Staying Awake (2008) | Hacker News Reader

Staying Awake (2008)

harpers.org

30 pointsNaOH11 comments

> Over the years, books kept in print may earn hundreds of thousands of dollars for their publisher and author. A few steady earners, even though the annual earnings are in what is now dismissively called “the midlist,” can keep publishers in business for years, and even allow them to take a risk or two on new authors. … To get big quick money, the publisher must risk a multimillion-dollar advance on a hot author who’s supposed to provide this week’s bestseller. These millions—often a dead loss—come out of funds that used to go to pay normal advances to reliable midlist authors and the royalties on older books that kept selling. Many midlist authors have been dropped, many reliably selling books remaindered… Is that any way to run a business?

Does this still occur? It seems shortsighted in that wonderful ‘management’ ‘business’ way that we’ve all seen. Yet we hear of self-published books getting deals and Amazon and other catalogues make the most rare of books accessible for purchase. Wouldn’t today be ideal for midlist authors?*

Does reading books have intrinsic value, or is it just a specific (archaic?) way of transmitting information? Socrates would be a podcaster today

Ever heard about imagination?

writing well is really hard. other mediums are other mediums.

sure the new mediums have reach going for them, but im not sure socrates would’ve enjoyed or optimized for popularity.

> writing well is really hard

I think because good writing is easier to read and understand than bad writing, there's almost an inverse relationship between how easy writing seems and how easy it is to read. So you read something and think "well, this is obvious" but the magic trick is how much work went in to making it so.

That's true for a lot of things. Skilled people make difficult things look easy.

I think specific, but not archaic. The written word can be beautiful like any other form of art - it's not only about transmitting information but transmitting emotion. Sorta like a photograph, painting, or song.

Yes, I think so. When you read a book you spend a long time with the ideas it contains. You think about the book when you go about your day: primed by what you're reading, you see new connections. You are in conversation with the book. Maybe parts of the book seep into your dreams. Years later, you might remember what you were doing when you read a particular passage.

Much of this is because reading a book takes time.

Yes, as other's have pointed, its just really hard to write well, I have thought that books are just an inefficient medium, but once I started reading more broadly, outside of computer topics, I discovered that engineers are just horrible writers.

Are you under the impression Socrates wrote anything in the first place?

And people don't believe we're in a literacy crisis.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48532053

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