Hacker News Reader

Comment by johnnyjustice | Hacker News Reader

Well that's not fair, its not simply foolish. He prefaced his comment with "Or" meaning that its a possible business model. I think it would be fantastic to speak to my favorite writers and I know their time is valuable so I would pay to. But I am not stating that it is the perfect path. Though it would be nice if people considered it as a possibility.

View on HN

It certainly is possible revenue source--once you have a big enough fanbase to support it. Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero.

It is not, in the general case, very viable. Which is why nobody takes it very seriously as a good path for all, or even most, writers. Because they have to eat, too.

>Which is probably multiple books and a number of years, during which your effective cash flow from an activity that takes up a staggering amount of time (and benefits others in the meantime) is essentially zero.

That's pretty much what most artists go through now, isn't it? I'm not convinced that copyright does a particularly good job of solving that problem. I'm not saying I definitely think copyright should be abolished, but it does at best a very mediocre job of rewarding artists.

I'm not so sure. Given the rise of self-publishing services, once your product is done (or even close to done, I suppose), you can immediately start generating cash flow. If you have some pleasant "free culture" person spreading the book free of charge and against your copyright, you're probably losing some sales. (Obviously not every person who downloads it for free would have bought it otherwise, but c'mon. The number of people in that category is almost definitely not zero.)

It's not going to keep you in gold-plated Maseratis, but it can start to add up.

Yes, but can it pay rent? I guess, my concern is that it may be better to hold down a single, solid, paying job and do art in your spare time than trying to hold down enough art gigs to add up to a job. You end up doing a lot of hard work making ends meet. Making it appear like art is a generally viable career choice might be doing more harm than good in the average case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com