From: marotta@hannah.enet.DEC.COM ("Hurt not the Earth, neither the sea, nor the trees.   16-Dec-1992 1508", Revelations 7:3)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Writers who get paid too little (used to be Co-authored books)
Date: 16 Dec 92 20:08:48 GMT

Curtis Yarvin writes:

>There's nothing like a flagrantly bogus economic analysis to bring the
>troglodytes out of their caves.  It's the 300-pound ferret of human
>discourse.

I agree 100%!  Look at the voter turnout for the 1992 Presidential
Election.  Everyone thinks we only have to solve the national
deficit problem; then we can all go back to the happy careless habits
of the 1950s.  

>Indeed, though, we need resort to no principle more arcane than the law of
>supply and demand.  For whatever reason, perhaps because they enjoy it,
>though the mechanics of this odd perversion have been lamentably
>underinvestigated by the neurobiological community, people are willing to
>write books for a wage that your average Somalian refugee would not accept
>were his only duty the regular consumption of fresh peaches.

>Furthermore, there are far more people willing and able to write good books
>than there is demand for those books.

Oh, Please!  I doubt many readers would agree that there are many
writers out there *capable* of producing a good book!   One drawback
to a supply-demand economy is that supplies need not be of high
quality to compete; the retail market today is glutted with
low-quality goods.  The consumer today buys goods without regard to
quality.

I fail to see how the writer can drive up the payment for her hours
of hard labor: what choices do publishing contracts leave for writers?

On the other hand, so many poor and simply awful books are published and
distributed.  The publishers seem to have little or no sense of
quality and pride.  The consumers seem to be buying this dreck,
though I certainly do not understand why!

I do not blame writers for selling their work to publishers for lower
charges than they deserve.  I blame publishers for lack of
discrimination and I blame consumers who are willing to pay for poor
prose and unending series of repetative plots and devices.

When the writer of a fabulous novel, as Guy Gavriel Kay, the author
of "Tigana" and "The Fionavar Tapestry," competes for bookstore shelf
space against the unending and deadly undead, such as Zelazny and L.
Ron Hubbard, not to mention Star Trek novels and Pern novels, books
that are obviously whacked out at the rate of 1 per week and never
copy-edited or proofread, I think the question of quality comes to
the fore.  If it takes Kay 2 1/2 years to prepare, present, and
publish his masterpieces, maybe he won't make as much money as a
Piers Anthony reusing his tired plots and cardboard characters,
changing only the titles of his novels to suit the cover art, but Kay
satisfies my need for higher conciousness and thoughtful perception
where Anthony only wastes my time.

I take action in my own small way, by purchasing novels by well-loved
authors in hardcover.  For the few experimental sojourns into works
by new authors or those I've both loved and hated, I purchase
paperback editions, or, better still, borrow from the public library.

What else can the lowly consumer do, other than to refuse to pay
hard-earned dollars for poor quality goods?

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written