrations from 1 german lady, but that ain't the same category, and she just went and did it by the time I met her and it was great). That music making mentioned has much higher popularity, we all have been young and some still are in our hearts. I don't think I am that much of an outlier, I've spent tons of time with folks from all continents, cultures and religions when backpacking, working, socializing in our tiny cosmopolitan metropole of Geneva. I don't want to state that nobody wants to write, but "huge percentage" is roughly in 1/2% if I am optimistic and take everybody that ever even fleetingly mentioned it by their word. To me personally it just sounds like too much actual effort and self-torture for some at-best mediocre output. One can learn whole new sports, hobbies, do long adventures that will create tons of memories that will make you smile and have that distant look into past when you will be dying and remembering them... that's worth investing some time into, not 10 millionth average book
• theptip 4y ago
  I don't think one has to go this far. It's already a hard job being an author, and if you make it less well-paid for the median author, we'd get less art, and less knowledge shared. However I think one could easily make a case for making it less well-paid for the big winners head of the power-law curve (the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, etc) which extract huge paychecks from the copyright monopoly. I think it's fine to give authors a temporary monopoly of say ten or twenty years, to reward production. The problem is when the modern special-interest-driven capitalist system hooks into this and keeps lobbying to increase the length of copyright, benefitting estates and conglomerates, rather than the initial authors doing the creative work. And the public pays the cost.
  • rfrey 4y ago
    I would be shocked if the median pay for an author was more than $2/hour. I'd actually be shocked if it was that much. Not sure what effect lowering it to $1.50/h would be.
    • joak 4y ago
      Most authors never make a dime. Most authors never get published. Most authors have no readers. Still they write. I think the point is to pay successful writers so they keep writing. Pay them and distribute ebooks for free. Where is the contradiction? The money just have to come from other sources than selling the books. Free ebooks mean more readers. This is something desirable, no?
• dojomouse 4y ago
  I have an innate desire to write a book. But I haven’t because the effort would be significant and I have other things to do, including work. I am glad that the many professional authors whose work I’ve enjoyed had financial reward providing them both the motive and means to write for me. You could argue I have an innate desire to care for people inasmuch as I was a volunteer ambulance officer for a while. But I’m pretty glad we pay doctors and nurses and paramedics to dedicate their working lives to doing an excellent job of that stuff rather than just assume that pro bono efforts will see us through. I think it’s enormously naive to assume we’d lose nothing if we took away art as a profession - especially since it’s so obvious it would be a dumb idea to do away with many other professions. Also I find it hard enough finding books and music I genuinely love even WITH the profit motive at work and giving people the ability to dedicate their lives to it!
  • LaundroMat 4y ago
    Maybe the profit motive is the reason why you can't find books you genuinely love.
    • philosopher1234 4y ago
      What’s a book that you love written without a profit motive?
      • dalke 4y ago
        Survey of Chemical Notation Systems - A Report of the Committee on Modern Methods of Handling Chemical Information. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences - National Research Council, 1964. It's an excellent snapshot of the world of chemical information on the cusp of computerization.
  • krolden 4y ago
    I'd much rather have doctors that weren't motivated by profit. There would be many more that actually give a shit about people rather than paying off med school or their Porsche loan.
• TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  Yes, but very few people can afford to write full-time without getting paid for it. The money isn't the deciding factor between writing vs not writing. It's the deciding factor between writing 40 hours a week vs 5 hours a week after doing their day job.
  • ekianjo 4y ago
    Why do you have to write full time?
    • TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      You don't have to, but I certainly appreciate that many good writers do and produce a lot more because of it.
      • autoexec 4y ago
        Many other good writers are restricted from producing a lot more because of it too. For all we know Steven King could have authored the best Harry Potter novel of all time, but we'll never know that because even if he wanted to, laws would have prevented him from writing one. King actually might have enough money to make that happen anyway, but billions of other humans, each of which might also write the best Harry Potter novel would never be able to afford to under current laws. It's easy to look at the good works that get created despite our copyright system and think that it's working out pretty well without giving consideration to what we're being denied because of it.
• Valakas_ 4y ago
  I think you live in a different world than 99% of the people where money is not an issue.