The sun cast beautiful rays across the foggy ground this morning. I got a picture of it (only because I went out early)…By the time I got out there, most of it had burned off, but it was still good to get out and moving.
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I do hope that those suggesting scraping content from the Internet at least had to decency to point out that you need to make sure said content is legally available for that purpose – say, Project Gutenberg or one of the other sites collecting public domain. Of course, there’s already a stupid number of people doing this…
I think this article shares your views.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-simon/calling-bullshit-on-autho_b_5826548.html
Indeed.
“Each book is the unique, quirky creation of a lonely, intense, and often expensive struggle on the part of a single individual.”
If this were true, the authors wouldn’t be caught in the Hachette vs. Amazon thing – they’d be indie publishers like … oh… Sar.
Oh, and:
“But books are not consumer goods. Books cannot be written more cheaply, nor can authors be outsourced to China.”
Have you *READ* a formula romance? Those can almost be written by computer program, much less by someone who writes English fairly well over in China. And let’s be honest – the formula romance category sales put SciFi to absolute shame. A major success in the SciFi or Fantasy field is a slow month for one of the volumes in the half-dozen any particular formula imprint puts out each month – and there’s a dozen or more imprints – five or six from each publisher. Sure, a major release by Stephen King, or a new Harry Potter novel, might sell in the millions over several years – but those Harlequins and Silhouettes and other lines sell 500K a month, month after month after month.
Yeah. That sentence had my hackles up, too. Not because of the silly outsourcing crack but the issue is not about writing them cheaply. Almost every book published in the US today was written on spec – not on an advance. That’s about as “cheap” as you can get.
The issue is the cost of publication. That *can* be done more cheaply. I prove that every day. There’s probably a middle ground between “banged out in my basement” and “artfully contrived in stupidly expensive office space on Fifth Avenue, printed en masse in Canada, and stored it some of the largest warehouses in New Jersey.”
The reality is that books are priced the way they are because publishers – who were the arbiters of the industry for going on a century – are no longer in touch with their own business. If the smarten up, we’ll all get much better at what we do.
I for one, not being an author (aspiring or otherwise), would love to see you write something on the publishing industry and on your own publishing experiences. You sound (and have sounded) more passionate about the topic than any other on your recent walks. I think it would be a great read and a valuable resource for someone who might want not to make the mistakes you made and who could benefit from your understanding of the actual underlying business model. Whatever you decide to write, I’ll be happy to read it.
Mostly I would like to see you get on a roll and not beat yourself up for not writing when life happens… Be well.