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Comment by bdrool | Hacker News Reader

It really makes me sad to read the part about counting pennies and having to stretch such tiny advances while writing the books, especially when she describes her frustration at how much a framed copy that was sent by the publisher must have cost, compared to her frugal situation. It is a shame that writing down useful knowledge in a clear way is not better rewarded.

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I wish more people on HN felt this way. I often see the opposite attitude expressed here towards writers: That it is not the audience's problem whether or not the writer eats. They should pick a different job if that sort of thing matters to them. (Granted, this is typically in discussions about online content, but I think it is kind of a class divide thing. Programmers seem to often not get how fortunate and well paid they really are.)

Guitar and video game players aren't well paid either. But they don't expect to be - they do it for fun.

Isn't that fair though? Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free. Or they could get a job doing what the market wants and not enjoy it so much but get paid more. It's very much the same situation for programmers except programmers don't have the expectation that their work must be worth money just because they spent a lot of time on it. That's life for most people - our hobbies aren't usually worth as much money as our less enjoyable jobs.

http://work.chron.com/salaries-pro-gamers-26166.html

http://www.simplyhired.com/salaries-k-guitar-player-jobs.htm...

You know these aren't representative at all. Almost every video gamer and guitar player earns nothing for their activities. Those millions of 0's won't be included in the guitar player salary graph.

Yes, I am aware of that. But you are just confirming my original observation here. You are acting like writers have no right to earn a decent living. Just because people might enjoy their work does not mean they should starve or be required to get some other job they don't enjoy to pay the bills. I get tired of that insinuation.

There are programmers who enjoy their work. They don't get told they have no right to the high salaries typical of programmers because they aren't suffering enough.

You're talking to the wrong person. I entirely agree with J. K. Rowling's right to earn millions from her writing. Because that's what people were willing to pay her for it. How else can we decide how to take money from one person and give it to another besides the market? Who do you want to pay that money? The taxpayer? Are you wanting free income for every author, artist, game player or hobbiest so they don't have to suffer unpleasant work? That might well be a valid idea but it's quite different from what you said. How do you "earn" a living when you're supported by charity?

Edit: What are you proposing instead of the current market situation? Do you want publishers to do something different? Governments? GoogFaceAzons? Readers? The general populace?

These comments usually occur in discussions about online ads. That isn't charity. Your assertion that it is charity is ridiculous.

do drug smugglers deserve millions?

do cheating athletes who aren't caught deserve millions?

do patent trolls deserve millions?

do televangelists deserve millions?

do oil and mining companies that destroy the environment deserve millions?

These are different problems. We're talking about authors and artists here. How and why should authors be paid for producing work that nobody wants? Should somebody else pay authors to pursue their hobby even when it doesn't provide much value to others?

i agree its hard to know what to pay. but i think you would rather have a contented artist producing work that you were indifferent to, than a highly paid patent troll, right?

They are all producing something people are willing to pay for.

That's an argument against basing compensation on what people are willing to pay for.

> You are acting like writers have no right to earn a decent living

Correct.

Writers, programmers, football players all do not have a _right_ to earn money.

Instead, _people_ have a right to get a job to earn themselves a decent income to make a good living. If I choose to do something that doesn't result in a good enough income, then that's on me.

I tend to agree; the "right to earn a decent living" is inherently incompatible with market economy. On the market, you only have the right to accept or refuse a transaction.

On the other hand, I also believe everyone should have a right to decent life - that's why I'm for extensive social security, and would happily support basic income if someone figures out how to do it right.

I feel like people are sometimes using "right to earn a decent living" as a proxy for "right to have a decent life" in order to imply that they want to have people working for living. But I think those concepts need to be clearly separated, because the concept of "right to earn a decent living" directly interferes with self-regulatory capabilities of the market, which is why we want free markets in the first place.

"Isn't that fair though? Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

No.

When I read this I think of Bruce Perens and BusyBox. [0] BusyBox, created by Perens as a floppy rescue/boot/installer disk for Debian, written as a single binary. [1],[2] Real handy if your partition failed or you needed to install an OS or update.

This didn't stop unscrupulous companies installing BusyBox charging for it and violating the GPL licensing agreements. [3] At no time did these companies chip in to help in the development of BB. Yet they wanted (needed) the inclusion of this useful software.

This is HN, a place where smart people hang out at the intersection of technology and commerce. I posted the article as an experiment to see what possible commercial possibilities could be imagined.

    SVG is too important to the web
    to let it whither and die.

There must be some other way to continue this kind of work sustainably. What else can you think up?

Reference

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox

[1] https://busybox.net/about.html

[2] https://busybox.net/oldnews.html

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BusyBox#GPL_lawsuits

This doesn't seem like a failure to dream up a way to compensate software authors, this seems like simple copyright infringement/theft.

I don't see what this has to do with the argument that "Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

You can argue the point 2 ways

1. Bruce Perens did BusyBox for fun and gave it away for free. After words some people were bad and got sued. So what does his making it for fun and free have to do with after words people got sued

2. Bruce Perens did Busybox and fun and gave it away not for free. His price is that if you it in a product (or portions of it, details don't matter to the point) that product (or portions of it) must also be GPLed.

If you take this interpretation then we're back to the same thing, what does this story have to do with "Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

"I don't see what this has to do with the argument ... If you take this interpretation then we're back to the same thing, what does this story ..."

Complains a lot.

> After words […]

Do you mean 'afterwards' or 'after an altercation took place'?

I think he meant the former.

> If you take this interpretation then we're back to the same thing, what does this story have to do with "Writers could do it for fun and give away their work for free."

Why should writers be relegated to only ever being allowed to "do it for fun" while programmers are not?

I mean, that depends on what you are writing and programming.

If I want someone to pay me for programming, I have to write something they want. The same is true for writers.

The point the original post was making is that if not enough people want what you are writing (code or text), you can do it for fun and give it away free. You can't expect to get paid for doing something you love. It's amazing if you can, and I'm incredibly lucky that I do, but it's not something I expect.

Hopefully in the future with enough automation people can just do things for fun, and all the jobs we need can be automated. We aren't there yet - but most people can work a job and have time for hobbies in modern developed countries.

Now, arguably, there is a lot of value in this work and we should be supporting it. That may be true, but that is a separate problem. The solution to this may be getting enough people to take note and care, and this post might be a start on that.

> If I want someone to pay me for programming, I have to write something they want. The same is true for writers.

Yes, although the argument in this particular thread is that writing is ~broadly~ underrewarded and that is OK because markets. Attempting to influence a market to reward people better is considered to be a bad thing - the only way people should be able to do that is by not participating in the market, according to many. Unless it's to do with programming. But not game development.

"Selling used bubblegum also suffers from being underrewarded. I spent all this time chewing gum and nobody wants to buy it? How's that fair for me? I chewed the gum - I deserve to be paid!"

Just because you do something (regardless of the value of doing that thing) doesn't mean you deserve to be paid for doing that thing. Especially if nobody is interested in paying you to do that thing.

So yes. It is "OK because markets". If you expect to be rewarded for your writing, make sure there is a marketable interest in what you will be writing. You may have to make an MVP (maybe the first and second chapters) to test the waters, but that isn't different from a programmer needing to make an MVP to test the waters for their potential product.

The issue is that the exact same communities which decry writers for asking that they get paid what they think they're worth, will cry that the entire software development market outside the SV bubble is "unfair" to developers because it's not paying SV market prices.

They also cry about immigrants taking their jobs at lower rates, outsourcing, people choosing to hire the new grad instead of the expert, and plenty of other things that could be responded to with "it's OK because markets".

Well firstly, most of the best writing isn't produced by people that are having fun the whole time. Most of it is the result of authors showing up to work, day after day, whether they felt like it or not.

Secondly, authors aren't the only people behind a good book. As evidenced by the typical "Acknowledgements" section, there's also the reviewers, editors, typesetters, artists, as well as long-suffering spouses and kids.

But crucially, people produce their best work under some kind of coach; and coaching is not generally fun. So coaches need to be paid, which means that performers need to be paid.

Yes, that's all true. But I'm talking about the case where authors aren't making much money compared to the effort they put in. What if the end product is so unuseful or so interchangable with thousands of similar free products that nobody wants to pay for it? In that case, I think it's wrong to ask somebody to give money to such an author. They're generating a product that costs more to produce than what it's worth.

Some musicians hire expensive guitar coaches, have help from friends, hire producers to record their music and in the end they're made something that nobody wants badly enough to pay for, so it's an overall loss. I'm talking about these cases. Why should we insist that somebody pay them for their time rather than how desirable their product is?

its simply lazy thinking to assume that people are paid what they deserve. not that your point isnt generally fair, but i always feel like we go too far in the direction of assuming people are paid what they deserve.

Why has every response to my comment misinterpreted it? Do you all have an axe to grind against someone and you thought I was that someone?

I'm simply saying that many writers produce work with very little value to other people, and that those writers shouldn't expect to be paid for their "work". Nobody pays me to eat food, even though I enjoy doing that.

How is going to school, starting up a career and writing books is any different than going to school, starting up a career and writing code?

Do you think that the code we write add that much value to society? Unless you are a computer scientist and pushing the boundaries, our code will simply rot away in 4 years and nobody will remember one line of it.

The equivalent in writing for what most programmers do would be marketing, PR, journalism, or technical writing. You can get a paying job to write, it's just going to be that kind of writing - not for your Next Great American Novel. Likewise, I get paid a salary to bolt together shitty enterprise software and automate call-center workers out of jobs - not to tickle my fancy writing video games or exploring the corners of computer science.

Aren't we talking about technical writing? The problem in the OP's post are about writing a book on SVG.

I would be more likely to agree if this thread was about the issues encountered while writing a children's story book.

Writing a technical book is, as far as I was aware, well known to be a losing bet, where it's exceedingly rare that authors make back their advances. e.g. http://www.voidspace.org.uk/python/articles/technical-writin...

Who needs a book about SVG? When I needed to build charts I took couple tutorials plus searched answers on stack overflow. It's way more efficient than reading huge book.

So, such books are needed by very small group of people. And this defines the pay.

> Who needs a book about SVG? When I needed to build charts I took couple tutorials plus searched answers on stack overflow.

The people out there who pride themselves into being able to do their work without relying on googling everything? What if you have an idea or a requirement that has never been done before?

How does what people deserve have anything to do with it?

A programmer might provide $100,000 of value to a company over a year, but that doesn't mean they deserve that much, or even any given fraction of that much. People are and should be paid exactly what they can get for their work. Selling things itself is work.

"People are and should be paid exactly what they can get for their work" what? to see how this thinking makes no sense, ask yourself- chronologically, when did this become true? was it after the great depression? was it during communist china? was it before we had fiat currency and had to barter? did it happen some time recently? why? people have been paid vastly differently, including not at all, for the same work. or maybe you have a pure, survival of the fittest mentality (for lack of a better phrase), and think it has it always been true? if always... then how do you feel if stealing gets you paid more? what if lying gets you paid more? what if fucking over other people gets you paid more? having slaves was incredibly profitable. you shouldn't be paid more for that, right?

What if you can't get a job doing what the market wants?

Then you're disabled and social welfare will support you. Same as anyone else who can't get a job.

are you by any chance not in the U.S?

What about things that are for the public good but doesn't have an immediate market demand, like government-funded research grants for scientists? The market is only concerned with short-term profits, it's not the optimal allocation of resources like some would have you believe. Projects that contribute to the commons should be funded, as long as the necessary check and balances are in place.

I went into programming because I saw how well paid a profession it would be. I could have done art or linguistics or something else. I enjoy it too, but I don't expect to be paid well for making videogames so I also do work I enjoy less that pays better.

I agree with you that writers of valuable content should be compensated better, but I don't understand this attitude that one should be able to go into any job you want and expect to make a living. If you write something that people want, don't give it to them until they pay for it.

Did the publisher in Amelia's case just screw her in negotiations, or do they always underpay their writers and backload it to royalties?

"Did the publisher in Amelia's case just screw her in negotiations,"

I suppose people were just not interested in SVG so much, so not much sold books -> not much money.

This problem has not been fixed ever - Robert Frost - legendary American poet - worked at a bank while he was famous.

So... IDK. I think people just roll with it and hope it'll all click at the end.

Writers in the film and television industry fixed it, by unionizing.

But they don't get to put their name on the cover.

My company (scripted.com) is looking to add more proven experts to our writer marketplace. We would be more than happy to fast-track the author of this piece through our writer application process, as she clearly has unique domain expertise. Our freelancers work all over the world, and tech writing is in very high demand. No promises but I might be able to convince our marketing department to become her first customer. Our blog could use content discussing the state of digital publishing technologies.

noah@scripted.com

I thought this was sad as well, especially since there are many people who make a lot more than this with self-published technical books.

If I'm completely honest, I hadn't heard of the author before reading her post, even though I try to keep up with the web development scene. This leads me to think that maybe she would've benefited from putting her name out there more, something many of us are hesitant to do.

2¢ — As someone who is actively working with SVG (at the level of DOM APIs, not just using SVG icon packs), I've found her name and work to be brought up quite often. Discussions of the SVG spec generally mention her in some capacity. I've seen her cited in countless blog posts, and guest on a few podcasts. In my experience she's been as visible as anyone active in the SVG space (like, say, Sara Soueidan or Sarah Drasner).

I've been lurking in the www-svg mailing list for years now (originally subscribed to bring up an issue with rendering I observed). Amelia more or less suddenly appeared in the discussions a while ago, but it was definitely noticeable. Heck, it's hard to miss her name at least at the point where SVG is (was?) standardised.

I do believe, however, that many, many people who use web technologies, never bothered to look up the actual specification, nor are they involved or watching the standardisation process. So it's easy to miss names that only crop up in that area.

They need to unionize. Writers in Hollywood get paid really well, because they have a union: The Screen Writers Guild.

They also get paid really well because Hollywood makes a lot of money and the national labour board ruled that most of the production companies in Hollywood HAVE to use that guild.

It's not clear to me who this technical writers union would be negotiating with, or why they'd have leverage over that entity. O'Reilly obviously has a limited pool of people it can find to write a book about SVG, but that also implies those people should have leverage to command more than a $4000 advance without needing to unionize.

I suspect many books just wouldn't get written if advances had to be higher, there isn't a huge amount of money sloshing about in technical publishing.

The tech industry has a lot of money. Probably more than Hollywood, if you define "tech" broadly. Hypothetically, if all the technical book authors, how-to bloggers, and Stack Overflow contributors were to go on strike, they would have considerable leverage over various wealthy software firms.

They'd also have to somehow remove all the old how-to content from the internet and somehow find a way to stop scabs. Any up and coming developer anywhere in the world could find the basic specs and references needed to become a "strikebreaker" expert on a given topic.

The nature of our industry and the widely disseminated information makes me really skeptical that could ever happen, even if there was a strong will to do so amongst developers and technical writers.

I'm not saying it's that likely to happen, I'm just pointing out that all this "oh well, technical writing is just low-paid worthless work and always has to be" fatalism is misguided.

There are proven models for demanding higher pay for writing, but they require labor solidarity (and some measure of accountability from industry)

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