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Comment by htsh | Hacker News Reader

1. Speaking tours make money. Conferences make money, etc.

2. Fame, recognition, i.e. non-monetary benefits to being a good writer.

3. At least some people write because they believe what they have to say is important and/or helpful.

4. People will always want to own physical books. This is different than music or a dvd as a book can be passed-on/gifted much easier than a DVD or a CD, which will be obsolete.

I can see both arguments, but I'm definitely not worried about the possibility that people will stop writing books.

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Speaking tours and the like make money if you're an established author, and it's about as likely as it is for your garage band to make millions on tour. Sure, it happens, but it's hardly a good career for the other 99.999% of folks who yearn to do that.

Agreed, but is it now possible get established relatively easier by simply writing a better book than the other guy? I mean the ease of distribution brings the harm of piracy but aren't there also some gains?

As examples, I'd offer both Why's poignant guide to Ruby and 2 pretty good books I've recently checked out, Learn Python the Hard Way & A Byte of Python.

> [Is] it now possible get established relatively easier by simply writing a better book than the other guy?

Sure, just like Britney Spears gets all her sales by having good music.

Writing a good book means little if you can't find a way to get lots of people to read it.

Well Britney is a good example but at the other end I'd offer something like Die Antwoord, who were able to get themselves a big record deal by simply putting their videos on youtube.

Or Justin Bieber, who also only exists because of the internet and youtube. I'm not saying Bieber makes good music, but he exists and thrives because of the internet, not despite it.

So if you have someone who is a great writer, they need to take time away from writing to do things that aren't writing, in order to make money?

If writing is something we value as a society, then there should be a good way for good writers to make money by writing, instead of having to find ancillary things they may not be particularly good at.

Demand payment and release the book one paragraph at a time.

Why do you say that people will always want to own physical books?

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