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Comment by narshaven | Hacker News Reader

If you really think writers are not paid, then you're wrong homie

As a former writer, the only market with real cash to spend for writing is commercial b2b/b2c. Everything else is a pittance unless you're the next twilight that hits critical mass and sells off the movie rights. if you're writing for the creative thrill, b2b works a good way to kill the soul.

creative writing basically has no real market, and even the best are going to be scrounging mid 5 figure incomes.

I think that's true of a lot of creative professions to be fair. Musicians don't have much of a market unless they're exceptional, same for artists. But there are ways to adapt your skills to be more valuable than they would be otherwise.

That said, programming is, in my opinion very creative as well, and that clearly does have a market.

Writing, music, and art are like other businesses. You have to actively find customers and a market fit that works for you, rather than putting something out there and hoping someone notices.

There's much less information on how to make this happen than there is on on creating the work. And success can depend as much on chutzpah and on working out how to bypass the usual selection processes as on talent.

Unlike software, they're extreme power law businesses. A handful of extremely successful people earn ridiculous money, a slightly larger number are comfortably professional, and an absolutely gigantic ocean of dabblers, wannabes, and part-timers earn little or nothing.

You can a completely mediocre developer and do just fine. It's not easy, but it is possible.

You can't be a completely mediocre creative. You have to stand out in multiple ways, through confidence and charisma, talent, originality, timeliness, presentation, and/or self-promotion. The ability to do that is - by definition - not mediocre.

you can be a mediocre developer and there's a decent job waiting for you making CRUD apps somewhere.

You can be an amazing/well-above-average writer/singer/other creative and make absolutely no money doing it despite all your efforts. the irony is that everyone wants to consume art but also wants to pay no money for it.

plumbing can be creative, but i wouldn't call it art.

TV/Screenplay writers can make great money on a popular show/film.

Other than that you're probably looking at startup exit odds of ever making 6 figures - maybe a 10% chance.

For real. Who pays writers? Readers.

I got paid by buyers of my book and a startup that pays me for blogging.

For me, it’s tech companies and executives who need (ghost-written) content but lack the inclination or ability to write their own stuff. You can make a decent living, but it’ll never make you rich.

Yes. It helps to live somewhere with decent healthcare too.

At the end of the day, yes. But we get our pay checks from the publishing companies that commission our words.

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