When ebooks first came on the scene, self-publishing was profitable. Due to relatively low competition, new authors and new releases could get traction with minimal marketing budgets. At the time, it seemed the great equalizer we'd all been waiting for had finally arrived.
Nowadays, ebooks is a huge industry with thousands of new releases every day. Word on the street is 10k-30k of marketing spend per year is required to generate any sales at all.
It's maybe the case that books as a whole is a winner-takes-all market. Is there a model could we create to bolster out the middle? If you look at sales data, you'll see the #1 bestseller sells more than 10x more copies than #2 on the list. It just makes economical sense for the big publishers to focus on their bestsellers.
There's so many high quality books being published each day. It's overwhelming! I guess all we can do is continue our patronage for the authors we like, to trust the recommendations from people we respect, and to be willing to try out new authors and new releases.
When working on a book for 2 years nets a $30k advance and it's unlikely to payout. It feels the incentives to pursue writing full-time are increasingly diminishing. Sometimes I wonder if for the majority of people who'd like to pursue authorship that doing so part-time is the only choice.
irq-1•52m ago
> Is there a model could we create to bolster out the middle?
Extend Copyright? (no, no..)
I have two ideas:
- Recommendations. Publishers connect with private LLM/Agents for custom recommendations. They'd need to keep reviews private, but could trade them among themselves.
- Insurance Pool. Authors could add works to a pool of books, and the profits could be split. Publishers would need to maintain the quality of books or authors won't join.
prerok•41m ago
You mean like an authorship coop? Might work, but the main problem is authors' self importance. Not a single author I know of would opt for it. They are all just impoverished millionares.
For less narcissistic authors it may well work, though. Will pitch it, thanks for the idea!
Telemakhos•50m ago
> There's so many high quality books being published each day.
Great is the stream of the Assyrian river, but much filth of earth and much refuse it carries on its waters. And not of every water do the Melissae carry to Deo, but of the trickling stream that springs from a holy fountain, pure and undefiled, the very crown of waters.
prerok•48m ago
I think part-time is indeed the only option and has been for a long long time. The e-books only shortly promised a disruption until it fell apart. As you say, partly due to advertising, but partly also due to being no editor. Editors can be both an annoyance but they are also a blessing, because they can advise as to what works and what does not.
If most people will just read one book per year, or better yet, will choose which one book to give to someone else (not having read it at all), of course they will choose #1.
I vividly remember the disappointment I felt when I gave #2 to an acquaintance (where I read both 1 and 2 and genuinely liked the one I gave better), only to be told that I gave the #2 and why didn't they receive the #1, and if that meant anything. Ok, off on a tangent, but geez that still hurts :(
dingnuts•41m ago
> If you look at sales data, you'll see the #1 bestseller sells more than 10x more copies than #2 on the list
All commercial art follows this pattern, a Pareto Distribution[0]. The top musician gets 10x what #2 does. Same with athletes. On and on. The rule applies to many competitive fields. The sky is blue, but it's astute of you to notice.
I don't think there have ever been any particular incentives to become a full-time writer. Most of us have read articles or books (Graydon Carter's) that have recently talked about the huge sums paid to some journalists 20 or 40 years ago, but the ratio of aspiring writers to well-paid writers has always yielded very high numbers.
It's the same in all creative professions, and even more so for those that grant visibility. I think most would be fine considering this activity as a part-time commitment, instead of chasing something that has little chance of coming true. Of course, you can't be a part-time athlete and aspire to greatness, but I don't think the same applies to writing, for example.
Now, we are in the realm of anecdotes, but the novel “Il Gattopardo,” which I consider to be among the top three Italian, and perhaps European, novels of the 20th century, was written by an amateur who did not even send the manuscript out to be considered for publication. It was discovered after Tomasi di Lampedusa's death by Giorgio Bassani, a talented writer who did not write full-time and who had incredible success with some fantastic novels, such as "Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini" (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis).
Finnucane•26m ago
None of this is new, it has been this way for decades. It just gets worse as the industry gets more concentrated, and the publishers are more tightly controlled by media conglomerates and equity investors who treat them as black boxes for the extraction of value. I haven't worked on the acquisitions side in a long time, but practically everything in this article could have been written thirty years ago. The midlist where you'd try to grow a new author's audience was already being squeezed out.
nemomarx•20m ago
I feel like part of this is that ebooks basically exist on Amazon and a few other large store fronts. Maybe if each niche had their own markets you could try and compete in smaller pools?
babblingfish•1h ago
Nowadays, ebooks is a huge industry with thousands of new releases every day. Word on the street is 10k-30k of marketing spend per year is required to generate any sales at all.
It's maybe the case that books as a whole is a winner-takes-all market. Is there a model could we create to bolster out the middle? If you look at sales data, you'll see the #1 bestseller sells more than 10x more copies than #2 on the list. It just makes economical sense for the big publishers to focus on their bestsellers.
There's so many high quality books being published each day. It's overwhelming! I guess all we can do is continue our patronage for the authors we like, to trust the recommendations from people we respect, and to be willing to try out new authors and new releases.
When working on a book for 2 years nets a $30k advance and it's unlikely to payout. It feels the incentives to pursue writing full-time are increasingly diminishing. Sometimes I wonder if for the majority of people who'd like to pursue authorship that doing so part-time is the only choice.
irq-1•52m ago
Extend Copyright? (no, no..)
I have two ideas:
- Recommendations. Publishers connect with private LLM/Agents for custom recommendations. They'd need to keep reviews private, but could trade them among themselves.
- Insurance Pool. Authors could add works to a pool of books, and the profits could be split. Publishers would need to maintain the quality of books or authors won't join.
prerok•41m ago
For less narcissistic authors it may well work, though. Will pitch it, thanks for the idea!
Telemakhos•50m ago
Great is the stream of the Assyrian river, but much filth of earth and much refuse it carries on its waters. And not of every water do the Melissae carry to Deo, but of the trickling stream that springs from a holy fountain, pure and undefiled, the very crown of waters.
prerok•48m ago
If most people will just read one book per year, or better yet, will choose which one book to give to someone else (not having read it at all), of course they will choose #1.
I vividly remember the disappointment I felt when I gave #2 to an acquaintance (where I read both 1 and 2 and genuinely liked the one I gave better), only to be told that I gave the #2 and why didn't they receive the #1, and if that meant anything. Ok, off on a tangent, but geez that still hurts :(
dingnuts•41m ago
All commercial art follows this pattern, a Pareto Distribution[0]. The top musician gets 10x what #2 does. Same with athletes. On and on. The rule applies to many competitive fields. The sky is blue, but it's astute of you to notice.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution
borroka•20m ago
It's the same in all creative professions, and even more so for those that grant visibility. I think most would be fine considering this activity as a part-time commitment, instead of chasing something that has little chance of coming true. Of course, you can't be a part-time athlete and aspire to greatness, but I don't think the same applies to writing, for example.
Now, we are in the realm of anecdotes, but the novel “Il Gattopardo,” which I consider to be among the top three Italian, and perhaps European, novels of the 20th century, was written by an amateur who did not even send the manuscript out to be considered for publication. It was discovered after Tomasi di Lampedusa's death by Giorgio Bassani, a talented writer who did not write full-time and who had incredible success with some fantastic novels, such as "Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini" (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis).