Good Authors that struggle

[Liadin]

Fall: Nobody said Twilight, etc., is good because people like them. People just said that your judgment on what's good isn't any more valid than anyone else's, and furthermore, that if the publishing model changed, there's no particular reason to assume that your personal tastes would win out.

IIRC, Stephen King once did an experiment where he published a book online chapter-by-chapter, contingent on a certain percentage of readers paying for each chapter. Not enough people paid, so he discontinued it. The Internet and freeloading go hand-in-hand.

[VarysTheSpider]

IIRC, Stephen King once did an experiment where he published a book online chapter-by-chapter, contingent on a certain percentage of readers paying for each chapter. Not enough people paid, so he discontinued it. The Internet and freeloading go hand-in-hand.

I remember that. The percentage was really high and the story was shit. Though most people were paying in the beginning.

ETA Not that I think a donation model will emerge either, it's too volatile.

[Spring Bass]

IIRC, Stephen King once did an experiment where he published a book online chapter-by-chapter, contingent on a certain percentage of readers paying for each chapter. Not enough people paid, so he discontinued it. The Internet and freeloading go hand-in-hand.

I think charging by chapter is the wrong way to go about it. They've tried something similar with the newspapers, charging a small amount of money per article, and it doesn't work well. Why that's the case is anyone's guess, although I suspect it has to do with re-usability (you can use and re-use a song you purchase off of iTunes, but you generally don't re-read a chapter more than a few times).

I doubt a donation model would work well, either. Look at the successful web-comics, for example. Some of them collect donations, but they usually get much more from the advertising revenue from their sites.

[Joe Abercrombie]

Some very peculiar arguments being advanced in this thread, to my way of thinking.

First off, ebooks aren't much cheaper to make than paper books. The costs associated with the physical book (printing, distribution, warehousing, shelving and so on) actually aren't that great, per unit. The vast majority of the cost is in the development - the commissioning, the editing, the management, the artwork and presentation. These things are still just as necessary for the e-edition as the print one, which is why I'd aim at a cost somewhat cheaper than physical editions (a couple of quid, say), but any less isn't really sustainable as ebooks become a bigger share of the market. I could go on, but I usually direct to Charlie Stross's article at this point...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/05/cmap-9-ebooks.html

There seems to be this weird idea that any money taken by the publisher is fat creamy profits for some faceless conglomerate. Some may be, but the vast majority goes to pay skilled and experienced people who work for the publisher and perform vital functions that the writer is almost certainly unable and unwilling to perform - editing, publicity, marketing, strategy, design, managing relationships with booksellers, with foreign publishers, with the writers themselves. I, for one, would much rather be writing than trying to take on all this stuff myself, or for that matter paying freelancers to do it. I'd rather just have a publisher, thank you all the same, and the dawn of ebooks doesn't make any of these functions redundant, really. It shifts emphasis, but the chances are that as ebooks become more sophisticated and include more interactive content there'll be more of this skilled non-writer work rather than less, and I'll need my publisher more than ever.

The idea that if writers don't get paid quality will skyrocket seems completely bizarre to me. It's like saying if we pay the players on our football team nothing we'll cut out the greed and have only people who want to play for the love. See how your league position goes then. If writers can't earn writing books they'll need to earn some other way, so they'll all go off to do video game consultancy and TV work or for that matter plastering if it can pay the bills. This argument also ignores the fact that the vast majority of writers earn sod all, really, certainly nowhere near a living wage, they nearly all do it for the love of it, at least to begin with. Writing is work, like any other work. Writing a whole book is a lot of work. Getting it published is a lot more. You're not going to do a career of that for nothing. Writer's earnings also seem pretty easy to justify since in general they're paid on the basis of the money they generate. No sales, no pay. We're wealth creators.

Anyone who thinks that the dawn of ebooks somehow ushers in an age of free-love in which readers and writers will finally be freed from the shackles of their evil, hated overlords, the publishers, and we will all be free to create and enjoy high quality content at the click of a mouse is off their rockers. You think what gets published is bad? A few minutes with a slush pile will give you horrific new definitions of badness, believe me. If you want quality content, especially which appeals to any kind of niche taste, you need some form of publisher, some form of retailer, and some means of paying the writer.

The problem with donation schemes and etc., as people have pointed out, is that you need to be very high profile in the first place to make that pay anything at all, and the profiles have already been generated by the traditional publishing model. If Stephen King has trouble making it work, what hope for midlisters? What hope for new writers? Unless they also happen to be marketing, accounting, and technical geniuses as well - a tall order.

Having said all that, I'm actually not that pessimistic. E-readers will become more mainstream, format issues will get solved and ebooks will become better presented and featured. Legitimate means of supply will become smoother and more appealing to the potentially less tech-savvy average user. We just need to get rid of DRM and sort out pricing (which is actually a surprisingly difficult and labyrinthine business with huge arrays of powerful and competing interests, for example in the UK you still need to pay VAT on ebooks but not on paper). Once the model makes better sense, I think plenty of folks will still pirate stuff, but plenty of folks borrow books and get them from the library now. You just need a good proportion to want to pay a reasonable amount, and I don't see that as unachievable by any means. I sell a decent number of ebooks now, and I make a better royalty out of them even than on hardcovers. When it comes down to it, I just don't think ebooks and physical books are actually that different.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Mr. Abercrombie,

But real copy editors would do their work for love of literature. So, if writers are no longer paid for their would neither would editors, graphic artists, and copy editors.

BTW, have you heard Cory Doctorow's "peace and love" ideas about the great world of free digital media distribution? He went on about it ad nauseum at Worldcon in 2009. I was not impressed.

[MinDonner]

Actually, you'd want a real copy editor to do it for their love of grammar. Just the thrill of getting every single comma in the right place should be reward enough for anyone.

[Willie McBride]

Having said all that, I'm actually not that pessimistic. E-readers will become more mainstream, format issues will get solved and ebooks will become better presented and featured. Legitimate means of supply will become smoother and more appealing to the potentially less tech-savvy average user. We just need to get rid of DRM and sort out pricing (which is actually a surprisingly difficult and labyrinthine business with huge arrays of powerful and competing interests, for example in the UK you still need to pay VAT on ebooks but not on paper). Once the model makes better sense, I think plenty of folks will still pirate stuff, but plenty of folks borrow books and get them from the library now. You just need a good proportion to want to pay a reasonable amount, and I don't see that as unachievable by any means. I sell a decent number of ebooks now, and I make a better royalty out of them even than on hardcovers. When it comes down to it, I just don't think ebooks and physical books are actually that different.

This.

I advanced the same points on a recent "ebook piracy is killing Western civilization" discussion on a blog and I was gracefully disappeared in less than a hour. Ebook piracy is not a problem: it's still limited, most "common readers", the ones who make the market and don't read blogs and forums are not even aware of it, and the numbers paraded around (700 hundred downloads for a very minor urban fantasy ebook!!! OMG, if all of those people had bought it, it would've topped the bestsellers' lists!!!) don't account for the "hoarding effect" ("I'll never read this 15-books long cheesy fantasy series, but since it's free I'll download it anyway") and the physical impossibility for anybody but a limited number of very fast readers with a lot of time on hands to actually read in less than a month the books you could possibly download in just 15 minutes.

The only thing the industry has to do is to avoid the mistakes made by the music industry ten years ago: they don't need to waste money in lawsuits who only make more people aware of the possibility to get free "something", they need to provide a compelling alternative. If a legit website allowed them to buy in less than a minute the ebooks they want at a price comparable to an MMPB and read them immediately on their ereaders, most people wouln't even try to look for dodgy pirated copies to check, convert and transfer around hoping that the formatting isn't irremediably lost somewhere in the process.

[Old Nan]

Actually, you'd want a real copy editor to do it for their love of grammar. Just the thrill of getting every single comma in the right place should be reward enough for anyone.

That last sentence brings me a strange yearning.

[fall787]

few things:

1.I think all of you guys are much better at arguing than me. Seriously. I don't think I can tie my thoughts in a proper fashion. So thanks for providing intelligent replies I enjoy reading.

2.I think many of the arguments I'm seeing don't deal with what's probably my biggest point: supply/demand. Combined with growing e-book/digital media factor and consequences. This isn't about stories becoming free being fair... it's about the world changing to a degree where they HAVE to be free... and anyone charging money upfront for their story will be ignored. Once again:

-too many books

-too few readers

-ebooks/digitalized versions slowly becoming dominant

3.Mr Abercrombie mentions other ventures authors can take up. Absolutely. Mr Abercrombie, I know you work for the film industry while writing books. Wouldn't that make a perfect example of what I mean?

4.My belief that free stories = better quality is hard to explain because it's so subjective. And no, football example doesn't work unless ALL of the teams in the league become unpaid. Which is what's going to happen in literature. I simply have faith that once monetary incentive is removed, there will be fewer authors, and thus fewer shitty stories. Fewer good stories too? Maybe, but I have faith.

5.Mr Abercrombie, as I already mentioned, the gatekeepers of the industry will remain. I don't know how, but they should, or the readers will drown in slushpile, as you say.

[Ormond]

4.My belief that free stories = better quality is hard to explain because it's so subjective. And no, football example doesn't work unless ALL of the teams in the league become unpaid. Which is what's going to happen in literature. I simply have faith that once monetary incentive is removed, there will be fewer authors, and thus fewer shitty stories. Fewer good stories too? Maybe, but I have faith.

Your beliefs about the future of literature and authorship are religious ones, then.

Personally I understand having faith, being one of the more religious posters on this forum. But you really can't expect anyone to take an argument on this issue based on "faith" seriously. It's as irrelevant to introduce faith into this as it would be to introduce faith into an argument about evolution or global climate change. If you want to convince others, you have to give some sort of rational argument based on investigation or careful observation of real human behavior, not your subjective "faith".

[Jon Sprunk]

Fall, I can appreciate your frustration with a lack of "good" books, but not your assertion that less=better. If you want more "good" books, then you need to be spread the word about the books you enjoy. Tell your friends, co-workers, teachers, family. Post on forums and give good reviews on sites like Amazon/Goodreads/Shelfari.

And to tie in with the OP, so many writers struggle because word-of-mouth about their books doesn't reach enough people. Just like a salesperson must pitch a certain number of people to reach their sales quota, authors must be exposed (figuratively) to enough people to generate enough sales for their work to become profitable (and thereby, receive another book deal, which allows them to keep writing).

[red snow]

I don't see how books becoming free will equal authors not getting paid. Stick free downloads on an author's website with ads before the download and they'll still get paid. They may have to revert back to an installment system where you get a chapter per download over time (as this will help with ad revenue). Hardcopies could still be sold at signings as you can't sign an e-book. There are tons of ways that ebooks will still generate revenue. The illegal download part doesn't matter as it's already here - the industry just needs to find more imaginative ways to make money from it.

This is all on the assumption that ebooks will dominate in the near future - something I still see as being a slow thing (all the hardcopy generations need to die out first and that's going to be several decades)

[Myrddin]

few things:

4.My belief that free stories = better quality is hard to explain because it's so subjective it doesn't make sense. And no, football example doesn't work unless ALL of the teams in the league become unpaid. Which is what's my faulty logic thinks is going to happen in literature. I simply have faith that once monetary incentive is removed, there will be fewer authors, and thus fewer shitty stories. Fewer good stories too? Maybe, but I have faith am delusional.

There. Fixed it for you.

[Lordwalker]

I like the ebook.. It's more portable. I can carry more of them at a time on a single device. And depending on what device/app you use they all keep track of one another as to where you are in each book your reading. The only exception I make is books in the fantasy genre or books with lots of maps and illustrations. Fantasy books tend to have those handy maps in the beginnings, that are much easier to read and to quickly flip back and forth to. Otherwise, I like the flexability of carrying multiple books in one lightweight device.

[WhiteHaven]

Ebooks suck. E-Readers should be forbidden by law.

[Arthmail]

While my first inclination is to call that Abercrombie fellow a soulless hack of the EVaL Empire, he's right.

Besides. The only thing i can say further on the subject is this:

- You don't go to your day job to do it for fucking free. Hobbies and volunteering are the only things that you do for free, and thats only because you haven't found a way to make money off of them. Bills still have to be paid, mouths fed, and hookers rented. So musicians, authors, etc should not be expected to do their work for free, or whatever "alternative" method you think works best. It's like telling an architect that you are only going to donate to him if you feel his services were up to your standards.

The only thing thats free in this world is a night with the Limecat, because he's a whore.

[Myrddin]

The only thing thats free in this world is a night with the Limecat, because he's a whore.

Dammit! He charged me 10 lime marinated tuna steaks for the experience!

Thought I'll have the memories forever.... :leaving:

[Arthmail]

Dammit! He charged me 10 lime marinated tuna steaks for the experience!

Thought I'll have the memories forever.... :leaving:

If by memories you mean rabies. And by rabies you mean herpies.

[Gabriele]

3.Mr Abercrombie mentions other ventures authors can take up. Absolutely. Mr Abercrombie, I know you work for the film industry while writing books. Wouldn't that make a perfect example of what I mean?

Heh, and films should be work of art, too, done for love and offered for free. That way the world would get rid of those crappy blockbusters (and the anorexic, botoxed actresses), and we'd get more meaningful French noir movies instead.

:P :D

[strongboar]

A: Yes, most of them. Which will be a good thing. The people writing because they HAVE to, will keep writing, and I believe those are the best authors.

Your problem is that nothing actually supports your view. William Shakespeare is considered one of the best authors/playwrights ever, and he wrote almost exclusively for the amusement of masses. You know what word is actually often used for a person who HAVE to write? Graphomaniac.