4 ms·
If anything, I think you're overselling it. Most authors make at best a very small amount of money from their work and are nowhere near being able to make a liv
by Kalium 4y ago
If anything, I think you're overselling it. Most authors make at best a very small amount of money from their work and are nowhere near being able to make a living from it. Most books simply don't sell much at all (200-300 for an average author), to the point where even 100% of sticker price wouldn't pay for a person's living expenses.
A generous assumption is hardbacks at $25 a pop. That would put an average author at 5k to 7.5k in a year... under the very improbable assumption of 100% of sticker price going to the author.
Spotify and the music world has a distinctly different problem. Last I read, the vast majority of their revenue is going to their licensing deals. The license-holders then don't pay much to the artists. You can blame Spotify for this if you choose, and many artists like to publicly, but as with many things in music it comes back to the labels.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pirate787 4y agoImportant to consider that most books range from barely readable to trash. I think the book distribution of quality is more concentrated among elite authors, whereas music is a lot more linear -- the average musician is a lot closer to elite musicians.
- nwiswell 4y ago> whereas music is a lot more linear -- the average musician is a lot closer to elite musicians. Gosh, I don't know. This is quite a claim. First off is the obvious question: who is a musician? High school band? Play Friday nights at the local pub? Or are we talking "survives exclusively on record sales" / "is a member of a symphony"? That's a lot of selection bias. Almost nobody publishing rubbish is surviving off that income. Second, "musician" is actually conflating two things: songwriting/composition and performance. Composition is the thing that really bears direct comparison, and I'd venture a guess you've not even heard all the awful songs out there because nobody with any talent is interested in performing them (unlike the ease with which anyone can publish total rubbish). Finally, if you consider the size of the corpus -- all songs vs all English text -- it's pretty clear which one is easier to curate (covers in music are super common, which is probably not an accident). Just anecdotally, I saw a video on reddit the other day of an African dictator casually wetting himself. But what was really striking to me was how absolutely awful the state band was. I found the link: https://old.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/znske2/south_sudan_president_salva_kiir_pees_on_himself/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/znske2/...