Salon Article on Midlist Authors
Remus Shepherd
such a career can be:
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html
This is depressing.
On a related note, someone remind me again why vanity publishers are
a bad idea? The sales figures in this article are low, the publishers
are hard to deal with, and the author's most successful book only got that way
because he/she hired free-lance publicists with his/her own money. Articles
like this make print-on-demand self-publication look very appealing.
... ...
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com>
Dan Goodman
> Saw an article today written by a midlist author about how hellish
> such a career can be:
>
> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html
>
> This is depressing.
Compared to what? If the writer is making a living above the poverty
level, that's not too bad. If the writer isn't above the poverty level
-- the returns may still be above what most dancers and actors earn.
> On a related note, someone remind me again why vanity publishers are
> a bad idea?
Because they rip you off. If they didn't rip you off, they would _by
definition_ not be vanity publishers. Their business is to make you feel
like an author, while giving as little service as they can legally get
away with.
If you want to feel like an author -- and you don't mind inflated fees,
printing that is probably inferior, etc. -- then go ahead and find a
vanity publisher.
> The sales figures in this article are low, the publishers
> are hard to deal with, and the author's most successful book only got
> that way because he/she hired free-lance publicists with his/her own
> money. Articles like this make print-on-demand self-publication look
> very appealing.
It may be a good alternative if you're willing to work hard at selling to
distributors, directly to bookstores, mail order, or door-to-door.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Remus Shepherd
> > This is depressing.
> Compared to what? If the writer is making a living above the poverty
> level, that's not too bad. If the writer isn't above the poverty level
> -- the returns may still be above what most dancers and actors earn.
Is writing only a career for people who can't make a living any other
way? Because if it is I'll drop out of the market; I don't want to take
money from near-indigents.
> > On a related note, someone remind me again why vanity publishers are
> > a bad idea?
> If you want to feel like an author -- and you don't mind inflated fees,
> printing that is probably inferior, etc. -- then go ahead and find a
> vanity publisher.
(...)
> > Articles like this make print-on-demand self-publication look
> > very appealing.
> It may be a good alternative if you're willing to work hard at selling to
> distributors, directly to bookstores, mail order, or door-to-door.
I may be suffering from a confusion of terms, Dan. I thought that
'vanity publishing' was synonymous with 'print-on-demand'. You're implying
it's not? I know nothing about these options.
David Bilek
Print-on-demand self publication isn't the same as vanity publication.
Vanity publication means that money flows from the author to the
publisher.
-David
David Friedman
Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
> > The sales figures in this article are low, the publishers
> > are hard to deal with, and the author's most successful book only got
> > that way because he/she hired free-lance publicists with his/her own
> > money. Articles like this make print-on-demand self-publication look
> > very appealing.
>
> It may be a good alternative if you're willing to work hard at selling to
> distributors, directly to bookstores, mail order, or door-to-door.
I believe Amazon.com will handle self published books, which should
eliminate most of that. All that is left is promotion--persuading people
that they want the book.
--
Remove NOSPAM to email
Also remove .invalid
www.daviddfriedman.com
Suzanne A Blom
David Bilek <dtb...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:m1fu501gfhvut233b...@4ax.com...
> Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> > Saw an article today written by a midlist author about how hellish
> >such a career can be:
> >
> >http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html
> >
> >a bad idea? The sales figures in this article are low, the publishers
> >are hard to deal with, and the author's most successful book only got
that way
> >because he/she hired free-lance publicists with his/her own money.
Articles
> >like this make print-on-demand self-publication look very appealing.
> >
>
> Print-on-demand self publication isn't the same as vanity publication.
> Vanity publication means that money flows from the author to the
> publisher.
>
Mary Gentle
Shepherd) wrote:
> Saw an article today written by a midlist author about how hellish
> such a career can be:
>
> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html
>
> This is depressing.
This appears to want to play ads at me, so I'm probably not going to be
reading the article...
> On a related note, someone remind me again why vanity publishers are
> a bad idea?
[...]
You pay them.
The sole correct version is: publishers pay you.
If you mean producing your own books, rather than vanity publishing, the
answer changes to 'distribution'... If you can persuade people to buy the
books via web sites or traditional book outlets, you need to do the job of
the publisher's sales force, and - at the moment, anyway - overcome the
assumption that if the book was any good, a 'real' publisher would be
bringing it out. Which takes enough time and effort to eat up a working
day before you ever write a word, and then some.
DIY publishing is better for books that fit small niche markets, and
particularly non fiction. It's not impossible for fiction to make it that
way, but when it does happen, it's news - which probably tells you
something about how often it happens.
Mary
Dan Goodman
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>> Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote in
>> > http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html
>> > This is depressing.
>
>> Compared to what? If the writer is making a living above the poverty
>> level, that's not too bad. If the writer isn't above the poverty
>> level -- the returns may still be above what most dancers and actors
>> earn.
>
> Is writing only a career for people who can't make a living any other
> way?
For _some_ people, writing is in the long run the highest-paid means of
making a living. However, a high percentage of them would do better
financially by taking a 9-to-5 writing job than by freelance writing.
Of those who do best financially by freelance writing, most can earn a
reasonable living.
> Because if it is I'll drop out of the market; I don't want to
> take money from near-indigents.
In practice, you would most likely be taking it away from people with a
paying hobby whose main income is from some other source.
>> > On a related note, someone remind me again why vanity publishers
>> > are a bad idea?
>
>> If you want to feel like an author -- and you don't mind inflated
>> fees, printing that is probably inferior, etc. -- then go ahead and
>> find a vanity publisher.
>
>> > Articles like this make print-on-demand self-publication look
>> > very appealing.
>
>> It may be a good alternative if you're willing to work hard at
>> selling to distributors, directly to bookstores, mail order, or
>> door-to-door.
>
> I may be suffering from a confusion of terms, Dan. You are.
> I thought that
> 'vanity publishing' was synonymous with 'print-on-demand'. You're
> implying it's not?
I'm stating outright that it's not.
From the Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
Vanity press
(Redirected from Vanity Publishing)
A vanity press is a publisher that charges writers a fee in return for
publishing their books. They are so called because the customer can then
tell others they have published a book. These companies often call
themselves subsidy publishers.
Unlike conventional publishers, vanity presses pay no royalties and have
no distribution apparatus. Vanity presses earn their money, not from
sales of books to readers like other publishers, but from sales of books
to the authors. The author receives the shipment of books and may attempt
to resell them through whatever channels are available. In many cases,
the copies are not even bound.
Writers considering self-publishing often also consider directly hiring a
printer. According to self-publisher and poet Peter Finch, vanity presses
charge higher premiums and create a risk that an author who has published
with a vanity press will be "tainted" and have more difficulty working
with a "real" publisher in the future.
See also Print on demand
Print on demand
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Print on demand (POD) services use new digital printing techniques to
publish small print runs of books (often a single copy) on demand.
Mostly used in self-publishing, print on demand services print books to
order for a fixed cost, often irrespective of the size of the order but
sometimes providing cheaper printing costs for larger runs. Most print on
demand publishers also offer an ISBN registration service and post books
available from them on their own website and with affiliates such as
Amazon.com.
Self-publishers use print on demand services as they do not require the
self-publisher to maintain a stock of the book themselves or pay the
associated large up-front print fees. Most print-on-demand services do
ask an up front fee for the creation of the digital masters, editing, and
formatting services. Very few services now offer any form of on demand
printing setup for free.
Profits from print on demand publishing are on a per sale basis and the
amount of commission will often vary depending on the route by which the
book was sold. Highest profits are usually generated from sales direct
from the print-on-demand service's website or by buying copies from the
service at a discount, as the publisher, and then selling them yourself.
Lowest commission usually come from sales from "bricks and mortar"
bookshops, with on-line bookstores falling somewhere in between.
steve miller
<re...@panix.com> wrotD:
> Is writing only a career for people who can't make a living any other
>way? Because if it is I'll drop out of the market; I don't want to take
>money from near-indigents.
How silly. Do you think the writers are paying for you to write?
> I thought that
>'vanity publishing' was synonymous with 'print-on-demand'. You're implying
>it's not? I know nothing about these options.
You haven't done your research. Self publishing and print on demand
are processes of getting books to people who want them. Vanity
publishing is paying somone to print a few books so you can say you're
an author.
Steve
Balance of Trade -- A Locus "New and Notable" Book
http://locusmag.com/2004/Monitor/Books03a.html
Low Port -- candidate for best anthology of 2003
http://www.livejournal.com/community/liaden_spoilers/
Joann Zimmerman
che...@starswarmnews.com says...
> On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 18:10:41 +0000 (UTC), Remus Shepherd
> <re...@panix.com> wrotD:
>
>
> > Is writing only a career for people who can't make a living any other
> >way? Because if it is I'll drop out of the market; I don't want to take
> >money from near-indigents.
>
> How silly. Do you think the writers are paying for you to write?
I think he means that he thinks that sales from writing is a zero-sum
game: that if I buy his book, I won't buy OtherDeservingBrokeWriter's
book, and that ODBW will therefore continue to be broke. This is
provably not the case; if I made money the only criterion for book-
buying, I would not have a mid-four-digits amount of books taking up all
my available wall space. (There is one lurker here who has seen what can
happen when I go into a used bookstore; the results are not pretty.)
--
"I never understood people who don't have bookshelves."
--George Plimpton
Joann Zimmerman jz...@bellereti.com
Lady of Shallott
"Joann Zimmerman" <jz...@bellereti.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.1ac928683...@newshost.cc.utexas.edu...
I suffer from the same "accidents" only mine usually occur in bookshops such
as Waterstones. The sales assistant's eyes light up when I enter the shop
because they know I'm going to walk out with a dozen books or more, even
though I swore I would only buy one particular book this time!
I too have a mid four digit collection of books which have been relegated to
the loft as my house was looking more like the public library than a home.
--
Annette
(ladyofsh...@btinternet.com)
"There are more things in heaven and earth, ...,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Irina Rempt
(ladyofsh...@btinternet.com) wrote:
> I too have a mid four digit collection of books which have been
> relegated to the loft as my house was looking more like the public
> library than a home.
Someone who had business with us once passed our house three times,
thinking it couldn't be the right address because there were so many
books that it had to be an office, not a home.
Irina (another mid-to-high four digit collection here, still
counting)
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 22-Mar-2004
steve miller
<re...@panix.com> wrotD:
> Saw an article today written by a midlist author about how hellish
Balance of Trade -- A Locus "New and Notable" Book
Brian M. Scott
<ir...@valdyas.org> wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition:
> On Monday 22 March 2004 23:52 Lady of Shallott
> (ladyofsh...@btinternet.com) wrote:
>> I too have a mid four digit collection of books which have been
>> relegated to the loft as my house was looking more like the public
>> library than a home.
> Someone who had business with us once passed our house three times,
> thinking it couldn't be the right address because there were so many
> books that it had to be an office, not a home.
> Irina (another mid-to-high four digit collection here, still
> counting)
Stopped counting about 30 years ago. It was at least mid four
digits then. This explains why so much of it is now in boxes.
Brian
Jim Bailey
> Saw an article today written by a midlist author about how hellish
>such a career can be:
>
>http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/22/midlist/index.html
>
> This is depressing.
Eh, it's actually a career that's far above average. I've heard the number
bandied about that the average selling fiction author in the US makes between
$3000 and $4000 per year. That sounds about right.
> On a related note, someone remind me again why vanity publishers
>are a bad idea? The sales figures in this article are low, the publishers
>are hard to deal with, and the author's most successful book only got
>that way because he/she hired free-lance publicists with his/her own
>money. Articles like this make print-on-demand self-publication look
>very appealing.
Put it this way. The most abysmal failure at a big publisher, and we're
talking first-time writer with a microscopic advance and absolutely no
promotional budget, will sell more copies than all but a very very small number
of vanity press books (the average for vanity POD is less than 100 as reported
by *them* in various brag press releases). Most *small* presses can outsell a
vanity press with one arm tied behind their backs. All of the POD vanity
published books sold in that industry's HISTORY (and we're talking about 10s of
thousands of different authors with over 100,000 different titles), wouldn't
match some single NYT #1 bestsellers.
Now, the problem that the author of this article is having is the other edge of
a sword that makes things much easier for us as beginning writers.
The REASON that midlisters are having such a tough time is that publishers,
major and minor, are publishing more titles by more authors, accepting more
books by new writers looking for the big hit, than in any time in history.
They're also selling more units than ever before.
However, the growth in the number of authors, when you apply that to an income
distribution curve, means that the middle gets affected MUCH more than either
extreme. Bestselling authors don't care if they're only making $5 million
instead of $10 million, and all those not making enough to live on anyway
aren't going to be much affected if they only get $3000 this year instead of
$4000. But if you suck the curve down enough to account for so many more
writers dividing the same chunk of overall income, and that point where income
drops below a "living wage" runs a long way along the line to affect a large
percentage of the population.
(Lessee, I made a rough graphical representation of what I mean a while
back.... here it is: http://www.sff.net/people/jbailey/writergraph.gif Total
income is represented by total area under the curve. When you add writers at
the tail end to the right, even if they make less, the money has to come from
lowering the curve for everybody on the left. There's probably a standard
distribution curve that explains the behavior more accurately (Maybe something
our resident economist can explain better than me :-), but I had just eyeballed
this for illustrative purposes).
So the real solution to fixing the midlist "problem" is to either grow
publishing income at a rate faster than new writers come into the game (HA!),
or to have publishers form a cartel and *seriously* limit the number of authors
and books they publish each year. But since they're all fiercely competitive
and looking for that elusive hit that nobody can predict, they'll keep throwing
new writers up against the wall until some of us stick.
Which again, means that those of us currently on the "outside" have never had a
better chance to *get* inside, but when we do, we're fighting even harder for
what's left, and the danger we'll be dropped again is ever present.
That's the deal we (or at least our muses) signed up for. I figure no matter
what the "odds" or "averages" or whatever, *somebody* has to be the next Tom
Clancy, or J.K. Rowling, or Dan Brown, it might as well be me. ;-)
Best,
Jim Bailey
--
Elysian Fiction (Fantasy short story e-zine)
http://www.elysianfiction.com/
Marilee J. Layman
>On Monday 22 March 2004 23:52 Lady of Shallott
>(ladyofsh...@btinternet.com) wrote:
>
>> I too have a mid four digit collection of books which have been
>> relegated to the loft as my house was looking more like the public
>> library than a home.
>
>Someone who had business with us once passed our house three times,
>thinking it couldn't be the right address because there were so many
>books that it had to be an office, not a home.
>
> Irina (another mid-to-high four digit collection here, still
>counting)
I only have about 2K. The condo is just too small.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Alma Hromic Deckert
between 4 and 5K, here. and growing... <sigh>
A.
Yoon Ha Lee
> Stopped counting about 30 years ago. It was at least mid four
> digits then. This explains why so much of it is now in boxes.
>
> Brian
Sad am I: only in very low four digits. But the collection between
myself and my sister (it's effectively the same collection, even though
we have to snail books to each other) has been culled and reconsolidated
*every time* our parents moved (average of every two years), and then
culled and culled again due to the fact that we've both been college
students without much in the way of bookshelf space, or friends with
cars for moving between dorms, for that matter. If we'd never had to
cull...yikes.
My husband tells me I don't want a house per se, I want a *library.*
Maybe someday in several decades, I will never have to move again.
*Hate* culling books.
--
Yoon Ha Lee
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com
Pi = 3, for small values of pi and large values of 3.
steve miller
<ladyofsh...@btinternet.com> wrotD:
>I suffer from the same "accidents" only mine usually occur in bookshops such
>as Waterstones. The sales assistant's eyes light up when I enter the shop
>because they know I'm going to walk out with a dozen books or more, even
>though I swore I would only buy one particular book this time!
>
>I too have a mid four digit collection of books which have been relegated to
>the loft as my house was looking more like the public library than a home.
Ummm .. when Sharon and I moved in together... we had a lot of
duplicate science fiction. We ended up starting an SF bookshop, mostly
with our duplicates for initial stock.
steve miller
>> This is depressing.
>
>Eh, it's actually a career that's far above average. I've heard the number
>bandied about that the average selling fiction author in the US makes between
>$3000 and $4000 per year. That sounds about right.
No sign in the article that we're talking fiction -- and several signs
that we're not -- i.e. the book that got the big advance was unwritten
whem the advance came... not at all likely for a first novelist unless
said first novelist was a celebrity.
Remus Shepherd
> che...@starswarmnews.com says...
> > <re...@panix.com> wrotD:
> > > Is writing only a career for people who can't make a living any other
> > >way? Because if it is I'll drop out of the market; I don't want to take
> > >money from near-indigents.
> >
> > How silly. Do you think the writers are paying for you to write?
> I think he means that he thinks that sales from writing is a zero-sum
> game: that if I buy his book, I won't buy OtherDeservingBrokeWriter's
> book, and that ODBW will therefore continue to be broke. This is
> provably not the case; if I made money the only criterion for book-
> buying, I would not have a mid-four-digits amount of books taking up all
> my available wall space.
Actually I was looking at it from a publishing point of view. If a
publisher buys my story, he won't buy a story from someone who needs the
money more.
Unfortunately the stories in my head are screaming, 'Screw them! We
want out!', so sympathy for my fellow authors is not reason enough to
stop writing. ;)
Remus Shepherd
> Ummm .. when Sharon and I moved in together... we had a lot of
> duplicate science fiction. We ended up starting an SF bookshop, mostly
> with our duplicates for initial stock.
You're a lucky man. When I and my wife moved in together, we gave all
our duplicate books to charity. Then in the divorce she took them all.
Ah, these things happen...and some years later I once again have boxes and
boxes full of books.
Elizabeth Shack
> Maybe someday in several decades, I will never have to move again.
> *Hate* culling books.
Yes. I've only got 500, because I keep moving. I still have 100 or so at my
parents' house.
I'm considering selling all my physics texts, which would shrink the
collecction by a few dozen.
--
Elizabeth Shack eashack at earthlink dot ent
Writing updates at http://www.livejournal.com/users/eashack/
Irina Rempt
That's one of the reasons (not the main reason) that we're never going
to divorce.
Irina
Remus Shepherd
> The REASON that midlisters are having such a tough time is that publishers,
> major and minor, are publishing more titles by more authors, accepting more
> books by new writers looking for the big hit, than in any time in history.
> They're also selling more units than ever before.
> However, the growth in the number of authors, when you apply that to an income
> distribution curve, means that the middle gets affected MUCH more than either
> extreme. Bestselling authors don't care if they're only making $5 million
> instead of $10 million, and all those not making enough to live on anyway
> aren't going to be much affected if they only get $3000 this year instead of
> $4000. But if you suck the curve down enough to account for so many more
> writers dividing the same chunk of overall income, and that point where income
> drops below a "living wage" runs a long way along the line to affect a large
> percentage of the population.
>
> (Lessee, I made a rough graphical representation of what I mean a while
> back.... here it is: http://www.sff.net/people/jbailey/writergraph.gif Total
> income is represented by total area under the curve. When you add writers at
> the tail end to the right, even if they make less, the money has to come from
> lowering the curve for everybody on the left. There's probably a standard
> distribution curve that explains the behavior more accurately (Maybe something
> our resident economist can explain better than me :-), but I had just eyeballed
> this for illustrative purposes).
Jim, thank you. This is a useful analysis. But I'm not clear about your
conclusions.
The area under the curve is the total income of all writers, but that isn't
a useful number -- better to say that it's the total outlay from the publisher.
The publisher wants to minimize this. And it seems as if the area is less
in the chart on the right than it is on the left, although I know these are
just rough sketches. But the money isn't being pushed down to give more
low-end writers a chance, it's being shifted up the chain to saturate the
high-end writers. Either way the midlist suffers. But I'm not convinced
there's any good news for new writers here.
> So the real solution to fixing the midlist "problem" is to either grow
> publishing income at a rate faster than new writers come into the game (HA!),
> or to have publishers form a cartel and *seriously* limit the number of authors
> and books they publish each year.
The real solution would be to form that cartel and set payments to authors
at a more equitable scale. If J.K.Rowling recieved just one million dollars
less, that could be used to give 100 new writers a $10,000 advance, or give
20 midlist writers a comfortable $50,000 lifestyle.
Alternately, writing could shift into an apprentice system, where starving
authors work under a celebrity author who gives them funds from his massive
income and puts his name on their books until they come into their own.
Didn't I hear that Tom Clancy does this?
Thanks for the info, Jim. But I'm still depressed. :)
Remus Shepherd
> A vanity press is a publisher that charges writers a fee in return for
> publishing their books. They are so called because the customer can then
> tell others they have published a book. These companies often call
> themselves subsidy publishers.
> Print on demand (POD) services use new digital printing techniques to
> publish small print runs of books (often a single copy) on demand.
Thanks, Dan -- you gave me an instant education. :) I haven't
researched the book publishing industry much, being being focused on the
short story market so far.
Nicola Browne
news:c3pnoi$sun$1...@reader1.panix.com
> Thanks for the info, Jim. But I'm still depressed. :)
>
Why are you depressed?
I know why I am - I 'm a mid list author : (
Make that a blocked mid list author.
Nicky
...
>
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Brian M. Scott
<re...@panix.com> wrote in
<news:c3pnoi$sun$1...@reader1.panix.com> in
rec.arts.sf.composition:
> Jim Bailey <jame...@aol.com> wrote:
[...]
Actually, Jim is claiming that it is. His sketches don't
show it as clearly as one might like, but I'm pretty sure
that the second curve is intended to be lower than the first
on the lefthand end (except for the very highest-earning
handful). In other words, the area under the long righthand
tail has been stolen from the lefthand end of the original
distribution. This forces the curve to drop more sharply,
which in turn moves the intersection with the living wage
line to the left. You could in fact keep the intersection
where it is (or even move it to the right) while extending
the tail of the distribution -- you could even do it while
maintaining the earnings of the very top end -- but I
suspect that this isn't the natural outcome.
[...]
Brian
David Friedman
Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote:
> The real solution would be to form that cartel and set payments to authors
> at a more equitable scale. If J.K.Rowling recieved just one million dollars
> less, that could be used to give 100 new writers a $10,000 advance, or give
> 20 midlist writers a comfortable $50,000 lifestyle.
It's hard to maintain a cartel if you can't close entry. If Rowling's
publisher decides to divert some of the income from her books to
subsidizing less popular authors, she can always go to a different
publisher. If all the publishers somehow got together and agreed to
divert income from the most successful authors to the less successful,
someone who started a new publishing firm without that policy could
attract a lot of top authors and make a lot of money.
The real problem, if it is a problem, is the same as for any other field
where people are doing something that many of them very much want to
do--acting, say, or music. There are enough reasonably good people
willing to work for not very much money so that the consumers of what
they are producing don't have to pay very much to get reasonably good
people to produce it. So only the people who are extraordinarily good or
extraordinarily lucky end up doing well, financially speaking.
Before describing that as unfair, it's worth looking at the other side
of it. The struggling actor, or musician, or writer isn't making very
much money. But he is spending his time doing what he very much wants to
do--unlike the shoe store clerk who is probably making more than the
average for any of those professions, but is doing it in a considerably
less satisfying way.
Charlton Wilbur
IR> That's one of the reasons (not the main reason) that we're
IR> never going to divorce.
Mmmm, staying together for the sake of the library.
Charlton
--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com
David Friedman
Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
> >>>>> "IR" == Irina Rempt <ir...@valdyas.org> writes:
>
> IR> That's one of the reasons (not the main reason) that we're
> IR> never going to divorce.
>
> Mmmm, staying together for the sake of the library.
I had to marry Betty because she got me addicted to her bread. After
twenty years my chances of overcoming the addiction don't look very
good.
Neil Barnes
After I divorced, I moved to a smaller place. Many books ended up in boxes;
I reduced the collection to about a thousand. I donated over five
thousand...
--
I have a quantum car. Every time I look at the speedometer I get lost...
barnacle
http://www.nailed-barnacle.co.uk
Neil Barnes
<c3nqmi$iv5$1...@sparta.btinternet.com>:
>I suffer from the same "accidents" only mine usually occur in bookshops
>such as Waterstones. The sales assistant's eyes light up when I enter
>the shop because they know I'm going to walk out with a dozen books or
>more, even though I swore I would only buy one particular book this
>time!
Stuck in Miami twice as long as planned. Running out of books. Must not go
to Borders... must walk past... must walk... ah damnit!
Ian Montgomerie
declining-midlist phenomenon should read Robert Frank's "The
Winner-Take-All Society" (or the section based on that book in his
excellent "Luxury Fever").
These are popularized economics books which don't deal with writing
specifically, but do deal in general with something that is becoming
increasingly relevant in the modern information society, the
winner-take-all market. Basically this is a type of market where the
more efficient and sophisticated it becomes, the more the lion's share
of the profit will accrue to a small minority. One of the examples is
acting (which seems to be like writing in a lot of ways).
A crucial point Frank makes about these kinds of markets is that if
the majority of participants have trouble making ends meet, that's not
a sign that big publishers or movie houses or whatever are
deliberately screwing the little guy. They probably are screwing the
little guy - their market power certainly gives them the ability - but
basically, the advancement of technology and increasing business
sophistication move the entertainment information market more toward
its "natural" state where a small number of megastars/megablockbusters
get most of the money, and most participants get very little money.
Part of Frank's larger point is also about society in general - with
the information economy becoming more of the overall economy,
"winner-take-all" markets account for more and more of society's
spending and income. The result is an increasing move to what most
people would consider a less fair society, where the rewarding of
talent/luck/opportunity is incredibly uneven. Most of the reward
going to a small minority, and being slightly less favored than that
minority means earning far less money. To anyone at all interested in
this, I recommend "Luxury Fever" as one of the best popularized
economics books you can find.
David Friedman
Ian Montgomerie <ianN...@ianmontgomerie.com> wrote:
> Anyone interested in what fundamentally underlies the
> declining-midlist phenomenon should read Robert Frank's "The
> Winner-Take-All Society" (or the section based on that book in his
> excellent "Luxury Fever").
I haven't read the book and might disagree with it if I did, but I am
familiar with Robert Frank's other work (and know him), and he is a
bright and original guy who writes interesting stuff. So without having
read the book I will still second your recommendation.
David Friedman
nailed_...@NOSPAMhotmail.com (Neil Barnes) wrote:
> Stuck in Miami twice as long as planned. Running out of books. Must not go
> to Borders... must walk past... must walk... ah damnit!
You have an internet connection. How can you run out of books when all
of Gutenberg is available for the asking?
Remus Shepherd
> Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote:
> > The real solution would be to form that cartel and set payments to authors
> > at a more equitable scale. If J.K.Rowling recieved just one million dollars
> > less, that could be used to give 100 new writers a $10,000 advance, or give
> > 20 midlist writers a comfortable $50,000 lifestyle.
> It's hard to maintain a cartel if you can't close entry.
Oh, yes, I know. When introduced to a new type of economics, the first
reaction of the neophyte is to think that some form of communism will
solve all problems. ;)
> The real problem, if it is a problem, is the same as for any other field
> where people are doing something that many of them very much want to
> do--acting, say, or music. There are enough reasonably good people
> willing to work for not very much money so that the consumers of what
> they are producing don't have to pay very much to get reasonably good
> people to produce it. So only the people who are extraordinarily good or
> extraordinarily lucky end up doing well, financially speaking.
That's true for every profession right now. CEOs in america make more
than 500 times what their workers make, even as they're laying workers off
and having their companies declare bankruptcy. As one of those workers
I'm rather upset about that. Didn't think it applied to books, though...
there's a systemic problem here.
> Before describing that as unfair, it's worth looking at the other side
> of it. The struggling actor, or musician, or writer isn't making very
> much money. But he is spending his time doing what he very much wants to
> do--unlike the shoe store clerk who is probably making more than the
> average for any of those professions, but is doing it in a considerably
> less satisfying way.
And that's why I'm depressed. :) I've mentioned before that I love
having written, but I find the actual process of writing painful and tedious.
If the main reward for writing is the enjoyment of writing itself, I have a
problem.
Ian Montgomerie
<ianN...@ianmontgomerie.com> wrote:
>Anyone interested in what fundamentally underlies the
>declining-midlist phenomenon should read Robert Frank's "The
>Winner-Take-All Society" (or the section based on that book in his
>excellent "Luxury Fever").
>
>These are popularized economics books which don't deal with writing
>specifically, but do deal in general with something that is becoming
>increasingly relevant in the modern information society, the
>winner-take-all market. Basically this is a type of market where the
>more efficient and sophisticated it becomes, the more the lion's share
>of the profit will accrue to a small minority. One of the examples is
>acting (which seems to be like writing in a lot of ways).
Indeed, I just found a good article on the midlist phenomenon, a study
commissioned by the Author's Guild. It mainly focuses on "literary
fiction and serious nonfiction", but I would guess the results can be
extented to the SF midlist.
http://www.authorsguild.org/miscfiles/midlist.pdf
It seems to match my inference of the existence of a winner-take-all
market. Midlist authors are having just as many titles published and
are getting plenty of shelf space. Their problem is consumer
attention - with increasingly efficient campaigns to focus marketing
dollars on the better selling books, the midlist books are less and
less likely to get noticed except by people coming across that one
copy on the shelf.
steve miller
<re...@panix.com> wrotD:
>steve miller <che...@starswarmnews.com> wrote:
>> Ummm .. when Sharon and I moved in together... we had a lot of
>> duplicate science fiction. We ended up starting an SF bookshop, mostly
>> with our duplicates for initial stock.
>
> You're a lucky man. When I and my wife moved in together, we gave all
>our duplicate books to charity. Then in the divorce she took them all.
Indeed, I *am* a lucky man, despite that my first wife ended up with
the bulk of my Andre Norton collection. I got to keep the cat, the
typewriter, the stereo (I was making my living as a music and book
reviewer and sometime poet-in-the-school rather than at fiction
writing at the time), the kitchen table, my clothes, and some of the
bookcases.
Since Sharon brought with her bookcases nearly sufficient to her
books, a cat, a tyoewriter of her own, and etc, we actually made out
quite well. It helped that we started collaborating almost
instantly....
steve miller
<b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrotD:
> His sketches don't
>show it as clearly as one might like, but I'm pretty sure
>that the second curve is intended to be lower than the first
>on the lefthand end (except for the very highest-earning
>handful). In other words, the area under the long righthand
>tail has been stolen from the lefthand end of the original
>distribution. This forces the curve to drop more sharply,
>which in turn moves the intersection with the living wage
>line to the left.
I suspect another problem with the graph is it's simplistic, single
line approach.
In fact the "living wage" line is inexact, to say the least. Even with
the area under the curve sounding exact and the blue line and etc...
we're not talking mathematical exactness.
For example, we moved to Maine so that we could afford to be writers
with the income we were making at writing when we moved. We haven't
bought a new car since then -- but I know people who assume you don't
have a living wage if you can' buy a new car every three years, and go
spend a month in Greece every fifth year. The living wage line shifts
if you change the assumption to a new car every 5 years and two weeks
in Greece every sixth....
A living wage for us is different than for many others -- we're not
saving up or paying for college, cars, braces, or proms for any kids.
And etc.... Again, I know people who have to have a collection of
single malts to be complete... but that's a lifestyle choice that some
translate into a "living wage" argument and others assume is a paisley
herring.
I suspect Jane Doe is as much a troll as a warning.
Wilson Heydt
steve miller <che...@starswarmnews.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 12:11:22 -0500, "Brian M. Scott"
><b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrotD:
>
>> His sketches don't
>>show it as clearly as one might like, but I'm pretty sure
>>that the second curve is intended to be lower than the first
>>on the lefthand end (except for the very highest-earning
>>handful). In other words, the area under the long righthand
>>tail has been stolen from the lefthand end of the original
>>distribution. This forces the curve to drop more sharply,
>>which in turn moves the intersection with the living wage
>>line to the left.
>
>I suspect another problem with the graph is it's simplistic, single
>line approach.
>
>In fact the "living wage" line is inexact, to say the least. Even with
>the area under the curve sounding exact and the blue line and etc...
>we're not talking mathematical exactness.
>
>For example, we moved to Maine so that we could afford to be writers
>with the income we were making at writing when we moved. We haven't
>bought a new car since then -- but I know people who assume you don't
>have a living wage if you can' buy a new car every three years, and go
>spend a month in Greece every fifth year. The living wage line shifts
>if you change the assumption to a new car every 5 years and two weeks
>in Greece every sixth....
Hmmm.... Last *new* car was in 1982 and I've *never* been to
Greece, so I guess I don't make a 'living wage'.
--
Hal Heydt
Albany, CA
My dime, my opinions.
steve miller
<re...@panix.com> wrotD:
> Actually I was looking at it from a publishing point of view. If a
>publisher buys my story, he won't buy a story from someone who needs the
>money more.
But this is not how it works, either. The publisher may very well buy
the story from someone else as well. A lot of the quantity of what
publishers buy is not very dependent on how much the writers get, but
on publishing schedules, marketing budgets, and the price of paper.
Ask an editor at it's not unusual for the writer's part of the cost
of pubbing a book to be 20% or less of the budget.
> Unfortunately the stories in my head are screaming, 'Screw them! We
>want out!', so sympathy for my fellow authors is not reason enough to
>stop writing. ;)
No, and it shouldn't be.
J.Pascal
> On 23 Mar 2004 01:55:38 GMT, jame...@aol.com (Jim Bailey) wrotD:
>
>
> >> This is depressing.
> >
> >Eh, it's actually a career that's far above average. I've heard the number
> >bandied about that the average selling fiction author in the US makes between
> >$3000 and $4000 per year. That sounds about right.
>
> No sign in the article that we're talking fiction -- and several signs
> that we're not -- i.e. the book that got the big advance was unwritten
> whem the advance came... not at all likely for a first novelist unless
> said first novelist was a celebrity.
Heh, I noticed that, but only at a subliminal level. I was
thinking "What is this person doing during the year it takes
for a complete manuscript to hit the bookstores, if her agent
is telling her to submit *proposals* when the books hit the
bookstores?" Which, I suppose I'm still wondering, and I know
that many fiction authors only write a book *after* they have
a request for it, but still.
I do think that people *should* be able to make a living writing
books. Why not? But *choosing* to write a book that is going
to take three years of research, etc., and then expecting to make
three years worth of money? Why? Because the book is important
and the author deserves to be lauded for her service to humanity?
Bah.
If a person expects business-like successes then they need to be
approaching things in a business-like manner. Seriously, did
anyone else notice how many times the word "important" was applied
to this person's books?
What it sounded like to *me* was that Jane Austen Doe feels like
she *deserves* success because of the worthiness of what she
writes and is bitter because it just doesn't work that way.
This doesn't make me feel depressed about publishing.
I've been hanging out on the eHarlequin writing boards and
those ladies impress me with their professional attitudes. No
one is going to go on at them about their service to humanity
and few of them are ever going to be stinking rich, but it most
certainly is possible to live off the income if you've got the
talent and a workmanlike attitude.
I still think that SF might be a better bet because of the
ability to accumulate a back-list. (If that is the right term.)
And my expectations are modest. I can't write "full-time" now
and even if I'm GREAT it will take time to build a back-list
and do all that earning out stuff.
Am I supposed to feel entitled to success?
-Julie
Yoon Ha Lee
> I suspect another problem with the graph is it's simplistic, single
> line approach.
>
> In fact the "living wage" line is inexact, to say the least. Even with
> the area under the curve sounding exact and the blue line and etc...
> we're not talking mathematical exactness.
[snip]
> A living wage for us is different than for many others -- we're not
> saving up or paying for college, cars, braces, or proms for any kids.
> And etc.... Again, I know people who have to have a collection of
> single malts to be complete... but that's a lifestyle choice that some
> translate into a "living wage" argument and others assume is a paisley
> herring.
If my husband hadn't been sent out here to Washington state for his
research, and we were still in Boston, we'd be a bit screwed.
Not to mention we're still paying for *my* college tuition. I'm not
ungrateful for the loans; they made going to college possible *at all,*
and I got a husband out of it, too. When I'm consistently getting
enough sleep that I'm safe behind a wheel, I am *so* learning to drive
so I can look for a part-time job. Adjusting to writing snippets at 3
AM wasn't so hard as I thought it'd be...
--
Yoon Ha Lee
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com
Pi = 3, for small values of pi and large values of 3.
R. L.
<re...@panix.com> wrote:
/snip/
> Alternately, writing could shift into an apprentice system, where starving
>authors work under a celebrity author who gives them funds from his massive
>income and puts his name on their books until they come into their own.
That's ghosting. Patricia and Mary G. may have mentioned this
occasionally? Not that they did it, but they seemed familiar with it.
Sea Wasp recently told about collaborating with a bigger name who
supplied the basic idea and the final polish, and both names went on the
cover. Piers Anthony talked about doing this with someone, called it a
'sandwich.'
Re the self-publishing route, is that what Cory Doctorow(sp?) did with
DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM?
R.L.
--
at houseboatonthestyx
Neil Barnes
<ddfr-BD4709.1...@sea-read.news.verio.net>:
>In article <c3ptdt$ko0$2...@nntp0.reith.bbc.co.uk>,
> nailed_...@NOSPAMhotmail.com (Neil Barnes) wrote:
>
>> Stuck in Miami twice as long as planned. Running out of books. Must
>> not go to Borders... must walk past... must walk... ah damnit!
>
>You have an internet connection. How can you run out of books when all
>of Gutenberg is available for the asking?
>
Strange you should mention.
I only have the internet connection while I'm at what is laughingly refered
to as 'work' (spelled 'manana' as far as I can tell) but being a cunning
chap I have the couple of hundred first choice books from Gutenberg on my
laptop.
But that's not a very nice reading platform; an evening task is the
development of a attribute+text editor when I have the enthusiasm, to pre-
format for dropbook for Palm.
That has a further snag, though, in that when I changed the laptop a couple
of months ago, the IR link to the PDA died and although the system seems to
work I get a cryptic 'IR failure - refer to...' pointing to a help file with
no relevant information. And my USB cable is in London. And I was unable to
locate my original installation disk to try a reload... annoying.
Don't suppose anyone has the CD that comes with a Sony Clie PEG-SJ20 that I
might borrow?
Neil
Alma Hromic Deckert
wrote:
bought a car when we moved to washington, which was last year - but
the last time i was in greece i was still not quite a teenager, so i
guess i have failed miserably on that front. but, um, just to screw up
the statistcs totally, the car (which was a 2002 model, purchased in
March 2003, so although not "new" was still under warrantee) was
bought for cash, and the cash came from my book sale. teh same
booksale also helped purchase my house, which is mortgage free and
held in clear title.
but then, this book is a small miracle and isn't likely to occur every
year. or even every sixth year, probably. (but it might still take me
to greece, if i look after the pennies...)
A.
Zeborah
> On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:09:31 -0800, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
>
> > Maybe someday in several decades, I will never have to move again.
> > *Hate* culling books.
>
> Yes. I've only got 500, because I keep moving. I still have 100 or so at my
> parents' house.
I've only got 127 books listed on my database -- that's English fiction
paperback. And I've bought/acquired another 32 since I last updated the
database a couple months ago. (Being at home, with used bookstores, and
library booksales, and friends giving books away -- instead of in Korea,
with only two small used bookstores a good hour and a half away, and the
knowledge that I've somehow got to get these home again -- is bad for my
budget and shelves.) And then there's probably another 60 French
fiction; about 40 magazines; 20 fiction hardback; 7 Bibles in various
versions and languages; maybe 120 non-fiction; 15 reference on my desk.
That's about 420-odd books, and I've been a poor indigent student for
most of my life, and out of the country for most of the rest of my life.
I Iate to think what's going to happen to my bookshop when I actually
get settled in a house with a job.
> I'm considering selling all my physics texts, which would shrink the
> collecction by a few dozen.
I've just joined BookCrossing.com, and plan to release some of the books
which were nice to read once but won't ever get read again.
Zeborah
Zeborah
> You have an internet connection. How can you run out of books when all
> of Gutenberg is available for the asking?
I must ask my father if we've got enough bandwidth available to easily
download their DVD image.
Zeborah
Ian Montgomerie
> The real solution would be to form that cartel and set payments to authors
> at a more equitable scale. If J.K.Rowling recieved just one million dollars
> less, that could be used to give 100 new writers a $10,000 advance, or give
> 20 midlist writers a comfortable $50,000 lifestyle.
That's a "real solution"? I don't see how a stable cartel (really
you're talking about a writers' union) could be formed based on such
an idea. What makes people deal with the cartel, makes successful
writers join/stay in the cartel, etc?
Even if you had the government redistribute royalty payments among
authors along some kind of sliding scale (fat chance to ever get that
implemented), the result would be a slew of new economic incentives
that probably would have way more effect that just redistributing
royalty income among authors.
For one thing, you would make it a lot more financially attractive to
be a midlist author, without making it financially more attractive to
_publish_ a midlist author. This would probably lead to a greatly
increased competition to be published, putting each individual midlist
author at a disadvantage in hard-to-predict ways. Maybe such a
hypothetical regulation would have more good than bad effects, I don't
know. But it probably wouldn't have simple and entirely predictable
effects.
Ian Montgomerie
> The real problem, if it is a problem, is the same as for any other field
> where people are doing something that many of them very much want to
> do--acting, say, or music. There are enough reasonably good people
> willing to work for not very much money so that the consumers of what
> they are producing don't have to pay very much to get reasonably good
> people to produce it. So only the people who are extraordinarily good or
> extraordinarily lucky end up doing well, financially speaking.
I am at a loss to how you think willingness to write explains the
recent changing distribution of income among writers (a shift of
income toward the top end and especially the bestsellers, away from
the midlist). People have always enjoyed writing, acting, and playing
music. It seems unlikely that there has been some radical change in
the distribution of that enjoyment over the past few decades - but in
all these industries there has been a radical change in the
distribution of income. Always fairly inequitable, it has recently
gotten much more so.
When you look at the issues, it turns out to be determined by changes
in _sales_ rather than by changes in _royalties_. Authors, for
example, make similar royalties now to what they have in the past.
But the actual _sales_ of books have changed, with bestsellers now
grabbing a much bigger chunk of the market than they once did.
(Movies and music see similar trends - the biggest concerts and CDs
and the blockbusters with big name actors grab an increasing share of
revenue). The serious observers that I've read on the issues all
point to improving technology and sophistication. Basically, as
production and distribution costs diminish and marketing becomes more
sophisticated, successful mass marketing has more and more power over
how much money something makes. The small number of works that reach
the top become bigger and bigger moneymakers, and it makes financial
sense to focus more and more marketing resources toward the bigger
moneymakers.
One example of increasing sophistication is the relatively new
phenomena of charging publishers for favorable placement of books.
Chain stores have become big and standardized enough that it has now
become feasible for them to offer deals where they will promote books
for a certain amount of money. When the market was mostly
independents, such deals could not be economically negotiated because
of the cost of dealing with so many different shops. This means
bookshops mostly promoted whichever books they saw fit. With the
chains, the promotions have been changed into a product which can be
practically sold to publishers. Publishers quickly discovered that it
is only economical for them to pay for that product for the books that
are likely to become top sellers. This "increased marketization" of
book promotions helped shift from the older arrangement where
bookshops promoted whatever they felt like, to a new environment where
promotions are focused much more narrowly on the books for which the
promotion will cause the most reliable increase in sales.
Jim Bailey
>Actually, Jim is claiming that it is. His sketches don't
>show it as clearly as one might like, but I'm pretty sure
>that the second curve is intended to be lower than the first
>on the lefthand end (except for the very highest-earning
>handful). In other words, the area under the long righthand
>tail has been stolen from the lefthand end of the original
>distribution. This forces the curve to drop more sharply,
>which in turn moves the intersection with the living wage
>line to the left. You could in fact keep the intersection
>where it is (or even move it to the right) while extending
>the tail of the distribution -- you could even do it while
>maintaining the earnings of the very top end -- but I
>suspect that this isn't the natural outcome.
Right, I'm going on gut instinct that what I described is what's happening.
It's probably closer to the truth that the curve is being pulled at from both
ends (the theory described in other posts about the concentration of sales and
promotion at the top end PLUS the addition of more writers as publishers churn
new names in the hope of striking it big).
So while more writers are getting "a shot", those who are getting it these days
are given a much smaller clip of ammunition in which to learn to hit the
target. I think that's an important thing to realize when putting on the
business hat of being a writer.
Best,
Jim Bailey
--
Elysian Fiction (Fantasy short story e-zine)
http://www.elysianfiction.com/
Jim Bailey
That sounds very interesting, and seems like it supports part of my theory.
You do see this in a lot of "entertainment" fields -- movies, books, sports,
music.
Music is where I'd be scared to be trying to enter the top of the market, since
the manipulation of the system and artists is *extremely* evolved now. Just as
an example, you could win the American Idol contest and be assured of
multi-million selling albums, but to get that chance, you've already signed
over your entire career to the producers *forever*.
There was an article in Billboard 5 years ago about how record companies were
going to start generating pop phenoms *specifically* because they didn't like
how the big artists like U2, Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, etc. had so much clout
when negotiating their contracts -- the profit margin was "below expectations".
They don't *care* that Britney Spears will be washed up within a couple of
years because that means she'll never reach the same point of power to dictate
terms. They'll just make another to replace her.
The other side of that was that they were dropping the kinds of bands that
would otherwise take 5 albums and a half-dozen years of touring to hone their
craft so that they could *be* the next big hit. Part of the problem from the
record company's perspective was that these kinds of acts reached a point where
they didn't *need* the full support structure to keep them going. The latest
pop prince/princess is *nothing* without the benefit of the record company
buying the songs, hiring the producer, creating a "look" etc.
This may sound off topic, but I think that if you're interested in seeing
*potential* trends and dangers in the publishing business, take a look at the
music business because they are masters at making the talent jump through their
hoops to get the job.
A semi-recent example (that thankfully didn't work) was when Penguin-Putnam
joined forces with Universal Music Group to introduce Inside Sessions, a
pay-to-submit service disguised as lessons for aspiring writers/artists. The
music side of this is still going strong because there's a whole ingrained
culture of "pay to play" in music. Fortunately, writers (at least those good
enough to actually be accepted) seemed to stay away enough for Penguin to drop
the program as too much hassle, even if it did generate income from desperate
newbies.
I'm still very disappointed that some of the very biggest names in writing
signed on to support this screw-the-newbie attempt, including Tom Clancy, Nora
Roberts, Nick Hornby, Kurt Vonnegut, Amy Tan.... But hey, they got theirs, why
should they care?
Jim Bailey
>On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 12:11:22 -0500, "Brian M. Scott"
><b.s...@csuohio.edu> wrotD:
>
>> His sketches don't
>>show it as clearly as one might like, but I'm pretty sure
>>that the second curve is intended to be lower than the first
>>on the lefthand end (except for the very highest-earning
>>handful). In other words, the area under the long righthand
>>tail has been stolen from the lefthand end of the original
>>distribution. This forces the curve to drop more sharply,
>>which in turn moves the intersection with the living wage
>>line to the left.
>
>I suspect another problem with the graph is it's simplistic, single
>line approach.
>
>In fact the "living wage" line is inexact, to say the least. Even with
>the area under the curve sounding exact and the blue line and etc...
>we're not talking mathematical exactness.
Very definitely, and if I hadn't made that clear in my post or graph, I should
have. It's mostly to illustrate that as an overall phenomenon, giving more
writers an opportunity (which combined with a very likely concentration at the
top in addition), will *naturally* lead to a midlist "crisis" because while the
market is growing at a pretty steady rate over the years, it isn't growing
enough to fully compensate for the pull from the left and the right.
>For example, we moved to Maine so that we could afford to be writers
>with the income we were making at writing when we moved. We haven't
>bought a new car since then -- but I know people who assume you don't
>have a living wage if you can' buy a new car every three years, and go
>spend a month in Greece every fifth year. The living wage line shifts
>if you change the assumption to a new car every 5 years and two weeks
>in Greece every sixth....
And that's something somebody looking for a *career* in this field needs to
take a very hard look at before quitting their day job. Another solution is to
do what Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch do, which is to write a
LOT of books each year under a variety of names. Between them individually and
as co-authors, and in any genre they can work in, they easily sell a dozen
books a year, and selling and writing that many on his own is a goal that Dean
has stated is his ideal (I don't think he's *quite* done it yet, but has come
pretty close).
There are a lot of strategies for making it, and we each have to go with what
we're comfortable with, but it does pay to think ahead.
Jim Bailey
>In article <c3pnoi$sun$1...@reader1.panix.com>,
> Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> The real solution would be to form that cartel and set payments
>> to authors at a more equitable scale. If J.K.Rowling recieved just
>> one million dollars less, that could be used to give 100 new writers
>> a $10,000 advance, or give 20 midlist writers a comfortable $50,000
>> lifestyle.
>
>It's hard to maintain a cartel if you can't close entry. If Rowling's
>publisher decides to divert some of the income from her books to
>subsidizing less popular authors, she can always go to a different
>publisher. If all the publishers somehow got together and agreed to
>divert income from the most successful authors to the less successful,
>someone who started a new publishing firm without that policy could
>attract a lot of top authors and make a lot of money.
Damn that free enterprise system! ;-)
>The real problem, if it is a problem, is the same as for any other field
>where people are doing something that many of them very much want to
>do--acting, say, or music. There are enough reasonably good people
>willing to work for not very much money so that the consumers of what
>they are producing don't have to pay very much to get reasonably good
>people to produce it. So only the people who are extraordinarily good or
>extraordinarily lucky end up doing well, financially speaking.
>
>Before describing that as unfair, it's worth looking at the other side
>of it. The struggling actor, or musician, or writer isn't making very
>much money. But he is spending his time doing what he very much
>wants to do--unlike the shoe store clerk who is probably making
>more than the average for any of those professions, but is doing it
>in a considerably less satisfying way.
I always find it interesting how just understanding that good old supply/demand
curve thing helps to see how things like this work.
As an aggregate, books pretty much work like any other commodity. There's a
general demand, and enough willing suppliers at a price to fill it, and *who*
writes the books and what they're about doesn't much matter on the macro scale.
However, on the micro scale, you have economies of scale to factor in among a
million other detailed reasons behind how the publishing industry works, and it
tends to really really *need* those top-end authors who outsell most other
books by orders of magnitude.
As an example I gave in my first post, the vanity POD publishing industry has
spent hundreds of millions of dollars now, trying to convince tens of thousands
of authors to publish 100,000 books or more, but the resultant *combined* sales
are less than a typical Tom Clancy book. So if you had a choice, would you
want to have to herd all of those authors and manuscripts through the process,
or just write one big fat check to Mr. Clancy, and have one editor, one
copyeditor, one advertising budget... (Naturally, this ignores the fact that
vanity publishers are NOT in the business of actually selling books, but in
selling the illusion of authorhood, so this is an apples and turtles
comparison, but it sounds good ;-) )
But this means that authors "good enough" or "lucky enough" are in demand
because publishers know they can make money off of them, even with "obscene"
advances. And in truth, since the range of royalties isn't *that* great
between newbies and Big Names (at most a single order of magnitude, say 2% vs.
20%), their earnings are backed almost completely by their actual sales.
I find all of this fascinating and encouraging, though, not frightening.
J.Pascal
> Anyone interested in what fundamentally underlies the
> declining-midlist phenomenon should read Robert Frank's "The
> Winner-Take-All Society" (or the section based on that book in his
> excellent "Luxury Fever").
>
> These are popularized economics books which don't deal with writing
> specifically, but do deal in general with something that is becoming
> increasingly relevant in the modern information society, the
> winner-take-all market. Basically this is a type of market where the
> more efficient and sophisticated it becomes, the more the lion's share
> of the profit will accrue to a small minority. One of the examples is
> acting (which seems to be like writing in a lot of ways).
But... Rowling profits in a direct relationship to how much
people are willing to pay for movies, books, action-figures...
The people working in factories making that stuff may be
getting taken but it has *nothing* to do with other
*authors* getting a bum deal. The "big buck" authors
are not making a joint effort with all of the rest of us
and then taking our share.
> A crucial point Frank makes about these kinds of markets is that if
> the majority of participants have trouble making ends meet, that's not
> a sign that big publishers or movie houses or whatever are
> deliberately screwing the little guy. They probably are screwing the
> little guy - their market power certainly gives them the ability - but
> basically, the advancement of technology and increasing business
> sophistication move the entertainment information market more toward
> its "natural" state where a small number of megastars/megablockbusters
> get most of the money, and most participants get very little money.
I imagined a new society build by stranded space-farers where the
founding members decide to make a strict law to prohibit *any*
electronic, radio, television, distribution of art, music or drama.
This would keep all the little guys in business... all the local
entertainers... all the small scale productions. Live music for
every dance! But it also would mean that no one could afford to but
the funds into anything that was more than middling-amateur because
it would be too difficult to get a return on that investment.
-Julie
Julian Flood
"Wilson Heydt" wrote
>
> I've *never* been to
> Greece, so I guess I don't make a 'living wage'.
Bombed it once. Does that count?
JF
Officially Interesting Person
David Friedman
ianN...@ianmontgomerie.com (Ian Montgomerie) wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nospam.com> wrote in message
> news:<ddfr-17190E.0...@sea-read.news.verio.net>...
>
> > The real problem, if it is a problem, is the same as for any other field
> > where people are doing something that many of them very much want to
> > do--acting, say, or music. There are enough reasonably good people
> > willing to work for not very much money so that the consumers of what
> > they are producing don't have to pay very much to get reasonably good
> > people to produce it. So only the people who are extraordinarily good or
> > extraordinarily lucky end up doing well, financially speaking.
>
> I am at a loss to how you think willingness to write explains the
> recent changing distribution of income among writers (a shift of
> income toward the top end and especially the bestsellers, away from
> the midlist).
I don't. I was describing a situation that I assume has existed for a
long time, not the changes in the details that may have happened
recently.
Ian Montgomerie
>There was an article in Billboard 5 years ago about how record companies were
>going to start generating pop phenoms *specifically* because they didn't like
>how the big artists like U2, Aerosmith, Rolling Stones, etc. had so much clout
>when negotiating their contracts -- the profit margin was "below expectations".
> They don't *care* that Britney Spears will be washed up within a couple of
>years because that means she'll never reach the same point of power to dictate
>terms. They'll just make another to replace her.
>
>The other side of that was that they were dropping the kinds of bands that
>would otherwise take 5 albums and a half-dozen years of touring to hone their
>craft so that they could *be* the next big hit. Part of the problem from the
>record company's perspective was that these kinds of acts reached a point where
>they didn't *need* the full support structure to keep them going. The latest
>pop prince/princess is *nothing* without the benefit of the record company
>buying the songs, hiring the producer, creating a "look" etc.
>
>This may sound off topic, but I think that if you're interested in seeing
>*potential* trends and dangers in the publishing business, take a look at the
>music business because they are masters at making the talent jump through their
>hoops to get the job.
I don't think books are quite so vulnerable to authors being "created"
by publishing companies, though. The premise underlying the
manufactured pop stars is that you can have somebody else write their
songs - so all you need is an attractive person with a good singing
voice, and lots of marketing cash. The company has the marketing cash
and hires the songwriters, and the supply of attractive people with
good singing voices is really very large when you're willing to look
hard enough for it.
However, they can't really apply this so well to genres outside of
pop, where a big part of the musician's talent is actually creating an
original musical sound combining vocals and instruments and so forth.
I don't think the book business will come closer than the media
tie-ins already are. That's a market right there where the authors
are working on the publisher's playground. Tie-ins as a group do sell
a decent chunk of books as far as SF goes, but they're in no danger of
dominating the bestseller lists. And even in the tie-in market you
find that some of the better authors are able to become much more
popular than others, and thus aren't really "disposable" to the
publisher.
Ian Montgomerie
>Ian Montgomerie <ianN...@ianmontgomerie.com> wrote in message news:<qku060hcrdrflcavf...@4ax.com>...
>> Anyone interested in what fundamentally underlies the
>> declining-midlist phenomenon should read Robert Frank's "The
>> Winner-Take-All Society" (or the section based on that book in his
>> excellent "Luxury Fever").
>>
>> These are popularized economics books which don't deal with writing
>> specifically, but do deal in general with something that is becoming
>> increasingly relevant in the modern information society, the
>> winner-take-all market. Basically this is a type of market where the
>> more efficient and sophisticated it becomes, the more the lion's share
>> of the profit will accrue to a small minority. One of the examples is
>> acting (which seems to be like writing in a lot of ways).
>
>But... Rowling profits in a direct relationship to how much
>people are willing to pay for movies, books, action-figures...
>The people working in factories making that stuff may be
>getting taken but it has *nothing* to do with other
>*authors* getting a bum deal. The "big buck" authors
>are not making a joint effort with all of the rest of us
>and then taking our share.
Excuse me? When you look at things in the big picture, people buy a
pretty stable number of books. This means that when a bestselling
author increases their sales, it generally _is_ at the expense of
other authors. Your typical novel buyer is more often going to be
looking for a book to read, rather than "it's Steven King or nothing".
Steven King or J.K.Rowling or whatever sell X books, but if they had
never written those books it doesn't mean that the total number of
books sold would be X less.
This means that as bestsellers are marketed more effectively, the
portion of books sold skews toward bestsellers. This certainly does
come at the expense of non-bestselling authors (non-star actors,
non-big-name musicians, etc. according to industry). It's a very well
known phenomenon and applies across many entertainment-oriented
industries.
So actually, when the J.K. Rowlings and the Steven Kings and the Tom
Clancys of the world sell more books, it does usually mean that other
authors will sell less. When a bestseller exploits a new market
(Harry Potter seems to have encouraged some people to read it who
otherwise might not have been reading anything else instead) it is not
fully competing with others, but most bestsellers don't exploit new
markets. Tom Clancy competes with other technothriller authors,
Steven King with other horror authors, Rowling does compete in part
for the sales of other YA and fantasy authors, and so on.
David Friedman
A very long time ago I met someone who had decided that the solution to
the problem being discussed here was to first make a million dollars,
and then write his novel.
When I met him he was well past his million. But he hadn't yet written
his novel.
David Chapman
> On 24 Mar 2004 02:00:31 GMT, jame...@aol.com (Jim Bailey) wrote:
>> This may sound off topic, but I think that if you're interested in seeing
>> *potential* trends and dangers in the publishing business, take a look
>> at the music business because they are masters at making the talent jump
>> through their hoops to get the job.
>
> I don't think books are quite so vulnerable to authors being "created"
> by publishing companies, though. The premise underlying the
> manufactured pop stars is that you can have somebody else write their
> songs
Two words: ghost writer.
> - so all you need is an attractive person with a good singing
> voice, and lots of marketing cash.
You give them too much credit. Manufactured pop stars are selected on the
twin bases of looks and tractability, nothing else. The reason all modern
pop acts sound alike is because they have to be massively overproduced to
get them into tune, which is why most of them mime on stage. (A telling
case was Avril Lavigne, who a little while back decided she was going to be
like a real musician and do an acoustic version of Sk8er Boi instead of
miming and in the process revealed to the world a total lack of singing
ability.)
As a matter of fact, I suspect the studios actively prefer acts with no
talent. When your career is tied completely to the studio, it's that much
harder to break away *and* the studio don't have to worry about a comeback
from last year's star act drawing sales away from their new udder.
--
Isn't the universe an amazing place? I wouldn't
live anywhere else.
David Chapman
> Excuse me? When you look at things in the big picture, people buy a
> pretty stable number of books. This means that when a bestselling
> author increases their sales, it generally _is_ at the expense of
> other authors. Your typical novel buyer is more often going to be
> looking for a book to read, rather than "it's Steven King or nothing".
> Steven King or J.K.Rowling or whatever sell X books, but if they had
> never written those books it doesn't mean that the total number of
> books sold would be X less.
In the case of King, maybe. Rowling's books, OTOH, are frequently cited as
being bought by people who don't normally buy books.
Zeborah
> "Wilson Heydt" wrote
>
> > I've *never* been to
> > Greece, so I guess I don't make a 'living wage'.
>
> Bombed it once. Does that count?
That could be a wonderful conversation stopper, in the right company.
Zeborah
Charlie Stross
as <che...@starswarmnews.com> declared:
> On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 22:52:02 +0000 (UTC), "Lady of Shallott"
><ladyofsh...@btinternet.com> wrotD:
>
>>I suffer from the same "accidents" only mine usually occur in bookshops such
>>as Waterstones. The sales assistant's eyes light up when I enter the shop
>>because they know I'm going to walk out with a dozen books or more, even
>>though I swore I would only buy one particular book this time!
>>
>>I too have a mid four digit collection of books which have been relegated to
>>the loft as my house was looking more like the public library than a home.
>
> Ummm .. when Sharon and I moved in together... we had a lot of
> duplicate science fiction. We ended up starting an SF bookshop, mostly
> with our duplicates for initial stock.
When Feorag and I moved in together we discovered, to our horror, that
our book collections contained two duplicate titles -- we both had a
copy of the same two novels by Douglas Adams.
Given that we both had >1000 books at that point, our intersection was
somewhere around the 0.1% mark. I'd argue that this is *worse* than
having to sell off the duplicates. I'm now seriously thinking we'll have
to move somewhere larger in the next couple of years if the current rate
of growth (>200 titles/year) continues.
-- Charlie
Charlie Stross
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:14:10 +0000 (UTC), Remus Shepherd
><re...@panix.com> wrote:
>
> /snip/
>
>> Alternately, writing could shift into an apprentice system, where starving
>>authors work under a celebrity author who gives them funds from his massive
>>income and puts his name on their books until they come into their own.
>
> That's ghosting. Patricia and Mary G. may have mentioned this
> occasionally? Not that they did it, but they seemed familiar with it.
No, that's not ghost-writing, that's sharecropping. Ghost writing is
when a celeb who *can't* write hires a writer to produce a book as work
for hire which then goes out under the celeb's name. Naming no names, a
famous Star Trek captain springs to mind ...
> Sea Wasp recently told about collaborating with a bigger name who
> supplied the basic idea and the final polish, and both names went on the
> cover. Piers Anthony talked about doing this with someone, called it a
> 'sandwich.'
It's quite common. Baen in particular seem to have been turning into a
factory for doing this in the mil-SF field lately. They've been keeping
good authors like Eric Flint so busy churning out outlines for new guys
and working on sharecrop projects for more famous authors that ... no,
let's not go there.
> Re the self-publishing route, is that what Cory Doctorow(sp?) did with
> DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM?
No he did not.
DOWN AND OUT was published by Tor. Cory prevailed upon Tor to accept the
risk of releasing the e-text of the book under a Creative Commons
license, in return for a smaller-than-usual advance. (The experiment
worked: the downloadable e-text version seems to have increased sales
of the dead-tree edition, and Cory has several other novels on the way.)
You might be thinking of John Scalzi, who originally sold his novels as
shareware via his weblog, before they were acquired by Tor. But this is
an extremely unusual route into the mainstream of the publishing
industry.
-- Charlie
Irina Rempt
wrote:
> When Feorag and I moved in together we discovered, to our horror, that
> our book collections contained two duplicate titles -- we both had a
> copy of the same two novels by Douglas Adams.
With us, it was that, the Bible, and several editions (each) of The
Hobbit and LoTR. And, surprisingly because it's rather rare. _The
Silver Eggheads_.
And we *do* have overlapping tastes. It's just that the books we
actually owned happened to be mostly outside the overlap.
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 23-Mar-2004
Manny Olds
> That sounds very interesting, and seems like it supports part of my theory.
> You do see this in a lot of "entertainment" fields -- movies, books, sports,
> music.
Very much so in baseball. Why has minor league, semi-pro, and women's
baseball foundered so hard in the USA? A quote from an article on the
subject sticks with me: "Why would someone want to schlep out to watch
mediocre baseball when they can stay home and watch the best in the
world?"
On the other hand, the movie industry is seeing a big change from DVDs.
I just read an article yesterday about how a movie that dies in the
theatres can now make a lot of money from DVD sales. I've also read that
Netflix has people who identify oddball, offbeat, unlikely, artistic,
cult-type movies. They can order a few copies and put them out where
people can see them--a lot of those moview take off in rentals and start
word of mouth, for example.
It seems like there ought to be a way to get book distribution more like
movies on DVD than like baseball in the stadium. I think that the
obstacle is that it is so much cheaper to make a bad book than to make a
bad movie that filtering is more of a problem; the current distribution
system has some filtering built in.
Thinking about this more...I like the Netflix model. I don't know why I am
not as comfortable with the similar Amazon system. I suspect it is
because every time I look there, they make recommendations that are
obviously based on what they have been paid to promote. Maybe the answer
is a flat-rate subscription service, maybe the answer is borrowing instead
of buying.
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
"Six times during the past year, a 13-year-old has been charged with
stealing cars, at times leading police on chases. ... 'This could be a cry
for help,' [Said the prosecutor.] 'On the other hand, he could just be a
car thief.' " -- AP news story (28 Nov 2000)
Charlie Stross
> At a slight tangent ... .
>
> A very long time ago I met someone who had decided that the solution to
> the problem being discussed here was to first make a million dollars,
> and then write his novel.
>
> When I met him he was well past his million. But he hadn't yet written
> his novel.
I used to think that too. I suspect it added a decade on to the time it
took me to sell my first book. Haven't made the million, either, but I
re-shuffled my priorities a while ago and now I'm a bit happier.
-- Charlie
Manny Olds
> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:14:10 +0000 (UTC), Remus Shepherd
> <re...@panix.com> wrote:
> /snip/
>> Alternately, writing could shift into an apprentice system, where starving
>>authors work under a celebrity author who gives them funds from his massive
>>income and puts his name on their books until they come into their own.
> That's ghosting. Patricia and Mary G. may have mentioned this
> occasionally? Not that they did it, but they seemed familiar with it.
> Sea Wasp recently told about collaborating with a bigger name who
> supplied the basic idea and the final polish, and both names went on the
> cover. Piers Anthony talked about doing this with someone, called it a
> 'sandwich.'
This is sort of an Atelier system, isn't it?
--
Manny Olds (old...@pobox.com) of Riverdale Park, Maryland, USA
Difficult? Me? Nah.
Neil Barnes
@news7.svr.pol.co.uk>:
>
>"Wilson Heydt" wrote
>
>>
>> I've *never* been to
>> Greece, so I guess I don't make a 'living wage'.
>
>Bombed it once. Does that count?
What, all of it? Or just a small part? Enquiring minds want to know!
Neil (who's been here and there in Greece and saw more damage from
earthquake than bombs)
Neil Barnes
<1983719.5...@calcifer.valdyas.org>:
>On Wednesday 24 March 2004 13:00 Charlie Stross (cha...@antipope.org)
>wrote:
>
>> When Feorag and I moved in together we discovered, to our horror, that
>> our book collections contained two duplicate titles -- we both had a
>> copy of the same two novels by Douglas Adams.
>
>With us, it was that, the Bible, and several editions (each) of The
>Hobbit and LoTR. And, surprisingly because it's rather rare. _The
>Silver Eggheads_.
No religious books, but one edition of LotR and TSE :)
Eric Jarvis
> Jim Bailey <jame...@aol.com> wrote:
> > That sounds very interesting, and seems like it supports part of my theory.
> > You do see this in a lot of "entertainment" fields -- movies, books, sports,
> > music.
>
> Very much so in baseball. Why has minor league, semi-pro, and women's
> baseball foundered so hard in the USA? A quote from an article on the
> subject sticks with me: "Why would someone want to schlep out to watch
> mediocre baseball when they can stay home and watch the best in the
> world?"
>
That's not inevitable. It's a media generated attitude. You get just as
much excitement watching ANY game, and unless you really know the sport
inside out you may well not actually be able to tell the difference most
of the time. The batter may not be as good in the minor league, but nor is
the pitcher. The home run hit looks just the same. Throw in some real
identification with ones home town team, and it's more fun than watching
the big game on TV. It's the same game, it has pretty much the same rules.
I've got a friend who has a private box at Stamford Bridge (the home
ground of Chelsea, currently one of the top soccer teams in Europe), to
his amazement I've several times rejected the chance to go there for free
in order to pay for myself to stand on the terraces and watch Scunthorpe
United play at somewhere like Barnet or Gillingham. Scunthorpe United are
probably not in most people's lists of the top 500 teams in Europe. Barnet
appear to play in a converted lean to, and Gillingham play on what usually
looks like an abandoned building site. However, they are MY TEAM. The club
captain is from San Sebastian in the Basque country, he's been at the club
8 years, and when he's injured he doesn't sit in the dug out for away
games...he and his wife come and sit with the fans. Three of the current
first team squad were brought up in the town.
The problem isn't a lack of excitement or enjoyment from the lower levels
of a sport. The problem is the cult of celebrity that we allow ourselves
to be sold. We value watching celebrities do something at a distance over
watching people who share aspects of our lives doing something right in
front of our eyes. We'd rather watch rehashed TV footage of a year old
Eminem concert than go to the local venue and hear a band that will be
famous next year. We're scared of doing anything that hasn't got the TV
pundit's seal of approval for fear of the ridicule of our peers for
enjoying the "wrong thing". Because being on TV is now the mark of true
reality and what we actually experience has no value if it can't be
related to something that has been on television.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
all these years I've waited for the revolution
and all we end up getting is spin
James Nicoll
Ian Montgomerie <ianN...@ianmontgomerie.com> wrote:
>
>So actually, when the J.K. Rowlings and the Steven Kings and the Tom
>Clancys of the world sell more books, it does usually mean that other
>authors will sell less. When a bestseller exploits a new market
>(Harry Potter seems to have encouraged some people to read it who
>otherwise might not have been reading anything else instead) it is not
>fully competing with others, but most bestsellers don't exploit new
>markets. Tom Clancy competes with other technothriller authors,
>Steven King with other horror authors, Rowling does compete in part
>for the sales of other YA and fantasy authors, and so on.
Rowling helped a lot of Young Adult writers by reminding
publishers and booksellers that there is a viable YA market to cater
to. Any of the YA authors here care to comment?
And King? Without King's steadfast support of the horror genre,
would it still be as viable a marketing niche as it is (admittedly, not
very) or would it have been subsumed into some other genre or indeed
allowed to be annexed by the movie industry entirely?
--
"Thousands of people will be exposed to Shakespeare who normally wouldn't. Now
everyone will be able to enjoy 'Hamlet'. That's the way it should be." "But
don't you see? Don't you understand what you are doing?" "Oh, yeah. I'm
destroying Shakespeare's snob appeal." "You _fiend_." [Lenny and Cowboy Wally]
Nicola Browne
news:c3sd0t$a8m$1...@panix2.panix.com
> Rowling helped a lot of Young Adult writers by reminding
> publishers and booksellers that there is a viable YA market to cater
> to. Any of the YA authors here care to comment?
>
She has improved the profile and, I suppose, made it more acceptable
for adults to read YA or children's books. ( her target market is 8-12
so she isn't really YA)I don't think she has increased the market,
however, as some kids do only buy HP - that at least is the word on the
street.
I think the issue of whether the YA market actually exists let alone is
viable is quite an interesting one, but I don't think it has anything
to do with HP (Though HP may account for the recent flurry of YA Fantasy
novels by non genre writers.)
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Ian Montgomerie
<jedit_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Ian Montgomerie wrote:
>> On 24 Mar 2004 02:00:31 GMT, jame...@aol.com (Jim Bailey) wrote:
>
>>> This may sound off topic, but I think that if you're interested in seeing
>>> *potential* trends and dangers in the publishing business, take a look
>>> at the music business because they are masters at making the talent jump
>>> through their hoops to get the job.
>>
>> I don't think books are quite so vulnerable to authors being "created"
>> by publishing companies, though. The premise underlying the
>> manufactured pop stars is that you can have somebody else write their
>> songs
>
>Two words: ghost writer.
What's the similarity?
The premise of manufactured pop stars is that the "star" is a person
who looks good and has a good signing voice, and they don't need
musical originality if someone else can do it. Writing isn't really
split between image and content creation. Ghostwriting uses a
_pre-existing_ celebrity name, and the celebrity gets a cut. Those
celebrity names aren't created or owned by the publishing houses. I
don't see how ghost writing is suddenly going to take over the
industry.
James Nicoll
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
>Stoned koala bears drooled eucalyptus spittle in awe
>as <see...@sssssssssssssssnospams.coms> declared:
>
>> On Tue, 23 Mar 2004 16:14:10 +0000 (UTC), Remus Shepherd
>><re...@panix.com> wrote:
>>
>> /snip/
>>
>> supplied the basic idea and the final polish, and both names went on the
>> cover. Piers Anthony talked about doing this with someone, called it a
>> 'sandwich.'
>
>It's quite common. Baen in particular seem to have been turning into a
>factory for doing this in the mil-SF field lately. They've been keeping
>good authors like Eric Flint so busy churning out outlines for new guys
>and working on sharecrop projects for more famous authors that ... no,
>let's not go there.
But it helps keep the house style at Baen constant from author to
author, which some readers like.
>> Re the self-publishing route, is that what Cory Doctorow(sp?) did with
>> DOWN AND OUT IN THE MAGIC KINGDOM?
>
>No he did not.
>
>DOWN AND OUT was published by Tor. Cory prevailed upon Tor to accept the
>risk of releasing the e-text of the book under a Creative Commons
>license, in return for a smaller-than-usual advance. (The experiment
>worked: the downloadable e-text version seems to have increased sales
>of the dead-tree edition, and Cory has several other novels on the way.)
>
Jim Munro did one book with HarperFlamingo, then decided for
ideological reasons to publish his books himself. He did well enough
to have gotten two books out under the NoMediaKings imprint (_Angry
Young Spaceman_ and _Everyone in Silico_, which is sort of a Greg Egan
book written from the point of view of a flesher).
I think Geoff Ryman's _253_ started off as a website and then
moved to paper.
In Other Media, Dave Sim successfully completed the 300 issue
run of _Cerebus the Aardvark_, a project that took something over a
quarter of a century, a period that covered a number of significant
changes in the comics industry and in Sim himself.
Weird how all these are Canadians, for values of Canadian that
include "hasn't lived in Canada since before Mary Pickford died."
Eric Jarvis
>
> I think Geoff Ryman's _253_ started off as a website and then
> moved to paper.
>
It did. Highly recommended by the way, even for people like me who
actually live by the Elephant and Castle.
--
eric
www.ericjarvis.co.uk
"live fast, die only if strictly necessary"
Dan Goodman
@antipope.org:
> It's quite common. Baen in particular seem to have been turning into a
> factory for doing this in the mil-SF field lately. They've been keeping
> good authors like Eric Flint so busy churning out outlines for new guys
> and working on sharecrop projects for more famous authors that ... no,
> let's not go there.
>
I understand that Jim Baen thinks highly of collaborations (not just
sharecropping, but also collaborations between writers at roughly the same
level), and has been known to push writers to collaborate.
--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://dsgood.blogspot.com or
http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Ian Montgomerie
wrote:
>Jim Bailey <jame...@aol.com> wrote:
>> That sounds very interesting, and seems like it supports part of my theory.
>> You do see this in a lot of "entertainment" fields -- movies, books, sports,
>> music.
>
>Very much so in baseball. Why has minor league, semi-pro, and women's
>baseball foundered so hard in the USA? A quote from an article on the
>subject sticks with me: "Why would someone want to schlep out to watch
>mediocre baseball when they can stay home and watch the best in the
>world?"
>
>On the other hand, the movie industry is seeing a big change from DVDs.
>I just read an article yesterday about how a movie that dies in the
>theatres can now make a lot of money from DVD sales. I've also read that
>Netflix has people who identify oddball, offbeat, unlikely, artistic,
>cult-type movies. They can order a few copies and put them out where
>people can see them--a lot of those moview take off in rentals and start
>word of mouth, for example.
>
>It seems like there ought to be a way to get book distribution more like
>movies on DVD than like baseball in the stadium.
Um, I think it already is. Books have considerably more diversity
than movies on DVD - the DVD market is movies becoming more like, but
still less diverse and more major-house-controlled than, books. Any
major studio release movie is almost automatically equivalent to a
bestselling book, there really aren't that many of them. Proportional
to the book market, the sales of a midlist book are more like those of
an independent movie. And DVDs like books can have "surprises" -
releases that didn't have much marketing or initial splash, but are
good long-term earners once the right audience discovers them.
I don't think the DVD industry knows much of anything that the book
industry doesn't.
>Thinking about this more...I like the Netflix model. I don't know why I am
>not as comfortable with the similar Amazon system. I suspect it is
>because every time I look there, they make recommendations that are
>obviously based on what they have been paid to promote.
Are you looking at the front-page recommendations (some of which are
paid but there was a ruckus about this and they're supposed to be
pretty clearly identifiable), or your personalized list of
recommendations? I've never had a personalized recommendation of
anything that smacked even _vaguely_ of having been a paid placement
(and you can click on the why-was-I-recommended-this link to see what
things you liked that got it put on your list). I don't think Amazon
offers paid placement in the personal recommendation list.
The Amazon system is _the_ way I find nonfiction these days. Mostly I
look for a few books on a subject I'm interested in and check the
"other people who shopped for/bought this book also shopped for/bought
these other books" links. They're VERY helpful if you want a quick
survey of what all the major nonfiction books on a subject are. Of
course, this works better for non-blockbuster-bestseller books, so
you're dealing with people who were specifically interested in the
subject.
I also find music largely by looking through Amazon, especially the
"other people liked" links, and then downloading some sample songs
from Kazaa. (Amazon has samples, but the sound quality is so
hideously bad that you can't tell much from them).
Celyn Armstrong
> Remus Shepherd <re...@panix.com> wrote in message news:<c3pnoi$sun$1...@reader1.panix.com>...
>
> > The real solution would be to form that cartel and set payments to authors
> > at a more equitable scale. If J.K.Rowling recieved just one million dollars
> > less, that could be used to give 100 new writers a $10,000 advance, or give
> > 20 midlist writers a comfortable $50,000 lifestyle.
>
> That's a "real solution"? I don't see how a stable cartel (really
> you're talking about a writers' union) could be formed based on such
> an idea. What makes people deal with the cartel, makes successful
> writers join/stay in the cartel, etc?
There is also the obvious point that such cartels are illegal -
certainly under EU law, and I'm fairly sure under US law as well. All
very well as a thought experiment, but not much use in practice.
Celyn
Julian Flood
"Neil Barnes" < wrote
> What, all of it? Or just a small part? Enquiring minds want to know!
>
> Neil (who's been here and there in Greece and saw more damage from
> earthquake than bombs)
>
It was only a little bomb, sir.
JF
David Chapman
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 09:27:13 -0000, "David Chapman"
> <jedit_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Ian Montgomerie wrote:
>>> I don't think books are quite so vulnerable to authors being "created"
>>> by publishing companies, though. The premise underlying the
>>> manufactured pop stars is that you can have somebody else write their
>>> songs
>>
>> Two words: ghost writer.
>
> What's the similarity?
>
> The premise of manufactured pop stars is that the "star" is a person
> who looks good and has a good signing voice,
What an appropriate typo.
> and they don't need
> musical originality if someone else can do it. Writing isn't really
> split between image and content creation. Ghostwriting uses a
> _pre-existing_ celebrity name, and the celebrity gets a cut. Those
> celebrity names aren't created or owned by the publishing houses. I
> don't see how ghost writing is suddenly going to take over the
> industry.
It's not, not in the same way that manufactured acts are. I'm just saying
that a celebrity can "manufacture themselves" as a writer by employing
someone to do what they cannot, just as manufactured acts are employed to do
what producers cannot - front a band.
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> "James Nicoll" <jdni...@panix.com> wrote in message
> news:c3sd0t$a8m$1...@panix2.panix.com
>
> > Rowling helped a lot of Young Adult writers by reminding
> > publishers and booksellers that there is a viable YA market to cater
> > to. Any of the YA authors here care to comment?
> >
> She has improved the profile and, I suppose, made it more acceptable
> for adults to read YA or children's books. ( her target market is 8-12
> so she isn't really YA)I don't think she has increased the market,
> however, as some kids do only buy HP - that at least is the word on the
> street.
That leaves open the question of whether some kids who otherwise
wouldn't be reading, or wouldn't be reading fantasy, started doing so
because of Harry Potter and are now reading other things.
David Friedman
Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> wrote:
> > That sounds very interesting, and seems like it supports part of my theory.
> > You do see this in a lot of "entertainment" fields -- movies, books, sports,
> > music.
>
> Very much so in baseball. Why has minor league, semi-pro, and women's
> baseball foundered so hard in the USA? A quote from an article on the
> subject sticks with me: "Why would someone want to schlep out to watch
> mediocre baseball when they can stay home and watch the best in the
> world?"
>
For people interested in academic analysis, I think it started with a
piece by Sherwin Rosen called something like "The Economics of
Superstars," ten years or so ago. My guess is that that is earlier than
Robert Frank's work on it.
David Friedman
Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote:
> I've got a friend who has a private box at Stamford Bridge (the home
> ground of Chelsea, currently one of the top soccer teams in Europe)
Do they ever have games there between England and Norway?
David Friedman
Charlie Stross <cha...@antipope.org> wrote:
Worse still, with all those new books to read, obviously neither of you
could have time to do anything else. Makes one wonder who has been
writing all those new books with your name on them.
Eric Jarvis
> In article <MPG.1acba7486...@news.individual.net>,
> Eric Jarvis <w...@ericjarvis.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > I've got a friend who has a private box at Stamford Bridge (the home
> > ground of Chelsea, currently one of the top soccer teams in Europe)
>
> Do they ever have games there between England and Norway?
>
It hasn't happened so far. Though Chelsea have played Tromso there, and I
was disappointed that none of the press seemed to notice. :)
Charlton Wilbur
CS> I used to think that too. I suspect it added a decade on to
CS> the time it took me to sell my first book. Haven't made the
CS> million, either, but I re-shuffled my priorities a while ago
CS> and now I'm a bit happier.
You know, "I re-shuffled my priorities and now I'm a bit happier" is
one of the things I hope I can say in about 6 months. I'm doing some
soul-searching now, prompted by quitting a job that I despised, and
it's making me re-think some of my long-term goals and the cost of
achieving them -- and in many cases, the costs I've already paid.
This is a scary position to be in: if I give up the professional goal
I've had since I was in high school, am I still who I thought I was?
Is this, on some level, acknowledging that I *couldn't* succeed at it,
in the guise of deciding that the cost of succeeding at it is
something I'm not willing to pay? I don't know. I do know that I
can't take a decisive step one way or the other for at least six
months, and in the interim I'm going to be doing a lot of
contemplation.
Charlton
--
cwilbur at chromatico dot net
cwilbur at mac dot com
Charlton Wilbur
MO> Very much so in baseball. Why has minor league, semi-pro, and
MO> women's baseball foundered so hard in the USA? A quote from an
MO> article on the subject sticks with me: "Why would someone want
MO> to schlep out to watch mediocre baseball when they can stay
MO> home and watch the best in the world?"
Because there's more to baseball than what comes across on TV -- just
like there's more to music than what comes across on TV, or more to
live theater than what comes across on TV. I actually prefer
minor-league baseball to major-league baseball, and don't watch
baseball on TV at all; there's something wonderful about the immediacy
of being maybe 30 yards from the first baseman, close enough that if
you shout something out about his mother he can hear it. Fenway Park
oozes with history; Camden Yards is a beautiful ballpark; but if I
need binoculars to figure out which player is where, there's something
not right.
Music is the same way: as nice as it is to see extreme close-ups of
guitar fingerings and violin bowings, there's something absolutely
magical about the rapport between artist and audience, especially when
you're part of the audience, and that rapport just doesn't happen when
the artist is on television and the audience is at home (or, I think,
when the artist is outnumbered more than 1000 to 1 by the audience).
The moment of silence between the last note and the beginning of the
applause is electric when you're in a room with 200 other people and
the music; it's not noticeable on television. This just doesn't come
across on TV.
And so I watch minor league baseball, and I go to hear lesser-known
bands that can play to 200-seat halls. I'm glad few other people do,
or I'd probably be crowded out of the hall and priced out of tickets.
Charlton Wilbur
JP> I imagined a new society build by stranded space-farers where
JP> the founding members decide to make a strict law to prohibit
JP> *any* electronic, radio, television, distribution of art,
JP> music or drama. This would keep all the little guys in
JP> business... all the local entertainers... all the small scale
JP> productions. Live music for every dance! But it also would
JP> mean that no one could afford to but the funds into anything
JP> that was more than middling-amateur because it would be too
JP> difficult to get a return on that investment.
It depends on the size of the society and the mobility of the
musicians. In this society, where there are no such laws, musicians
can make quite a good living for themselves. The problem is, it takes
hard work and a lot of sacrifice, and it's not a royal road to wealth,
fame, and prosperity.
So many bands practice in the hopes of getting a major-label contract
so that they can get promotion and a tour and a record in stores
nationwide. But this benefits the record company more than the band.
The way to succeed as a small band is to sacrifice as much as you can,
own your own record label (or take part in a cooperatively-owned one)
and publish your own CDs, tour like mad, and do your own publicity --
and all is for naught if you aren't making music that people want to
hear. But this isn't at all romantic, and it seems suspiciously like
really hard work, and it requires a lot of sacrifice and and a healthy
dose of luck, and so most bands just keep on waiting for that magical
major-label record contract.
All that said, I think I'd gladly live in such a society. For all its
benefits -- we cannot prove that Brahms actually heard orchestral
performances of all nine of Beethoven's symphonies during his
lifetime, while I can run them all back-to-back on my iPod should I
want to -- the easy availability of recorded music means that amateur
music-making suffers horrendously. Why pay a local amateur dance band
to play at your wedding reception when you can get a DJ for much less,
*and* hear all the music from the radio that you like?
Charlton Wilbur
IR> With us, it was that, the Bible, and several editions (each)
IR> of The Hobbit and LoTR.
When Jason and I moved in together, the *only* books we had in common
were _The Elements of Style_ and the Bible. Fortunately, the Bibles
were all different translations, and _The Elements of Style_ is small
and easily misplaced.
This did not stop the acquisition, however. Not even the lack of
places to put the books did that. I'm currently looking at three
stacks of books on the floor nearly as tall as I am, which we
consolidated from about a dozen piles of books during our spring
cleaning. We need more bookshelves.
Wilson Heydt
Julian Flood <j...@floodsclimbersnospam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>
>"Wilson Heydt" wrote
>
>>
>> I've *never* been to
>> Greece, so I guess I don't make a 'living wage'.
>
>Bombed it once. Does that count?
Only if you rode the bomb down.
--
Hal Heydt
Albany, CA
My dime, my opinions.
Brian M. Scott
<nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition:
[...]
> I think the issue of whether the YA market actually exists let alone is
> viable is quite an interesting one, but I don't think it has anything
> to do with HP (Though HP may account for the recent flurry of YA Fantasy
> novels by non genre writers.)
Possibly an even more interesting question is what percentage of
the YA market actually consists of YAs. I've been part of it for
decades.
Brian
David Langford
>On Wednesday 24 March 2004 13:00 Charlie Stross (cha...@antipope.org)
>wrote:
>
>> When Feorag and I moved in together we discovered, to our horror, that
>> our book collections contained two duplicate titles -- we both had a
>> copy of the same two novels by Douglas Adams.
>
>With us, it was that, the Bible, and several editions (each) of The
>Hobbit and LoTR. And, surprisingly because it's rather rare. _The
>Silver Eggheads_.
Funny coincidence dept: I mentioned =The Silver Eggheads= in a column
delivered to SFX this week ( it should be in their June issue, number 118
and so my 118th column not counting extra feature articles).
The overlap between my and Hazel's collections when we married was pretty
minimal. A boxed Puffin set of the Narnia books, as I remember, plus
=Creatures of Light and Darkness= (which doesn't really count -- I'd given
her a copy because she was reading Egyptology at Oxford). Definitely not
LOTR, because Hazel had read Terry Pratchett's copy while working in the
same office as his wife....
All these people with 4-digit book collections! It was well past 25,000
when we last counted here, and that was twenty years ago. Thank goodness
it's a big house.
Dave
--
David Langford
ans...@cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.co.uk/
M. C. DeMarco
Charlton Wilbur <cwi...@mithril.chromatico.net> wrote:
> >>>>> "MO" == Manny Olds <old...@pobox.com> writes:
>
> MO> Very much so in baseball. Why has minor league, semi-pro, and
> MO> women's baseball foundered so hard in the USA? A quote from an
> MO> article on the subject sticks with me: "Why would someone want
> MO> to schlep out to watch mediocre baseball when they can stay
> MO> home and watch the best in the world?"
>
> Because there's more to baseball than what comes across on TV -- just
> like there's more to music than what comes across on TV, or more to
> live theater than what comes across on TV.
And minor-league baseball is cheaper. If mid-list books were
proportionally cheaper than the bestsellers, I'd be buying them.
mcd
--
___________________
m...@sdf.lonesun.org Change the sun to a star to reply.
http://sffms.ficml.org/
Home of the SFFMS LaTeX manuscript class
Nicola Browne
news:7vuzozox1h2o$.1ftkdt0a...@40tude.net
> On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 16:39:25 +0000 (UTC), "Nicola Browne"
> <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in rec.arts.sf.composition:
>
> > Possibly an even more interesting question is what percentage of
> the YA market actually consists of YAs. I've been part of it for
> decades.
>
Why? I read it because I write it and have friends now who write it.
I also have teenage children and I like to buy them books I rate
and I like to read the books they rate. But for those factors
I probably wouldn't read it.
Nicola Browne
news:ddfr-303272.0...@sea-read.news.verio.net
> > That leaves open the question of whether some kids who otherwise
> wouldn't be reading, or wouldn't be reading fantasy, started doing so
> because of Harry Potter and are now reading other things.
I have always argued this is the case, but most children's writers and
the only publisher I've ever discussed it with don't appear to agree.
For a long time the only novel my second son had completed was HP.
He does now read other things ( though it took a while) but only where
I can't see him and never mine : )
Nicola Browne
news:mcd-6A339D.1...@news06.east.earthlink.net
>>
> And minor-league baseball is cheaper. If mid-list books were
> proportionally cheaper than the bestsellers, I'd be buying them.
>
In UK the opposite is true bestsellers and prizewinners are regular
discounted at major chains and are more likely to be stocked by
supermarkets and (discount) book clubs. It makes no sense at all.
J.Pascal
> On 23 Mar 2004 18:32:09 -0800, ju...@pascal.org (J.Pascal) wrote:
>
> >Ian Montgomerie <ianN...@ianmontgomerie.com> wrote in message news:<qku060hcrdrflcavf...@4ax.com>...
> >> Anyone interested in what fundamentally underlies the
> >> declining-midlist phenomenon should read Robert Frank's "The
> >> Winner-Take-All Society" (or the section based on that book in his
> >> excellent "Luxury Fever").
> >>
> >> These are popularized economics books which don't deal with writing
> >> specifically, but do deal in general with something that is becoming
> >> increasingly relevant in the modern information society, the
> >> winner-take-all market. Basically this is a type of market where the
> >> more efficient and sophisticated it becomes, the more the lion's share
> >> of the profit will accrue to a small minority. One of the examples is
> >> acting (which seems to be like writing in a lot of ways).
> >
> >But... Rowling profits in a direct relationship to how much
> >people are willing to pay for movies, books, action-figures...
> >The people working in factories making that stuff may be
> >getting taken but it has *nothing* to do with other
> >*authors* getting a bum deal. The "big buck" authors
> >are not making a joint effort with all of the rest of us
> >and then taking our share.
>
> Excuse me? When you look at things in the big picture, people buy a
> pretty stable number of books.
Do they? Someone has figured this out in relationship to, say,
pre-information based economy? People have pretty stable levels
of disposable income, sure. Most people spend all that they have.
> This means that when a bestselling
> author increases their sales, it generally _is_ at the expense of
> other authors. Your typical novel buyer is more often going to be
> looking for a book to read, rather than "it's Steven King or nothing".
I think that there may well be people who go out to buy
"Steven King or nothing" or "Danielle Steel or nothing."
For some reason they've read a book by a huge author and liked
it but they don't care enough about reading to find something
just for the sake of reading a story. Or they might never
have bothered to read, but pick up a book of a movie they loved
and then decided to try other books as well.
The BIG authors are huge because they are read by *non* readers.
> Steven King or J.K.Rowling or whatever sell X books, but if they had
> never written those books it doesn't mean that the total number of
> books sold would be X less.
Well, no. But if they sell X books it might be that the total
number of books sold would be Y less. Or, even, if they hadn't
sold X number of books it might be that the total number of
books sold would be X+Y less.
I've certainly heard that the success of Rowling has lead to
larger sales in the same market... not smaller ones.
> This means that as bestsellers are marketed more effectively, the
> portion of books sold skews toward bestsellers. This certainly does
> come at the expense of non-bestselling authors (non-star actors,
> non-big-name musicians, etc. according to industry). It's a very well
> known phenomenon and applies across many entertainment-oriented
> industries.
This is what I don't "get". Oh, sure, marketing will sell that
first book. Does it sell the second as well if the first was a
dud? Was Steven King created by marketing? Do people think he's
great because the media told them so?
The thing about writers and movies and what not is that even the
big names can only produce new work slowly. They can't flood or
control the market entirely. How many movies would you see in a
year if you only saw the ones by George Lucas? How many books would
you read in a year if you only read Bujold?
> So actually, when the J.K. Rowlings and the Steven Kings and the Tom
> Clancys of the world sell more books, it does usually mean that other
> authors will sell less. When a bestseller exploits a new market
> (Harry Potter seems to have encouraged some people to read it who
> otherwise might not have been reading anything else instead) it is not
> fully competing with others, but most bestsellers don't exploit new
> markets. Tom Clancy competes with other technothriller authors,
> Steven King with other horror authors, Rowling does compete in part
> for the sales of other YA and fantasy authors, and so on.
When I was a kid I read everything by Louie L'Amour. Was he
competing for sales with Zane Grey? I did run out of L'Amour
books and picked up the other Westerns in the school library.
I didn't like them. If L'Amour didn't write books I would not
have been reading other Westerns instead. True, I'd have been
reading *something* but not Westerns.
Oh, I have no arguement with the effect of our information technologies
on entertainment. When you can enjoy the performance of world class
artists so easily, why spend money on local, and lesser, talent?
But consider... could those mid-list authors we started out talking
about even hope to support themselves in a market without the
kind of infrastructure we have? The "starving artist" thing is
by no means modern. Famous artists from history lived in poverty
while they were alive or were independantly wealthy or supported
by patrons or family.
The idea in the original article seemed to be that "this is so
unfair to us, we are so neglected" and I just don't see it.
Mostly because I don't see how things used to be better.
-Julie