One of the dominant subjective experiences of living today is the sensation that any possible amazing kind of life is right there and it is only up to us to reach out to pluck it. You go on Instagram and see people living blissful lives of travel in gorgeous locales while talking about how affordable it is. That random dude who wrote a series of posts on some story-telling Reddit ends up getting it optioned by Hollywood and is now a major screenwriter. The sea shanty Tik-Tok'er is a major label recording artist.
Our culture's positive values of egalitarianism and opportunity say that whatever you want your life to be can be, if only you work hard enough to get it.
The dark side of this is that many of us won't. And, in particular, in many areas, the total number of brass rings is relatively fixed and we can't all get them. A hundred years ago, most people didn't even think of becoming an author. It was a rarefied activity done by people who went to college and moved to New York City. For more, authors felt like an Other. It's not that their personal dreams of authorship were crushed by the lack of opportunity, it's like they never thought to dream it in the first place, any more than people dream of being howler monkeys or velour sofas.
But today, media is more than happy to show us all possible dreams. Our social media aggregators filter out all of the lives you're likely to lead and show you only the best ones.
So I think today many many more people consider and try to become authors than ever before. But the total amount of time spent reading isn't growing enough to accommodate that. While some will find success (for however they choose to define that), the end result is probably a much greater number of dreams thwarted than attained.
I love this TED talk by Alain de Botton on success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtSE4rglxbY
He says:
"It is probably as unlikely nowadays that you would become as rich and famous as Bill Gates as it was unlikely in the 17th century that you would exceed to the ranks of the French aristocracy. But the point is it doesn't feel that way. It's made to feel by the media and other outlets that if you've got energy, a few bright ideas about technology, a garage, you too could start a major thing."
In the past, the big hurdle to becoming an author (or a musician, or a model, etc) was getting past the gatekeepers. You had to convince a publisher, or a label, or a modeling company that you were worthy and then you were in.
This seemed like an impossible task to most people, and many people gave up without even trying. But for those who did persist and attempt to get past the gatekeepers, there was a very clear goal, and the gatekeepers were very clear to you when you didn't make it.
The traditional gatekeepers to a lot of professions are being bypassed these days, so at first it seems like it should be easier now. You don't have to have any connections or convince a single person your stuff is worthy.
However, in reality that game is even harder now. The demand for the content hasn't changed much, and it is still just as rare to succeed in these fields as before. However, people never get the clear 'pass/fail' response from a gatekeeper, so people who will never make it are likely to pursue the career longer than they might have with a more clear rejection.
> A hundred years ago, most people didn't even think of becoming an author.
The following is a bit tangential, but I keep thinking about it:
I was watching this video on the Barnum effect recently, which basically says that people are likely to believe in the accuracy of vague descriptions of their personality (think horoscopes; "Libras need security").
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=si2HoscBLIw&t=4m23s
The super-vague personality assessment, which was tailored to describe as many people as possible, included the wish for writing a novel (at 4m23s). That's how common this desire is/was? I wonder if the modern version of it would say "you have considered opening up on YouTube".
Today—because we are all so intensely culturally obsessed with financial success—"being a writer" means writing stuff right now and doing it well enough to make a living off of. Where before, many dreamed of writing as a thing to do after they've earned most of their wealth, now it is a means to it.
This is something I've thought about a lot lately. It seems like if you show any hint of artistic talent or skill in some craft, everyone around you starts encouraging you to monetize it. You draw so well, you should have a patreon. You made some nice soap, you should sell that at the farmer's market. You picked up enough leatherworking to make a wallet, when are you opening the etsy store? I don't think that's right.
edit: nobody tells the person who changes their own oil "oh wow you should be a mechanic!", but god forbid you write a short story without submitting it to The New Yorker :)
It's worse: a hundred years ago (say 1921) there were less people (in the US for example), and more succesful authors.
Now it's more people (350 million vs 100 million in 2021) AND less absolute people reading books (perhaps as today they also compete with tv, the web, youtube, netflix, social media, videogames, and so on as everyday entertainment options).
So it's much much harder to make a living as an author today than in 1921.
On the numbers side people have a lot more disposable income, capturing a larger share of revenue per person can completely flip the equation. Patreon, etc don’t have to individually provide enough to live off of as long as all revenue streams add up to a living wage. I suspect if the objective threshold is say 50k USD inflation adjusted, today is relatively speaking a much better time to be an author than most people here are assuming.
Of course that’s ignoring all the vanity books being published. Simply having an ISBN number doesn’t really mean anything in today’s world.
And much easier to make it as a television screen writer.
The mediums have shifted
That there are new jobs of a different kind is not much consolation when one likes the old jobs.
But that surplus workforce found jobs in other areas, creating whole industries where there had been nothing. Can't have Post-mates without workers and restaurants. Can't have restaurants without more workers and food distribution. Can't have food distribution without more workers and food processors... etc.
Ivy league english majors get jobs writing TV and movie scripts. Mass electronic distribution means that many many people get to watch the creative output of a small number of people. All the other people who used to write are available to fill new niches in the economy.
Yep, the transition is difficult, and they'll complain about it, but society as a whole benefits.
For many it remains still not that wise a decision.
>All the other people who used to write are available to fill new niches in the economy.
Yeah, I hear burger-flipping is still in demand.
I appreciate the ELI5, but it's not that I don't know history, or I don't understand that some jobs die and others replace them.
It is that I consider some jobs dying a problem, whether they are replaced by something else or not, and doubly so in the way that that transition happens (and some people in each generation get the short end of the stick).
ok, but it's not that some jobs die and others replace them, it's that efficiency gains allow less effort to satiate demand and thereby create a labor/ingenuity supply for new endeavors.
the job of writing (or performing music, etc.) did not die, it's that the demand for satisfying arts consumption can be met by a smaller sector of the economy.
If only Ivy League English majors get to be writers, then I think society as a whole has lost a lot.
Are you sure there were more successful authors? There weren't that many notable books published in 1921.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120330/12402418305/why-m...
Edit: I'm a bit off with my dates, as 1922 was the year after which works effectively didn't ever enter the public domain.
I really don't see any good argument why copyright should last longer than, say, 20 years.
Would any potential authors decide it's not worth it to write books if copyright only lasted 20 years? What benefit to society does ~100 years of copyright provide?
My ideal is like the old system (initial registration plus fixed term renewals). That actually worked well to balance interests and we should go back to it. Just make the renewals an increasing cost so that your 'Mickey Mouse' hits can continue to have effectively infinite protection while most won't renew and drop into the public domain.
The boring truth is politicians in Congress were in favor of copyright extension (at least in 1998). Two reasons given were: 1) copyright industries give the US one of its most significant trade surpluses, and 2) the European Union had recently extended copyright there for 20 years, and so EU works would be protected for 20 years longer than US works if the US did not enact similar term extensions.
I fully expect the copyright on the first Mickey Mouse cartoon will expire in 2024.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/678813/disney-lobbying-e...
That the extension was done under the guise of harmonization only shows that the lobbying was done one country at a time. That there is "only" $4 million/year doesn't show that Disney has a small effect, but rather how unbelievably cheap it is to buy a congressional vote.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act#S...
> That there is "only" $4 million/year doesn't show that Disney has a small effect, but rather how unbelievably cheap it is to buy a congressional vote.
It doesn't show that. You're speculating that Congress supported copyright due to Disney's lobbying and dismissing the possibility that members of Congress who supported it actually supported it for the reasons they stated. The tricky thing with this kind of speculation is it's impossible to prove or disprove. Maybe it was Disney that convinced them. But you don't seem to have any evidence.
If it's so cheap to buy Congressional votes, why hasn't Disney been able to extend copyright again in the past 20 years? They've been lobbying every year since Sonny Bono. The copyright on Mickey Mouse is about to expire.
If votes are so cheap, why can't we just buy votes to shorten copyright? Or at least prevent extensions?
Everything having a lifetime copyright has it's own problems, but cutting everything to 20 years creates it own.
The public domain isn't meant to be a dumping ground for forgotten properties. Rather, the public domain is a wellspring from which new writers can draw upon. Just as I may name a character "Sherlock" (1887), "Romeo" (1597), or "Odysseus" (~700 BC) in order to bring in specific character traits, I may also want to name a character "Superman" (1938), "Gandalf" (1954), or "Skywalker" (1977). These are all part of our shared cultural heritage from previous generations, and we have a right to build upon that heritage to create something even better for the next generation.
That is why I think roughly one generation, 30 years or so, is an appropriate maximum copyright duration. As adults, every generation has the right to retell and remix stories and characters from their childhood. The current duration of copyright is a gross abuse of that right.
To respond to this specific point, though "...we have a right to build upon that heritage to create something even better for the next generation". We already do this, we create tropes and then write new stories using those tropes. Creating new is better than just rehashing existing properties and longer copyright terms actually encourage new works because you can't rely on older properties for your material. I think they're too long for virtually all works because most works are commercial failures. They could find new audiences if their distribution rights weren't locked up. MST3K is a great example of doing something new with an existing property that is only possible with term limits.
I strongly disagree with this statement. The point of copyright is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts". The commercial viability is the means through which that point is achieved. If at any time copyright isn't functioning to promote the arts, and instead hinders, then it isn't fulfilling the point.
While I do agree that the tropes are the stronger part, part of the reason why shared characters are so powerful is because they can immediately stand in to represent the trope. If I am writing a Robin Hood story, I don't need to spend time explaining who Robin Hood is, I can just start telling the story. If I am writing a story about "What if Superman were evil?" (e.g. [0][1]), then I need to first spend time explaining who the character is, describing powers, and then drawing just enough parallels so that the audience knows who I'm talking about without drawing so many that I get sued. It's a really boring way to start a story.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irredeemable [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightburn
https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/no-copyright-...
Progress of knowledge is covered differently and it's why the US has carved exceptions for facts (they're exempt from copyright) and we use a patent system for inventions. Think of current problems with companies like Elsiver that use copyright as a cudgel to keep academic papers from the masses.
I definitely agree that copyright can, and frequently does hinder progress. My statement is perhaps limited to the US, where patents and copyrights are given an explicit goal in Article 1 of the Constitution, stating "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." The "to promote the progress" wording is important, as it tells a goal, and not just a legal capability.
A thought experiment I like is to consider the best way to promote progress in the arts and sciences. Suppose there were a magic box, which could instantly tell the full value of any invention or artwork or writing. You put something in, and it tells you how much it benefits society. Then there could be a program set up to reward authors and inventors for making things. They come up to the box, put the work in, and get paid the amount that the magic box tells you. In exchange for contributing to society, there is some compensation for doing so.
Of course, no such magic box exists, nor can it. We could have some sort of a poll to determine the overall worth of a new book or a better can opener, but that would have a lot of overhead. So instead, for a limited time, we reward authors and inventors by giving them a temporary monopoly over making copies of what they wrote, and that can become a monetary reward by selling those copies. Because we don't have an objective measure of a book's worth, we fall back to subjective measures. But this is still fundamentally a restriction on society as a whole, not to reproduce something that they have purchased, and that restriction requires some ongoing basis. It cannot be forever, and it must always be in service of promoting the arts and sciences, because that is the only reason why the offer of a legal monopoly in exchange for open publication exists.
(As a tangent, I don't understand any basis for legal protections of trade secrets, beyond civil penalties for breaking a contract. Companies using trade secrets have decided not to accept the bargain offered by patents, and therefore should also not have the benefits of legal protections.)
(And a second tangent, I don't think that computer programs released without source code should be eligible for copyright protection. The authors have not fulfilled their side of the bargain by releasing a work in a form that can be built upon and expanded by society once their limited-time monopoly has expired, and so they should not receive the legal monopoly offered in that bargain.)
Yes, and that point is that it's not for ever.
> It's an exclusive distribution right of a creative work.
Exactly. For a limited time.
Most of us only live for a single lifetime, so anything longer than that is effectively forever: If something is locked away by copyright when you're born, and still is when you die, then you don't ever get it free of copyright.
Games are interesting because games copy each other incessantly but almost never sue over copyright.
The actual source code and art would clearly fall under copyright, but not the gameplay. So when PUBG discovered the popular battle royale genre, everyone rushed to copy it and now we have Fortnite, Apex Legends, Call of Duty Battle Royale, etc. When Dota was popular, it spawned tons of clones. Minecraft spawned tons of clones. In some cases where the clones are too similar, the original creator may have legal grounds for suing, but they seldom do so.
Short of blatantly stealing assets from another game, it's hard to get in trouble over another game's copyright.
Side note, this has been a really good thread to read and respond to.
Even Twilight fanficton like 50 Shades of Gray launched even more imitators!
Sherlock Holmes is in the public domain, and as far as I know, it's been fine. That might be why there have been so many movies and shows based on the character recently.
Imagine it's 2024 and the original Mickey Mouse cartoon just entered the public domain. How does this impact Disney?
-Anyone could watch Steamboat Willie for free (assuming it's online somewhere). I don't see this harming Disney.
-Another big studio like Warner could make a cartoon with the original Mickey. I doubt any of the big studios are even interested in doing so, but if they do, I don't think it will affect Disney's revenue.
-Small studios and independent artists could use the original Mickey character. I think if anyone does this, it's more likely to help than hurt Disney, by boosting Mickey's profile.
-Other manufacturers could make Mickey Mouse merchandise. This is probably the biggest direct harm to Disney, but I don't think it'll make much impact on their revenue.
Some things people couldn't do:
-Use the Mickey Mouse logo. It's protected by trademark.
-Make a sequel or spin off of a modern Mickey Mouse product. Another studio couldn't just make Epic Mickey 2 since Epic Mickey (2010) is still protected.
I'm not sure Disney makes much money off of Mickey compared to other properties like Star Wars, Marvel, Frozen, etc. Mickey's popularity seems to be waning. Apart from a few video games, he hasn't been in much recently. He has a TV show that did fine but isn't particularly popular.
Okay, but what about other popular properties? The first Harry Potter book was published 24 years ago. What if it were in the public domain?
-J. K. Rowling's net worth is estimated to be over a billion USD. She'll be okay.
-People would still buy new books written by J. K. Rowling.
-Only her earliest books would be in the public domain.
In most jobs, you can't expect to work for a few years and be set for life. I'm not sure why it should be different for authors (and it usually isn't). If your book won't make enough money for you to retire after 20 years of sales, you'd either have to write another book, or get another job. That's already the case for the vast majority of authors.
The trick to dealing with a 20 year copyright term is to keep making new works. Which is exactly what copyright was supposed to encourage.
Couple of other issues.
"Small studios and independent artists could use the original Mickey character"
"Other manufacturers could make Mickey Mouse merchandise. This is probably the biggest direct harm to Disney, but I don't think it'll make much impact on their revenue."
The reason you've seen them make Steamboat Willie LEGO and the current "old-style" Mickey Mouse cartoons is because they're setting up a copyright argument if someone tried. They're also setting up the same arguments that Sherlock Holmes uses which is that the elements of Mickey in Steamboat Willie have been used recently and are thus still locked up by copyright. You can distribute Steamboat Willie, but can not otherwise use the property. The Sherlock Holmes case is here: https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=163248743572192...
"Which is exactly what copyright was supposed to encourage."
No, copyright is an exclusive distribution right. It's a government granted monopoly to provide protection to creative works. The history of copyright is pretty interesting in an of itself and starts with the printing press in the 1500s. Long story short, though, it's always been about commercial exploitation of a creative work.
This was edited to correct some info.
The Doyle estate lost the case you're referring to and Klinger was allowed to publish his derivative stories.
Disney could try to sue, but I don't think their case is any stronger than the Sherlock Holmes case if the defendant is only deriving material from the original Mickey cartoon.
From the case listed "And the claim is correct, for he acknowledges that those copyrights are valid and that the only copying he wants to include in his book is copying of the Holmes and Watson characters as they appear in the earlier stories and in the novels."
Mickey Mouse will most certainly not be in the public domain anymore than he is now. Disney can also fall back on trademark law to take care of Disney's use as well.
It's a bit of a moot point in my opinion, because I don't think anyone outside of Disney would even want to make more of 1928 Mickey. It's old. It's not popular. Maybe they'd use him for a cameo or for parody, but shows already do that anyway, regardless of the copyright [1].
We have a mechanism for solving the problem of Derivative works that purport to be creations of the "empire": trademarks.
BTW, everyone focuses on Steamboat Willie (entering the public domain in 2024), but there are already several Mickey Mouse cartoons in the public domain: The Mad Doctor, Minnie's Yoo-Hoo, and Mickey's Surprise Party.
So, it is possible to create derivative Mickey Mouse works, just make sure that they can't be confused for works or products created or licensed by Disney.
There are many thousands of successful authors living today. I'm wondering, how many were there in 1921?
Ironically it's those same social media aggregators that make the stars these days.
You can literally be an overnight success if you get lucky.
Don’t get me wrong, I fantasize too, but I manage in eating a balanced breakfast. I think the obsessive component is completely disregarded in the realization of most “self-actualizing” aspirants. I can think of a recent read of Angus Black of AC/DC and how he turned his first guitar’s fretboard rotten from all the sweat. Focusing more on finding that obsession rather than fantasizing about becoming something you likely are not tooled for - say an author - will lead to a more satisfactory course through life. Otherwise, one is simply blindly and madly stabbing in the dark to achieve what someone like Bukowski will starve to do. It must come from within, not from without.
TIL of the associated phrase, thank you!
Here's some other things he said on making a living as a writer: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/vonnegut-writing-i...
Note that he got paid $750 for his first short story in 1949! I don't know how many places are paying first time authors that much today, and then you remember to calculate inflation.
Very few genre magazines will accept more than 10k words. A handful will accept 20k-25k (Asimov's, Analog, Clarkesworld for example, last I checked). Many will prefer much shorter works.
And of course that is before taking into account the competition - the editor of a relatively minor scifi magazine mention on Twitter that their typical slush pile per issue was 1400-1500 stories.
I've submitted a couple of stories, but decided that effort vs. relatively low potential payoff was so low that since I wouldn't really be profitable when factoring in time spent anyway it was better to just put my stories on my website and pay to promote them to relevant twitter followers to pull in readers for my novel and increase my following at the same time.
The few short stories I've published so far has as a result reached a much wider audience than most of the main scifi magazines reach. E.g. even Analog was reportedly down to 27k readers by 2011.
But of course being able to afford to do that is a pretty privileged position to be in.
That's surprising; I subscribed to Asimov's for about 6 months back in 2015 and based on what I was reading, I assumed they must be publishing everything that comes in the door.
Also probably many people probably submit the same pieces over and over.
Btw if you find an outlet that seems to have no standards but also pays, the right thing to do is to stop being a subscriber and start being an author.
I assume editors don't get paid nearly enough.
I think they might be publishing stuff their core audience really likes, btw. It's just that audience is probably a niche.
Vonnegut had to convince at least two gatekeepers: his own agent and the editor at Colliers.
I spent a large chunk of time a few years back looking into the questions OP is asking, and the ultimate truth I came to is this: whether you're self publishing or going the traditional route, you're going to need some established gatekeepers to support you if you're going to make it.
In 1949, those gatekeepers were traditional publishers. In 2021, we still have traditional publishers, but we also have content curation algorithms, social media influencers, podcast hosts, and platforms like Substack and Patreon. If you can get any of them to put resources into promoting you, you'll have a real opportunity of making it - that is, if what you're offering is any good.
If you can't or don't want to get the attention of those gatekeepers, it doesn't matter how good your content is, no one will ever find you.
Also, would it not make sense to look at writing even from a more indirect point? For example, millions of people enjoyed the creativity of the /Friends/ writers, without actually reading a single word. Should they be counted as successful as a book writer with millions of readers?
I don't think it's greedy either, but it's also obviously past the point of "can I make a living doing this". After all, median individual income is less than half of that.
"a living" and "the kind of living I want" are different things, obviously.
> I've made that as a pitching coach and umpire throughout my career, why not hope for it as a pitcher?
Writer/editor are fundamentally different roles than novelist. In the former, the people with the up front capital already know what they want, at least in a more concrete sense than "something that makes us more money than we put in." The focus is on selling whatever makes them money, whether it's a product or a trade publication or ad space. They don't really need the best, they just want to avoid the worst so that the writing/editing doesn't bring down the rest of the product, magazine, marketing, etc. That's where most of that $100k comes from: the value writing/editing brings to the rest of the operation that is actually generating the cash.
As a novelist, you are the product. Your story & marketability, the quality of your prose, how closely you follow the cultural zeitgeist, and so on become the dominant factors. Instead of derisking the money making part of the operation, you the risky money making operation. Such roles are almost universally on a bimodal income distribution. Major league pitchers get paid anywhere from a few hundred thousand to tens of millions but the next run down is the AAA leagues, which pay at most $50k a year. There are far more people making $100k/year supporting the pitchers than there are pitchers making $100k.
Think of it from an economics perspective (rough math here): according to [1] "only 690 million print books were sold in 2019 in the U.S. in all publishing categories combined, both fiction and nonfiction." Lets assume physical to e-book sales are 1:1 (they're not) so a total of 1.4 billion books sold. Let's assume the average price per book is $20 (a tad high). There were 17.1 million new cars sold that year, lets assume at an average of $30k each (a tad low). That's a total market of $28 billion vs $513 billion dollars. Assuming 30% cost of goods sold for the former and 70% COGS for the latter that's $21 billion left over for the novelists or $153 billion gross profit from selling the cars.
Now there's certainly lots of room for you to make $100k/year as a novelist in that $28 billion but that is for all novelists in the US and - I suspect - academic textbook authors are probably making a disproportionate chunk of that money while inflating the average price per book. My assumption is very little of that $153 billion goes to writers but that number includes over 16,000 dealerships, all of whom need their copy for sales and marketing. The average dealership in the US sells 500-1000 cars a year with upwards of $10-20 million per year revenue so $100k/year for a writer would be a drop in the bucket for them, especially with freelancers. Multiply that by all the other industries and the numbers grow to overwhelming amounts: if 0.01% of $21+ trillion in general industry spending (going by GDP) goes to writers in a gaussian distribution, there's going to be a lot more $100k/year authors in that group than among novelists.
[1] https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publish...
What I am asking is, is it possible for me, who already has a niche audience for my writing, to have those followers support me as a writer? Can I add enough value to that small audience, that they want to pay to subscribe to my work? Would 1,000 people pay $100/year? Or 2,000 people pay $50/year?
This is different from selling books. It's selling a platform.
It STILL might not work. And I STILL might never reach that income. But it's an entirely new way to think about books and publishing and I'm curious to see if there's still a path for fiction writers in there somewhere....
That's a completely different concept that a novelist so data from the classic publishing industry are likely useless. You'll have to find out for yourself ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I know of some niches that certainly are supporting multiple independent authors at that amount per year or more, but they're all unique markets in their own right and I'd hesitate to extrapolate one from the other. In truth, I'd call most of those people analysts who write well and the few who work in fiction have semi-formulaic/restricted niches like writing material for GMs of hardcore D&D groups. Hardly work that allows one to flourish artistically.
tldr: Short answer: no. Long answer: ...is left as an exercise for the reader.
He asked me whether he had mentioned, in any of the papers of the Rambler, the description in Virgil of the entrance into Hell, with an application to the press; 'for,' said he, 'I do not much remember them'. I told him, 'No.' Upon which he repeated it:
Vestibulum ante ipsum, primisque in faucibus orci,
Luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae;
Pallentesque habitant Morbi, tristisque Senectus,
Et Metus, et malesuada Fames, et turpis Egestas,
Terribiles visu formae; Lethumque, Laborque.
[Footnote: Just in the gate, and in the jaws of hell,
Revengeful cares, and sullen sorrows dwell;
And pale diseases, and repining age;
Want, fear, and famine's unresisted rage;
Here toils and death, and death's half-brother, sleep,
Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep. DRYDEN.]
(entry of Thursday, 14th October)
And this at almost a million dollars: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.modelmaker...
I'm not sure if these are outliers, and my "random" sampling is just picking out highly visible apps. But I've made good money off an app built in a month, and I've made relatively little from a book written in 3 months.
Software has a lot more variety. You can make say, a communist themed productivity app vs a forest themed one and these will appeal to different people.
I often suspect we haven't noticed the inflationary effects on this as a "high" salary as much as we otherwise would because of the psychological effect of the change from five to six figures. Yeah, the median salary is low, but that's been well-covered elsewhere about how it hasn't risen in line with costs or upper-percentile income - so think of this as just another example of "here's a field where you can't make a comfortable income anymore."
My assumption is almost certainly yes--provided you made it through the big publisher gatekeepers. (And were able to parlay that into shelf space at the store.)
- People probably read more books. There were fewer other demands on attention, whether YouTube, social media, online content generally, etc. I certainly read books far less than I used to.
- There was less competition once you got through the aforementioned gatekeepers.
- There was less discounting. Books used to be sold at list price. And, subsequently, maybe at a small discount in some places.
- Publishers often provided support with marketing activities.
(1) The idea of the "midlist novel" or "paperback original" basically disappeared for a couple decades -- these are the old mass market paperbacks that you used to see all the time, about 4.25" by 7", that you almost never see anymore. (So, there was a kind of discounting: softcover books were a lot cheaper, even when adjusted for inflation.) There were authors who made a good living pumping out these midlist books at the rate of one or even two a year. The self-publishing boom has brought this back to a degree as ebook originals, although I've talked to more than a few ebook-first indie authors who insist they need to get out four or more books a year to make a living, so it's arguably harder for most. And of course that "most" is "most of those who manage to make a living that way," which is, well, not actually most!
(2) Short story rates used to be much, much higher than they are now when adjusted for inflation, to the point where there were people who made a successful living selling primarily -- or even exclusively! -- short fiction. I've never been able to get a good read, pun intended, on what happened here, other than a nebulous sense that readers' tastes just changed over the years (the "fewer other demands on attention" you mention was likely a big part of that), and those markets became less viable.
If you've got a larger reader base and lots of competition, you can pay a lot for content. If you don't, you can't. The various TV subscription services are playing the same game that the sci-fi magazines used to; they pay a huge amount to produce content for recurring revenue, in fairly tight competition with the other streaming services to have the best stuff. (Think the expanse vs the mandalorian vs unbounded quantities of star trek.) The primary medium for consuming sci-fi changed as it went more mainstream, but also magazines died generally.
I'd also note that some of the better SF short story writers these days tend to write in a mix of genres and often publish in places like The New Yorker.
For example Penguin, which was launched in the 30s to provide cheap literary paperbacks for the mass market - a kind of cultural levelling up instead of dumbing down.
Now publishing houses are relatively small departments in unimaginably huge media corporations. Penguin is now part of Penguin Random House which is part of Bertelsmann, which also owns BMG (Bertelsmann Music), RTL TV/Radio in Europe, and Arvato, which is a general purpose corporate offering logistics, finance, IT.
So it's not a family-owned business any more. And it is much more business than family, with the usual MBA culture of targets, ROI, and the rest.
I'd imagine the number of books sold per year is strictly increasing.
If it's growing because of one extremely voracious reader buying up every book they can get their hands on, that's a scenario that favours more obscure authors.
Harry Potter was good (in the first few anyway), but if you like that type of thing there are ton of much better books that never made it.
I read the first few HP, and thought they were dreadful, and thus never read the later ones, so maybe I'm not the person you want advice from, but here are some recommendations of novels/novelists in the same genre (fantasy novels, written for children, that hold up for adults):
Nearly anything by Dianna Wynne Jones, but I particularly enjoyed The Lives of Christopher Chant, Archer's Goon, and of course Howl's Moving Castle.
Susan Cooper's famous Dark is Rising series. Half the series is more normal-kid (starting with Greenwitch), half is more special-magic-kid (starting with The Dark is Rising).
Garth Nix's Old Kingdom, starting with Sabriel.
While China Mieville is very much not a children's author (really! don't buy a random mieville book for your young niece/nephew, really don't!), Un-Lun-Dun is an amazing book in this genre.
https://ideas.bkconnection.com/10-awful-truths-about-publish...
Also you'd think last year might have led to more people reading books.
These are the authors that basically keep the lights on for the publisher. Overall though, profitable publishing is a business of breakout hits, the authors that sell 50,000+ copies and hit the best seller lists. Failed first-time authors and mid-list authors may mostly cancel each other out on profit, and it's those few hits that push publishers into the black.
This paints a picture of media forms along some continuum, which describes what you're looking for.
[1] Media Literacy, W. James Potter
I suspect there is now a middle ground that didn't exist before: In the 1970s you were either selling >10,000 copies, or you weren't a published author. 'Self-publishing' had a reputation as a scam to extract money from naive would-be authors. (I'm not sure what the academic book market was like at the time)
It's only with the rise of ebooks and print-on-demand that niche, low-selling authors have become a thing.
Academic presses are also mostly very low volume. But academics don't expect to make a living from selling books (at least not directly - books help to establish reputations which can help you in the academic job market).
Vanity publishers would tell every author their work had great sales potential, then charge them $2000 for $500 worth of editing, printing and marketing - so authors would not only fail to make money, they would actually make a large loss.
As to whether either form of self-publishing 'scam' or not, that depends on the expectations of the author. I think it's always been common to publish just to be published with no expectation of making money, hence the 'vanity'. But I have no data to back that up.
Today you can decide how much your editor is worth. If your grammar and spelling is good you can pay less, or if you know it is bad (like me) you can pay extra until the quality is where you want it. You might even have a friend who will do the early editing for free (a trained editor shouldn't be wasted on spell check duties, but they are probably worth it once you think the book is done for final tweaks) Whatever this investment is, you can limit the costs.
Low selling authors have been a big thing since always, because there are a huge number of markets that are small enough that it was (and is) not unusual for publishers in smaller markets to print on the order of a few hundred books per run for unknown authors.
E.g. in Norway (where Kjell Hallbing/Louis Masterson is from), 10k sold used to mean you were a big deal, and high up on the bestseller lists.
Like, for example, let's just consider authors and video game creators. Let's suppose that in the fifties, before video games, there were, say, 100,000 full-time fiction authors in the US. (That number sounds awfully high to me, but maybe.) Today, according to this article, there can only be at most about 7,000 full time fiction authors in the US. But according to this page[1], there are 260,000 people working in the videogaming industry. So if we only consider these two industries, that's 160,000 more people getting paid full time wages to create entertainment.
That's sad if you want to be an author, but if you're concerned about the overall creation mix of society, then maybe it's not so sad.
[1]: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/employment/vid...
And the slice of the videogaming industry that is analogous to authors is probably a vastly smaller proportion than of print fiction publishing because there is so much more non-authorial stuff to do.
I have to admit I'm a little surprised. I would have thought by now the videogame industry would be bigger than books, but maybe it's not.
$1000 * 12 < $100,000
"But there used to be another way. When Alexandre Dumas debuted The Count of Monte Cristo it was published as a feuilleton—a portion of the weekly newspaper devoted to fiction. From August 1844 to January 1846 his chapters were published in 18 installments for The Journal des Débats, a newspaper that went out to 9,000 to 10,000 paying subscribers in France—and readers were rapt by it.
In the forward to a 2004 translation of the book, the writer Luc Sante wrote: “The effect of the serials, which held vast audiences enthralled… is unlike any experience of reading we are likely to have known ourselves, maybe something like that of a particularly gripping television series. Day after day, at breakfast or at work or on the street, people talked of little else.”
It was basically “Game of Thrones.” Readers could not wait to get their hands on the next chapter and that bode very well for the writer who was not only paid by the newspaper in real-time for his work (by the word), but also grew the popularity of his work over the entirety of the time it was being published.
“The ‘Presse’ pays nearly 300 francs per day for feuilletons to Alexandre Dumas, George Sand, De Balzac, Frederic Soulé, Theophile Gautier, and Jules Sandeau,” Littell’s Little Age, Volume 10 wrote in 1846. “But what will the result be in 1848? That each of these personnages will have made from 32,000 to 64,000 francs per annum for two or three years for writing profitable trash of the color of the foulest mud in Paris?”
That “profitable trash” earned those writers an annual salary of between $202,107 to $404,213 in today’s dollars—and the obvious disdain of that Littell writer who, even then preferred the merits of a bound and published book. The same volume goes on to say that Dumas earned about 10,000 francs ($65,743 today) per installment when he was poached from The Presse by The Constitutionnel in 1845."
https://ellegriffin.substack.com/p/publishing-industry-truth
You need to look back at the recent past and not just the most successful authors to see what the trends are. Is a random sampling of 100 authors from 2000 making more than those in 2019? Has the total number of books sold sharply declined?
Agreed. Most writers do it because they love writing, not because they expect $100k/year. The money comes after the success. I wish her luck
The funny thing about writing is that writers mostly hate writing. Writers like being writers. They also like having written books. But the process, they despise.
This is very different from other arts. Musicians enjoy playing music a lot. Performers, in general, love to perform. Even painters, I think, like to paint.
Not writers.
I do also think that the expectation/standard of a $100k/year salary is a bit high. That's almost double the US median household income, for a job that can be done (some would argue is best done) from a house in the woods. I also know that some authors are turning to Patreon. N.K. Jemisen famously started a Patreon that allowed her to quit her job and begin writing full-time. I personally have donated >$100 directly to favorite midlist authors who have made a big impact on my reading life.
FWIW, I used to read more, but I still buy at least three or four full-priced books a year.