Ask YC: Who would you pay to read? | Hacker News Reader

Ask YC: Who would you pay to read?

24 pointspchristensen14 comments

Along the same lines as yesterday's discussion, whose writing would you pay to read? Keep in mind that for high quality, sporadic writers, payment might mean more frequent writing.

Here's my list (going alphabetically through my Google Reader list:

Definitely:

- Steve McConnell's stuff is always backed by research and therefore much more valuable than most thoughts or ideas ( http://blogs.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/rss.aspx )

- Dan Weinreb is rational, thorough, a bit of a legend in my niche, and I'm a bit of an ITA fanboy ( http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/feed/ )

- Bill Simmons (sports writer) is hilarious and my only remaining connection to sports spectatorship ( http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/feed?query=Bill_Simmons )

- pg ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaulGrahamUnofficialRssFeed )

- yegge is funny, and pay-per-post would be a bargain! ( http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default )

Maybe/Conditional: - pmarca if he would stay on topic ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/pmarca )

- defmacro if it caused more documentation and features to be written for weblocks ( http://www.defmacro.org/rss/news.xml )

- Ted Neward is new to me but climbing the charts (http://blogs.tedneward.com/SyndicationService.asmx/GetAtom )

- Jeff Moser is coming on strong ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/Moserware )

- Kevin Kelley is on the bubble ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/thetechnium )

Based on previous writing more so than current:

- raganwald from a couple years ago - the Ruby stuff means less to me than his older topics ( http://feeds.raganwald.com/raganwald )

- Joel a couple years ago, not Joel now ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/rss.xml )

That's 12 out of 172. 5 were conditional and 2 would be mainly to access archives. So about 2-5% of authors I read are people I'd pay to read. What about you?

"for high quality, sporadic writers, payment might mean more frequent writing."

And more frequent writing might mean lower-quality writing. There are certainly writers I'd pay to write less - to get the same ideas not buried under so many words. If a magazine had its staff writers produce, say, a maximum 500 words a day, the quality would skyrocket and I'd pay much more for it. Look at the quality of the New Yorker - it's not because they have the best writers (although they do), it's because they let them work for months on a single piece.

Mencius Moldbug - http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/ - it's hard to tell if he's crazy or a prophet, but it's definitely the most intellectually fascinating blog I've ever come across.

+1 for pmarca.

Also http://particletree.com/ if it was updated more often - but I guess they're going for quality over quantity, which is fine by me.

Thanks for the post, will add some of those to my reading list.

Tipjoy sounds more and more awesome by the day

Very interesting question:

Scott Adams

Violent Acres

Mark Cuban if he hired a copy editor. I have a low tolerance for typos/grammar and that guy is off the charts.

My friend Mike May: http://mikemay.blogspot.com/ , though I would have to pay per post since he doesn't write often and I'd feel ripped off with a subscription model.

I'd pay to not read TechCrunch, but I'm too afraid of missing something.

Since I'm already paying with my time, what's the difference in paying a bit extra in cash? So almost everybody I read frequently and carefully is somebody I'd pay to read. In technology: Mark Pilgrim, pg, danah boyd, Ian Bicking, probably dozens more. Outside technology, there are too many to even begin listing.

Malcolm Gladwell almost always has something interesting to say.

Steve Pavlina of 2005 and 2006 had some dazzling productivity and personal management articles.

Blogs? Nobody. I pay to read the authors that I'm willing to pay for, when I buy their books. Out of the OP's list, I've bought books by Steve McConnell, Paul Graham, Ted Neward and Joel Spolsky.

Well I buy books fairly often, so I'm paying to read them.

In terms of blogs, I'd be willing to pay something to subscribe to the simple dollar, probably bruce schneier's blog, boing boing.

There are others, I'm sure.

Malcolm Gladwell (New Yorker)

John Hollinger (ESPN)

Paul Graham

Warren Buffet

Andrew Sullivan

Since you were non-format-specific in your question:

Neil Gaiman Haruki Murakami William Gibson Neal Stephenson Banana Yoshimoto

;-)

PG. So I bought Hackers & Painters.

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