Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CM30 | Hacker News Reader

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It's the same with most creative fields really. The vast majority of people earn very little from their work, and a few really skilled/lucky folks at the top of the field earn a fortune.

See also music, art, game design/development, content creation on sites like YouTube and Twitch, blogging, etc.

Part of this is simply due to competition; there was stacks of it before the internet got big, and there's probably a thousand times more now the internet has become normalised. The barrier to entry to writing a book or becoming a writer is extremely low in the grand scheme of things (well, if you have the determination/patience to finish), so enough people do that you're spoilt for choice there.

Add this to how challenging the marketing/sales side of running a business is by default, and how trying to make a sustainable income as an author or creator is basically being a sole trader/entrepreneur, and well, it's not too surprising that most people don't do particularly well from it.

On the competition aspect, I think it's also important to look at the consumer side. For me it was wild knowing Mission Impossible struggled at the box office because of Barbie/Oppenheimer, especially because it was such a big budget film and it was actually my favorite of the three. The reality is that most people would maybe go once a month to the cinema, so they have to prioritize what to watch.

To make matters worse, you are also competing with all of history. If you want to read 12 books this year, when are you going to get to the small creators with years-worth of classics to go through?

Agree with your overall point, but the Mission Impossible thing isn't that surprising to me. I think a lot of people are tired of endless reboots/sequels of action-adventure movies. Also I think Tom Cruise can have the opposite of star power these days, a lot of people feel kind of ick about him.

I don’t watch movies with certain actors in them. He’s one of them.

That's a good point really. Not many people realise that the majority of the population doesn't buy many creative works at all.

They'll only go to the cinema maybe once a month, buy perhaps a few video games and tabletop games a year if any, watch perhaps a few TV shows or films or streaming services every month, buy perhaps 10-12 books a year, and for many of them, not buy any paintings or display art at all.

And then unless it goes viral/gets picked up by the media/becomes a meme, it probably won't even get noticed by the general public. So you have to hope the right people find your work so that happens too...

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