Re: Re: Paul Krugman holds forth on the future of publishing

From: "Jon Jermey"

As Aaron has said, you have now given focus to your remarks and 
this makes your perspective understandable.   But you still do 
not have understanding of the process or the markets.

> We need to distinguish here between 'production' and 'adding
> value'. If I write a novel on 300 sheets of white paper I
> have been productive, but I probably haven't added value,
> because people who in the past would have paid good money
> for 300 sheets of white paper will not now pay that.

You are assuming you can apply mass production-line economics to 
book writing;  I doubt if you can even apply that to simple 
'how-to' books.   There is one professor who applies your ideas 
through a computer model by trawling the net automatically for 
statistical information and making these up in to ebooks which 
are offered at various prices, some of them in the hundreds of 
dollars.

That superficially makes a point about ease of 'writing', but 
otherwise diverts ignificantly from your model.

>
> How do I determine if I have added 'demonstrable' value? By
> trying to sell the stuff. How do I determine if my
> novel-writing was the most productive way of spending my
> time? By trying to sell the stuff in a free market, and
> seeing if I make more money than I could have made doing
> anything else. And a 'free market' doesn't involve
> suppressing or restricting access to competing reading
> material. That just turns everyone else into losers.

Now, you see, you have allowed yourself to get obsessed by the 
money measurement, and by trying to shoe in the creative process 
into the non-creative world of goods manufacture.   They differ 
so much it is hardly worth the argument.

But getting carried away on the economics language does not mean 
you are  floating on the right river.   I have tried to explain 
that economics is largely an explanation of what has happened. 
While there may be common themes to pick up to estimate the 
future with there are no genuine laws, except perhaps the 
observations relating to supply and demand.

Experience curves work for a while until the unforeseen 
alteration in the basics of a situation.    Thus the financial 
markets were blithely assuming that the one model was going to 
produce new yachts for ever, and no economist accepted that the 
seeds of that destruction were set about ten years ago, nor that 
the  inevitablity of disaster lay in the actions of Reagan and 
Thatcher in the 1980s.

There will soon be books explaining that!

>
> If the burger shop would have paid me $5000 for the same
> time spent flipping burgers, and I lose money on my novel,
> then I haven't been using my time in the most productive way
> and society is more than $5000 worse off as a result. This
> is all just Economics 101. If I've got more than $5000 worth
> of fun out of writing my novel then that's OK, but if not,
> then I'm not entitled to sit and whine about how society
> 'ought' to pay me better. I just need to get a real job.

Well, just maybe, flipping those burgers might create the seeds 
of a novel [search out 'The Egg and I']- of course you might say 
that the writer ought then to pay MacDonalds for the idea... 
;-)  I would think you even more nuts than you are sounding to my 
ear,

>
> So -- getting back to basics -- my initial response was to
> the claim "Writers deserve to make a living". No. Nobody
> deserves to make a living unless they produce something
> somebody else values sufficiently to pay for it.

This is perhaps the core of disagreement.   In apparent terms 
your words echo De Maupassant's 'The Ant and the Grasshopper', 
where the grasshopper has been idle all summer and has no winter 
store and the ants point out he should have been industrious like 
them.

But his ignores the reality that modern production means no one 
has to sing for their supper any more;   we are awash with the 
oversupply of goods and the desperation of salesmen to find new 
ways of getting us to buy.   Explain to me why, in a time of 
glut, any member of society should be excluded from a living.

>
> Unfortunately the wrong-headed belief that producing words
> on paper is somehow inherently virtuous and should be
> rewarded regardless of its commercial value runs deep: maybe
> it's a hangover from our largely pre-literate ancestors.

'Virtuous' is not a word or claim any of us would use;  plebianly 
'worthy' perhaps from time to time.   But what do you mean here? 
And who are these 'largely pre-literate ancestors'.    Societies 
are known to be literate at least 5000 years ago, and it may be 
that the Hindu language dates back 10,000 years.   But we 
actually don't know whether there was literacy before - it seems 
somewhere around 10,000 years ago there was a world wide disaster 
of flooding.   We certainly know that ancient Babylon ran a 
society commercially very similar to this day and age.

Literacy can probably come out only of a society beyond The Ant 
and The Grasshopper, where surplus is made.

I
> don't know about the US but here in Australia there are
> plenty of tax-funded grants for writers and other creative
> artists; and as a result we see a steady stream of
> unsaleable rubbish presented under the name of 'art' by
> people who could be spending their time getting off welfare
> and doing something useful.
>
> Jon.

I would have no intention of defending any part of this, just as 
I recognise that our Tate Gallery and the Turner Prize it runs 
have got into the hands of fools and charlatans.   But my view 
denies neither the fact of quality art, nor the importance of 
prizes and awards.

But, by setting your telescope to the blind eye, like Nelson, you 
are ignoring the evidence that is large on the horizon.    The 
creative process is not production-line and the best test of 
demand, but not necessarily of quality, is the marketplace IF, 
and it is a big IF, the marketplace is a level field.

As to the supports for some writers that have drawn your wrath 
well, very often, they do indeed produce that 'writing for hire' 
quality.   Surely that is the last thing you really want to 
encourage?

Joseph Harris


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