Re: "The Elusive E-book" and the elephant in the room

> If book sales stopped, then I'd be worried that people no longer are  
> willing to pay for quality, especially with so many "free  
> alternatives" To follow your line of thinking to it's natural  
> conclusion, then there should be no one paying for anything since  
> all they have to do is fire up their computer.
>
> This hasn't happened and I don't believe it will ever happen.

Give it a generation. I see a lot of questions on Yahoo Answers, "is  
this good?" or "how do I publish this?" and the snippets are not only  
the most imaginable dreck, they are also cliched, ungrammatical and  
not showing even a modicum of writing talent. The big problem coming  
is that it used to be that people knew what they liked and it was  
genre. Now, people know what they like and it doesn't even require  
moderately correct grammar and spelling... because most people  
themselves don't know foreword from forward and lie from lay.

The trend may not have bottomed out yet, but it's accelerating.

> A paying structure will always encourage (hopefully) the best and  
> brightest to take pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

If it worked, it might. I do think that the current structure rewards  
the lucky and the persistent over the truly talented. Even if you are  
truly talented, you still have to get found y the right person, on the  
right day, when that person's socks are the right level of tightness.

> As a former journalist, it is often bandied about how we would do it  
> for free. This has helped keep salaries low and a complete fallacy I  
> might add. But I'm sure doctors also like to help people but no one  
> goes into medicine expecting to "get by"

Hear, hear!

> You may get one book out of a person for the "sheer joy of telling  
> that story." But without some economic incentives, there may be more  
> than a few "on-off" authors. They may write that "brilliant" book,  
> but you'd be hard pressed to get anything more out of them as they  
> have bills to pay and families to feed.

That's happening to a midlist author I know. She got four books out  
last year. This year, she is getting divorced, holding a full time  
job, caring for her kids and ferrying them around to elite sports and  
associated doctors, and she is struggling to get ONE book out... a  
book which will pay for extras but will not support her.

> It's simple economics. People would prefer to earn their living  
> doing what they love. For some it is medicine, others teaching, and  
> writers want to earn their living writing.
>
> Take away that economic incentive and we will see very few new  
> writers indeed.

I disagree. We will see LOTS of new writers. New writers have endless  
stores of dreams to dash. There will always be new dreamers. What we  
will not see is many mature writers. Money is what gives people the  
incentive to mature, to grow, to master the craft. Money is what keeps  
people in the game beyond the day when their mother says, "hon, you're  
35, its time to get a real job." Cut out the mid-list and you'll have  
only the blockbuster that can be predicted--and that's DARN FEW of  
them. If we eviscerate the mid-list, who will write the breakout novels?

dej

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