Pulped e-Fiction on those Dark High Seas

I mentioned in an earlier post about the similarities between now and the Depression Era in respect to writers. Well, then I discovered this on You-Tube by the UFO.com channel:

It’s well worth the watch, as a fine hymn to latter day – and quite important – writing, but also as a nod to what’s happening now. With so many mid-list authors being forced down self-publication via e-readers, and selling at just 99p or equivalent, it’s evident that many writers – while they are being published – are just not earning much money and certainly not enough to live on, as in the Depression Era. It’s these conditions that depress me the most – that it’s looking more likely that earning a living out of publishing is going to be based on volume than anything else, especially in e-publishing. Also, it means many fine writers are just going to fall off the face of the earth.

It’s definitely a struggle at the moment. While it’s argued this is a golden age for writers to get read (it’s easier than ever to be self-published), for writers who want to make a career out of writing, it’s probably worse now than it has been for a long time. Opportunities that might have been there before are now closed, maybe permanently as mainstream publishing tries to rally itself. For the writer, who has problems churning out maybe a couple of hundred thousand words a year, maybe a lot less, it’s not looking good at all.

Add to this, that writers have to eat and look after their families and I wonder how long this can all last for, and how long writers have the stamina to keep going before saying, “That’s enough for me…”

It’s also a good argument against those cretins arguing that all books and entertainment should be free, that it’s okay to pirate books. Sure, I understand things are tough for everyone, but if you don’t pay a writer, then those books aren’t gonna get written, okay? That’s the biggest difference between now and the Depression. Back then, people paid for that little bit of light while things were so dark; these days it’s far easier to steal that light, which just makes the darkness a little darker in the end, folks.

(I promise my next post will be less gloomy, btw…)