Comment on Australians love cheap books. Here's why that's a problem
NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org 2 weeks ago
Maybe the invisible hand of the market belongs to an illiterate fool?
FBP seems like a bandaid in a car crash. Capitalism isn’t a good framework for anything except making like 100 awful people disgustingly wealthy making and distrubuting cultural artefacts. Book are just hard to make and hard to enjoy relative to Netflix slop and video games etc.
murtaza64@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
books are hard to make compared to tv/movies and video games?? how?
NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org 2 weeks ago
Because outside of some textbooks they are almost entirely solitary efforts until editing, which is a very difficult thing to pull off. They have smaller audiences, take longer to ‘consume’, can’t be sold for as larger margins, and they are not easy to monetise in other ways aside from sale. Additionally physical copies are much more expensive to make than digital copies of media, and many book enjoyers want physical copies.
Just look around, nobody gets rich making books. Mass market tv/film and video games are staggering profitable by comparison, and hence easier and more attractive to make.
murtaza64@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
you’re right, it’s definitely easier to market and push a high budget movie or game and make a ton of money off of it. I guess I was thinking of total labor involved in publishing a book vs a movie without considering whether it will actually be read/watched
NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org 2 weeks ago
Oh right, yeah that is a correct thing to be confused by. I was talking market and you were talking effort and we were both probably thinking: what the fuck sort of idiot is this person? :p
It’s just generally true that being an indie creative while having to pay rent or get thrown to the street to starve and die is very difficult. People with vision and drive make the most valuable culture, and capitalism sees that as inefficient.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 weeks ago
Well, there’s also licensing the rights to adapt into movies or video games. And I think Amazon has a Netflix-like service for books? (I don’t know, because I never use Amazon whenever possible. I suspect it’s probably not a great deal for authors, just like streaming music is bad for musicians, etc .) And of course there’s libraries, which don’t receive nearly enough support themselves, but I believe do give some form of compensation to authors. And people who write frequent but shorter works can work on a patron model.
Not that I disagree with your underlying point. The finances with books are very difficult. There are other options though. Unfortunately the major publishers are really bad at exploring them, because they’re very old and very set in their ways.
NaevaTheRat@vegantheoryclub.org 2 weeks ago
Ah yes, “Your inner fish, the video game”. I can see it now. “Debt: the first 5000 years the Netflix series” rivetting viewing.
Margins on books are awful, authors are largely paid a lump sum for publishing because they need food and sales on a book are often quite small. Like a few thousand small. Keep in mind you also need money while you are writing a book before it’s being sold.
Patreon models and self publishing only works for smut and pulp.