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Correction - it won't make most authors rich. It's like cooking - most chefs are ruining their health with 14-hour-days for pennies, and like five others are cr

Correction - it won't make most authors rich. It's like cooking - most chefs are ruining their health with 14-hour-days for pennies, and like five others are crushing it. You have to be really, REALLY good.

paulpauper 3y ago
or just lucky. as someone who reads a lot of blogs, the top substack bloggers are not that much better, if at all ,compared to obscure ones
- bruce511 3y ago
  Or hard working, at the right thing - ie marketing. Most creatives, programmers included, believe "if you write it, they will come." The successful ones though are the ones who got good at selling it.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    Hard work and/or luck. Usually both, but not always. Occasionally you hear of someone (Rodriguez in Searching for Sugar Man) who makes it big despite doing nothing at all to promote himself. And hard working folks who go nowhere. I'm watching a documentary right now about Jonathan Ramie, who plays Jesus in The Chosen. He struggled for 20 years, not even having health insurance.
coldtea 3y ago
Are the chefs that are crushing it "really, REALLY good", or just good, comparable perhaps to tens of thousands of others (and worse than many of them) that nonetheless aren't crushing it?
- bsder 3y ago
  With chefs, it seems like they really are crushing it. I've heard of a couple of top chefs who got burned out, went and started "something else" away from their fame, which then proceeded to crush it as well. Of course, there is a lot of survivorship bias. I never heard of the ones who never crushed it or who started the second thing and it failed. However, the fact that there are a non-trivial number of chefs who crush it multiple times seems to suggest that there is something that they have. Even people like Anthony Bourdain acknowledge that there is a VAST gulf in capability between people like himself and the people who went and survived those big name restaurant kitchens.

paulpauper 3y ago

or just lucky. as someone who reads a lot of blogs, the top substack bloggers are not that much better, if at all ,compared to obscure ones

bruce511 3y ago
Or hard working, at the right thing - ie marketing. Most creatives, programmers included, believe "if you write it, they will come." The successful ones though are the ones who got good at selling it.
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Hard work and/or luck. Usually both, but not always. Occasionally you hear of someone (Rodriguez in Searching for Sugar Man) who makes it big despite doing nothing at all to promote himself. And hard working folks who go nowhere. I'm watching a documentary right now about Jonathan Ramie, who plays Jesus in The Chosen. He struggled for 20 years, not even having health insurance.

coldtea 3y ago

Are the chefs that are crushing it "really, REALLY good", or just good, comparable perhaps to tens of thousands of others (and worse than many of them) that nonetheless aren't crushing it?

bsder 3y ago
With chefs, it seems like they really are crushing it. I've heard of a couple of top chefs who got burned out, went and started "something else" away from their fame, which then proceeded to crush it as well. Of course, there is a lot of survivorship bias. I never heard of the ones who never crushed it or who started the second thing and it failed. However, the fact that there are a non-trivial number of chefs who crush it multiple times seems to suggest that there is something that they have. Even people like Anthony Bourdain acknowledge that there is a VAST gulf in capability between people like himself and the people who went and survived those big name restaurant kitchens.