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Comment by blackqueeriroh | Hacker News Reader

For anyone who thinks the problem is Anthropic, I want you all to know that most authors make less than the median income. Most make less than $20,000 a year, because publishing houses give authors an advance, and then authors must pay back that entire advance in sales before they see a dollar of profit from their work.

Most never do.

Maybe publishers should JUST pay authors WELL, and get a book every 2-3 years.

https://authorsguild.org/news/key-takeaways-from-2023-author...

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>> Maybe publishers should JUST pay authors WELL, and get a book every 2-3 years

There are a couple problems with this approach.

Firstly, while the median income is 20k, the book business is like films or music; ie not evenly distributed. At the top end are a small number of successful authors. They effectively subsidize the publishing house while the house throws advances at authors hoping for the next big whale.

Many books never earn back their advance. Meaning if the author was paid out of royalties they'd make less, not more.

Making advances bigger would result in fewer advances. The pot of money is finite.

This is all happening in a market where supply is unconstrained (everyone thinks they can write), and demand is very limited.

And before we discuss the value, or lack thereof of having an intermediary at all, it should be noted from your link that the median for published authors is higher than self-published authors. So clearly they seem to be making authors more valuable.

In truth of course, most (published) books aren't terribly valuable. Like music and movies most float to the bottom.

So no, the answer is not "pay authors more".

If most books never recoup the advance in sales, then isn't this a better deal for most authors? It sounds like a guaranteed floor which might be very low but is nonetheless higher than the alternative

> then authors must pay back that entire advance in sales before they see a dollar of profit from their work. Most never do.

Thats a nice way of saying publishing houses are paying most authors more than they make from the sales

That's not accurate either. If the royalties are 15%, for example, then covering a $15k advance would take $100k of sales.

A typical book isn't making the publisher much profit but they aren't losing money on it either.

There can be more than one problem at once

if authors get an advance that's greater than the sale of their books, doesn't it mean that the publishers lose money, i.e. paid more for those books than the books sales?

Authors get around 10% of the cover price of a book as royalties, it depends on several factors. The rest goes to the publisher. So some do lose money, but the break even for the publisher is usually well before the advance is fully covered by royalties.

Well the publisher also pays for the book to be bound, edited, overhead for their staff, cover art. Many books don't sell for the full retail price and are discounted. So net of all of this a 10% profit margin is common, they aren't keeping 90% of the book sales.

Long story short - publishing houses are venture capital firms.

Most of their investments fail miserably, but they only need one Google/Stephen King.

Why would you think the advance is the problem? The problem is the low cut of sales if anything. The advance is exclusively beneficial.

Part of the problem is the rest of us are broke as well and taxed to death so we don't have much left. If they paid you well, we wouldn't be able to afford your books.

Note that most of our biggest tax is not called a tax, it's called rent.

The problem is the plagiarism

I don't think so Anthropic models are not used to distribute fake copies of books. Excerpts, maybe, but that's fair use.

Yes, the Anthropic settlement is far too small to distribute fairly. It seems like you think this makes the action that lead to this settlement justified?

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