Australians’ love of cheap books is driving independent bookstores and writers out of business. These prominent authors believe there is a simple solution.
Maybe the invisible hand of the market belongs to an illiterate fool?
FBP seems like a bandaid in a car crash. Capitalism isn’t a good framework for
anything except making like 100 awful people disgustingly wealthymaking and distrubuting cultural artefacts. Book are just hard to make and hard to enjoy relative to Netflix slop and video games etc.books are hard to make compared to tv/movies and video games?? how?
Because outside of some textbooks they are almost entirely solitary efforts until editing, which is a very difficult thing to pull off. They have smaller audiences, take longer to ‘consume’, can’t be sold for as larger margins, and they are not easy to monetise in other ways aside from sale. Additionally physical copies are much more expensive to make than digital copies of media, and many book enjoyers want physical copies.
Just look around, nobody gets rich making books. Mass market tv/film and video games are staggering profitable by comparison, and hence easier and more attractive to make.
you’re right, it’s definitely easier to market and push a high budget movie or game and make a ton of money off of it. I guess I was thinking of total labor involved in publishing a book vs a movie without considering whether it will actually be read/watched
Oh right, yeah that is a correct thing to be confused by. I was talking market and you were talking effort and we were both probably thinking: what the fuck sort of idiot is this person? :p
It’s just generally true that being an indie creative while having to pay rent or get thrown to the street to starve and die is very difficult. People with vision and drive make the most valuable culture, and capitalism sees that as inefficient.
they are not easy to monetise in other ways aside from sale
Well, there’s also licensing the rights to adapt into movies or video games. And I think Amazon has a Netflix-like service for books? (I don’t know, because I never use Amazon whenever possible. I suspect it’s probably not a great deal for authors, just like streaming music is bad for musicians, etc .) And of course there’s libraries, which don’t receive nearly enough support themselves, but I believe do give some form of compensation to authors. And people who write frequent but shorter works can work on a patron model.
Not that I disagree with your underlying point. The finances with books are very difficult. There are other options though. Unfortunately the major publishers are really bad at exploring them, because they’re very old and very set in their ways.
Ah yes, “Your inner fish, the video game”. I can see it now. “Debt: the first 5000 years the Netflix series” rivetting viewing.
Margins on books are awful, authors are largely paid a lump sum for publishing because they need food and sales on a book are often quite small. Like a few thousand small. Keep in mind you also need money while you are writing a book before it’s being sold.
Patreon models and self publishing only works for smut and pulp.
Patreon, as I said, only works for things being published in small chunks regularly. Smut and pulp are definitely within that category (and there’s nothing wrong with either style of writing!), but it can also work for certain types of non-fiction writing where you might be publishing your research process as you go.
Self-publishing can work for any style of writing. It’s difficult to get noticed, and most of the more successful self-publishers became so because they also have followings on other platforms like YouTube, but it is a viable option.
I’m not suggesting that any of these ideas are panaceae. Like I said, I basically agree with you that it’s difficult to be commercially successful in writing. I just wanted to point out that it’s not quite as black and white as to suggest that you can’t monetise it any way other than sales. 15 years ago people probably would have said the same thing about movies, and it’s still mostly true about video games.
I think you’re focusing on mass market stuff too much and you’re tech-brained. Publishers are basically necessary for non fiction as you need fact checkers, legal cover if making claims about humans that might sue you and research access and assistance.
Marketing help is needed for anything that isn’t already popular, income is needed while you work, editing is an extremely hard job that is a profession for a reason. Relying on something like patreon or YouTube where you have no real rights is an extremely precarious way to live open only to people with extremely specific skills around self promotion.
There are reasons beyond authors being dumbshits why Australian authors struggle and every author ever will tell you it’s a terrible way to make bread.
I’m gonna be honest, I’m here trying to have a civil and interesting conversation, and the vibe I’m getting back is just way more hostile than I’m willing to put up with.
Seems like a fairly reasonable idea. A bit Listian, which is in line with the way the economic/political world is turning now. Mild industry protections, like this seems, could be very useful for Australia.
Yeahhhh not really that much of a loss is it.
Support your local library.
Well, if you allow the logical sequence presented (whereby small and local authors are disproportionately supported by the bookstores in question), I think it’s enough of a loss to be worth collectively considering how to prevent it. This is kinda like the physical books equivalent of losing indie game devs publishing their stuff on Itch.
