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Comment by wcarss | Hacker News Reader

> I’ve made enough on this Kickstarter. I don’t need to squeeze people for every penny—but what I do want to do is find a way to provide options for authors.

This is a kind of sentiment I wish was not exceptional. People often talk about how one day they may have enough, and _then_ they'll help others -- but it's rare to see someone (especially with less than a billion dollars) say out loud that they did it, and in the same breath they start helping. (At a certain time, Kaladin wouldn't believe this kind of guy exists!)

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I think it's important to realize just how rare a position Brandon Sanderson is in, really. Publishing and the literary scene outside of the major publishers has always been people using the little money they make to try and keep it alive outside of the dominant system that's creeping towards a monopoly in NA. Most stuff just doesn't have the huge marketing capability that Sanderson does and usually fails. Frankly, most authors are barely able to make a living doing it. Sanderson is far from the only person trying to help authors in publishing, but his 0.1% level financial success in publishing likely means he can accept much more risk than even more well known authors.

That said, I do find it kind of ironic that he made a secret deal with Spotify, which has its own pitiful history of payouts to artists. But atleast free accounts get access to the books as well.

If anything, I think you're overselling it. Most authors make at best a very small amount of money from their work and are nowhere near being able to make a living from it. Most books simply don't sell much at all (200-300 for an average author), to the point where even 100% of sticker price wouldn't pay for a person's living expenses.

A generous assumption is hardbacks at $25 a pop. That would put an average author at 5k to 7.5k in a year... under the very improbable assumption of 100% of sticker price going to the author.

Spotify and the music world has a distinctly different problem. Last I read, the vast majority of their revenue is going to their licensing deals. The license-holders then don't pay much to the artists. You can blame Spotify for this if you choose, and many artists like to publicly, but as with many things in music it comes back to the labels.

Important to consider that most books range from barely readable to trash. I think the book distribution of quality is more concentrated among elite authors, whereas music is a lot more linear -- the average musician is a lot closer to elite musicians.

> whereas music is a lot more linear -- the average musician is a lot closer to elite musicians.

Gosh, I don't know. This is quite a claim.

First off is the obvious question: who is a musician? High school band? Play Friday nights at the local pub? Or are we talking "survives exclusively on record sales" / "is a member of a symphony"? That's a lot of selection bias. Almost nobody publishing rubbish is surviving off that income.

Second, "musician" is actually conflating two things: songwriting/composition and performance. Composition is the thing that really bears direct comparison, and I'd venture a guess you've not even heard all the awful songs out there because nobody with any talent is interested in performing them (unlike the ease with which anyone can publish total rubbish).

Finally, if you consider the size of the corpus -- all songs vs all English text -- it's pretty clear which one is easier to curate (covers in music are super common, which is probably not an accident).

Just anecdotally, I saw a video on reddit the other day of an African dictator casually wetting himself. But what was really striking to me was how absolutely awful the state band was.

I found the link:

https://old.reddit.com/r/CrazyFuckingVideos/comments/znske2/...

Not only is it rare for someone to experience success like Sanderson, it's even rarer for an author to so consistently put out high quality work. The man practically writes a 1,000 page novel a year. He's lucked (and hard-worked) into a lot of leverage here.

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