Yes, you are. You just tell yourself that you are not.

And yes, you can write a book. Whether it gets published or not is another story.

I don't understand why someone whose job it is to find the next best selling novel would write a post like this. It reeks of something a literary-agent/failed writer in Brooklyn would say...

With that being said Eddie Izzard, with little training, ran 43 marathons in 51 days. He didn't break any records or win any medals, which I suppose is roughly analogous to getting a book published, but he did do it, over and over again, which is arguably writing the damn book.

All of this suggests that I could probably run a marathon right now if I really felt like it. Fortunately (I'll say it again) I can't be arsed. Same goes for writing the book, because nothing inspires me enough to write an entire book. But I could do it, because I've absolutely written a book's worth of words over the past few years.

Nowhere near that long. There's actually a great book ("The Non-Runner's Marathon Trainer") which takes you, quite conservatively, from "I can run a few miles" to your first marathon day in 16 weeks.

With runs on only 4 days a week -- only one of them a long run -- it hardly "takes over your life", either.

My training consisted of maybe a dozen 2 mile runs, and a couple of 6 mile runs, in the space of about a month.

I didn't do any exercise other than that. I wouldn't say I'm naturally athletic either. Sure, I was pretty slow at 2:30, but I managed to run the whole thing without resting or walking.

I reckon that I could smash out a marathon with less than 6 months of training, running 3 days a week. It certainly wouldn't take over my life, and it wouldn't take a year of training.

A similar endurance event I did once was riding a century (100 miles). Sure, riding a bike is a bit easier than running, but my total training for that was about 6 months, riding 25 miles 4 times a week, plus a single 60 mile ride. I managed to complete the ride in about 5:30.

Humans are well adapted to long distance endurance activities. A person of average fitness can walk 12 hours a day for a week with a 15-20 kg pack.

[1] I couldn't have imagined working out either but at 36 years old I found myself getting tired out walking upstairs, and having a torrid time with any kind of reasonably intense physical activity, and realised I needed to do something about it to avoid serious health problems later in life - and possibly not that much later.

Well, so could any human being. I've run a bunch of Marathons, and I've personally seen people with no legs complete them. The only significant difference between those who have completed a Marathon and those who haven't is who could be arsed to do it. But I don't think that extrapolates to any human endeavour. Highly motivated people can work their entire lives and something, and still fail.

It depends on the genre and if it's fiction or non-fiction. Non fiction, yes. But fiction is harder because of stylistic attributes and the fact it all has to connect. It's not like writing 300 300-word blog posts.

Too general a statement. Sure, an engaging consistent story is much harder than, say, the average cookbook or travel guide.

But many textbooks in science and math seem like absolutely Herculean effort. Gravitation[1] by Misner, Thorne, & Wheeler (a work of non-fiction) in my opinion would be the equivalent in intellectual effort to several thousand average works of fiction.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/06911...

Ever read Dan Brown?

Is there? The general public can be sold any kind of crap that takes minimal effort -- and in the same way, don't buy masterpieces that take tremendous effort and skill to create.

>It might be tawdry, silly, and factually inaccurate, but those qualities are orthogonal to whether or not you can write a story that people want to buy.

This isn't an argument on actual writing skill though.

It's like you measure a new category like "skill of writing best-selling stuff" that's not necessarily connected to the skill of writing itself -- just to the degree of sales.

But one can sell bad stuff or skilless stuff too. Sales don't show anything more than a skill in sales themselves.

Eeesh. Any able-bodied person can walk a marathon, given sufficient motivation. You might be able to run parts of it, but you can't run a marathon through sheer force of will if you haven't done the training.

A book is technically just a bunch of bound pages, so anyone can write one in the loosest sense of the word. I can just type the word "beige" 80,000 times and call it a day. Writing a book that someone will actually read past the first chapter requires a certain level of skill. The author isn't telling people not to try - his closing paragraph makes that clear - but he's warning people of the amount of work and practice involved in writing something that people want to read.

To quote the great Ronnie Coleman, "everybody wanna to be a bodybuilder, but ain't nobody wanna lift no heavy-ass weight". The number of people who like the idea of being an author is vastly greater than the number of people willing to learn how to write well. If you enjoy the process of writing, then by all means write for your own pleasure. If you harbour dreams of being the next J.K. Rowling, you're likely to be sorely disappointed.

The original metaphor is a bit off. Anyone who puts in the effort could write fifty thousand words on the same theme or plot. Likewise anyone could complete a marathon with enough training and effort. A better comparison would be writing a novel that people would pay to read, and completing a marathon so quickly that people would pay you to do it.

While everyone can do the amateur version of these tasks not everyone can do the professional certain.

It's not merely a case of writing something that someone would pay to read, but writing something that someone would read at all. That's a considerably lower hurdle, but one that many authors never vault. Every day, the slush piles of publishers swell with lovingly-crafted novels that will, in all likelihood, never be read by anyone.

The parallel I might draw is with a singer so dreadfully tone deaf that their neighbours lodge a complaint, or a comedian so bad that they are booed off stage at an open-mic night. Most first-time novelists are precisely that awful - their work is not merely of insufficient quality to attract a paying audience, but actively repellent. Few budding authors are prepared for that level of disappointment.

Yes, and you can't write a book if you can't read, or structure a sentence, or have a computer/typewriter/crayon, etc...

I'm mostly fine walking around. I can even do short flights of stairs. In fact, up until a few years ago they only bothered me when I sat in a really unergonomic chair for a while. Then someone convinced me to try this "couch to 5k" thing, and said that literally anyone could do it, and that I liked like I weighed maybe half as much as people that'd actually followed the timetable and gone from couch to 5k.

Fast forward two months. The doctor says "stay off your feet and see if it gets better". They haven't started feeling better. It's been almost three years.

I understand the viewpoint you're trying to hold, and I sympathize. Knowing there are things you can't do really sucks. Especially when you try and fail at something you really wanted, in Brooklyn or otherwise. Unfortunately, you're being a little bit insensitive, verging on offensive. "Just put down the crutches and walk". "Just stop being depressed and be happy". "Just focus". "Just try harder". "Just stop telling yourself you're incapable".

Almost came here with this exact same comment. Absolutely not amount of motivation or feel good thinking about my own capabilities and willingness to 'do the damn thing' can surmount the sheer agony and pain I feel after a 2 mile run (because that's the most I can bear to stand) after years of jumping out of airplanes for a living (US Military) over 12 years.

Ever have your knee shattered to pieces and fracture a femur after having a chute partially open and hitting the ground at 6ft/sec? Lemme tell you something: it's horrifying.

You know the phrase "blinding pain"? It's a kind of pain that's so severe your vision literally blurs.

You can see things, you can make out shapes, but your brain is so focused on that pain that vision rides shotgun for a bit. It's a level of pain that can (and has) induced vomiting and loss of consciousness when I so much as step the wrong way off a curb.

Don't tell me "you can do it, just put your mind to it" when my mind doesn't even have the bandwidth to register vision.

There is NO amount of "you can do it" motivational, go-getter mentality that will convince me to push through that kind of pain. Absolutely, positively and without any hesitation on the topic at hand: N-O-N-E. Heck, I stood up once to go get a cup of coffee, turned, stepped in an awkward way and turned my knee and immediately fell over in tears.

So when someone says they can't run a marathon, maybe leave it at that-they know what they're capable of better than you do.

Let's not ignore the other option (among many) which is: people in perfectly fine health who aren't particularly fond of having the ideals and opinions of the hyper-health conscious and uber-active lifestyle types projected onto them from someone who doesn't have the letters M.D. following their surname.

Also, training for marathon requires a lot of time and there is opportunity cost there. I will not blame father for spending his time with kids instead of training for marathon or what not. Nor someone who spends time educating himself rather then physically training. Or reading book, washing dishes or just having time consuming job.

The motivational quotes are told to make people feel good.

Yes, you can write out an idea. Whether that gets to be a page or not is another story.

Yes, you can write out a book. Whether that gets published or not is another story.

Yes, you can self publish a book. Whether that gets people to care or not is another story.

Yes, you can spread your ideas to others. Whether that lasts or not is another story.

Yes, you can live on through your words. Whether that's going to be good or bad on your name is another story.

But through it all, all that matters is what you choose to self identify as. Whether you survive, benefit, or take over the industry built up before you or by others, is another story.

A number of famous composers were not 'successful' in their time, same with painters, same with some writers (A Confederacy of Dunces comes to mind), later after their death they gained acclaim.

I think the mere act of creation and distribution of art is the goal in itself, and with technology you can keep it around for a long time.

To say something isn't popular doesn't mean it's not good. In 200 years conservatories of music are not going to be talking about Taylor Swift despite her engineered success, who knows who they'll be talking about!

Similarly, the overwhelming majority can produce a book length manuscript, even if it isn't particularly remarkable. Again, they may need to work up to it.

In this, near-perfect verbal SAT is pretty much irrelevant.

If by publishing you mean Amazon, then yeah, anyone can do that. Even robots can. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-kindle-spam/spam-c...

That's too low a bar. If you don't make the New York Times list, you're not really writing a book, and if you're not winning the Boston marathon, you're not marathoning.

Or so some would say.

Ignoring the problems and gatekeeping attendant in publishers, I belive most people could write a book that a significant number of people they didn't already know would pay to read (this may fall well below the numbers that would make a publisher interested). It probably wouldn't be their first book. Similarly most people could run enough to post a decent marathon time - again, probably not on their first marathon.

The main characteristic is not "raw talent" or physiology, respectively - the main characteristic is trying, failing, learning from your errors, trying more.

I forget who said it but "talent is a pursued interest". If you pick a random person and they choose to put the time in odds are extremely good they could write an ok book or post an ok marathon time. They aren't likely to write a best seller or break 2:30 - but that's not the point.

It is undeniably true that the overwhelming majority of people will never do either of these, but that is not because they are incapable of it but because they do not choose to focus time there.

What's mostly missing from this discussion is marketing. Sorry, but even pretty good books will languish on Amazon (which is mostly what matters) if you just put a book out there, fiction or non-fiction, with the attitude that "If you build it, they will come." (Like most everything else.)

Unless you're a known quantity for other reasons, even getting accepted by a publisher is a tough slog and there is a long list of stories of publishers (like studios) passing on blockbusters. Not that getting in with a major publisher is any guarantee of success but cultivating a fan base as a total independent self-publishing is that much harder.

(In addition, as someone who does a lot of writing and editing, you're also probably optimistic about the abilities of said random person.)

If you can craft an engaging story and you have the motivation to write, an editor (or a thesaurus) can help with vocabulary.

Actually reading comprehension is about everything _besides_ subject knowledge.

It's about the pure ability to understand something you've read -- e.g. to understand tone, intent, turns of phrase, idioms, writing styles, patterns, argument building, etc -- not about having some particular domain knowledge.

In other words if you read an article about a physics experiment but didn't understand it because you don't know what "spin", "wavefunction", or "interferometer" means in QM, then you don't have a reading comprehension problem. You just have a lack of physics knowledge.

If, inversely, you read an article about something you know very well in real life (e.g. baseball), but miss what the author tries to say, mistake the intent of some metaphor, misunderstand the argumentation, etc, then you do have a reading comprehension problem.

Of course to comprehend something you read you also need to be familiar with the thing it's talking about to. But reading comprehension is about everything else but that part -- it's about being familiar with the written word and the ways people express things in writing in themselves [1].

[1] "Fundamental skills required in efficient reading comprehension are knowing meaning of words, ability to understand meaning of a word from discourse context, ability to follow organization of passage and to identify antecedents and references in it, ability to draw inferences from a passage about its contents, ability to identify the main thought of a passage, ability to answer questions answered in a passage, ability to recognize the literary devices or propositional structures used in a passage and determine its tone, to understand the situational mood (agents, objects, temporal and spatial reference points, casual and intentional inflections, etc.) conveyed for assertions, questioning, commanding, refraining etc. and finally ability to determine writer's purpose, intent and point of view, and draw inferences about the writer"

https://www.education.com/reference/article/prior-knowledge-...

http://www.readingrockets.org/article/building-background-kn...

Here's a few articles on the topic with very relevant reference sections if you'd like to know more.

You don't have to define it thusly, though. Whatever SAT tests test for, this is already the dictionary meaning of the term. The except was from Wikipedia.

Here's a dictionary lemma too: comprehension: "a test to find out how well students understand written or spoken language" (listening/reading comprehension).

It's not argued that domain knowledge doesn't factor tremendously in understanding. Just that this is not a reading comprehension intends to measure (heck, the hint is in the very combination of the words that make up the term).

Of course in order to understand some text in a reading comprehension test, domain knowledge will also help.

But reading comprehension is not about any particular domain -- and tests in that don't constraint themselves to only present texts about a specific subject.

I don't think vocab can be taught. The reason is, vocab is very highly correlated with IQ, which is stable thought life and cannot be boosted. A large vocab requires a strong crystallized memory, which is a part of IQ. Most people when they encounter new words either are unable to infer the meaning and or forget it, but smart people do both.

The fact that IQ and vocabulary are correlated across a population doesn't imply that, and it's clearly not true unless you don't think someone can learn a new language later in life. Or you think that a person can learn 10k new words in a new language, but not an extra few thousand in their existing language?

>Competent writers have a varied vocabulary which does not come across as forced

Yes competent writing requires some minimum vocabulary. It doesn't require a vocabulary sufficient to score near perfect on the SAT. Most writers limit the vocabulary they use to match their target audience, so having a much larger vocabulary than your target audience isn't going to be that useful.

Yet, from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient):

>Raw scores on IQ tests for many populations have been rising at an average rate that scales to three IQ points per decade since the early 20th century, a phenomenon called the Flynn effect.

I have a couple of questions:

i) Have you been able to apply the skills you gained for something else? Did it help you career-wise in any way, or do you just feel like it made you a better, more well-rounded person?

ii) Did you have a job at the same time to sustain yourself?

Yes I do use the skills, on email daily for example. I understand punctuation a bit better and many word definitions are clearer. As a programmer I could already touch-type. I repeat myself less and edit down my copy removing redundant words. One concise sentence is better than saying the same thing 10 ways. I don't have as much anxiety or stress in general as writing things down gets it all out and helps you understand yourself better. Turning mentalses into logic. You may even find you logically disagree with how you 'thought' you were thinking. This is very resolving. You also learn a lot about the subject you are writing.

Yes I had a job, yes it did affect it. For 2 years writing became my evening hobby instead of coding. Sometimes it felt like I was deviating from what I should be doing. I ignored those feelings. Peers that didn't know me very long judged me as not being into my vocation (something I normally pride myself on.) I felt this affected my stance in the team. But I had more to gain than other peoples opinions. I've been a generalist coder for 15+ years so was a decade ahead of many of them and could afford to drop a gear.

I admit to cheating in the editing phase. After 11 months of editing I'd almost re-written the whole book. I realised like painting, writing is never finished, only left. This is partly because you're always changing. I tried modafinil, wrapped up in a few weeks and moved on.

Ultimately the article agrees with your perspective. The last paragraph: "If you want to write a book, do it. It’s wonderful and horrible and fulfilling and soul-crushing all at the same time. But do it because you want to, not because someone suggested it one time."

But the intended meaning of the article is more like “no, you probably don’t have a bestselling book in you.”

Disclaimer - I’ve written a kids sci-fi novel in the past year. Something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile now, and finally got around to actually putting down the words on the page to make it happen.

Now it’s one thing to say “I wrote a novel.” But to be fair I wrote the draft of a novel that still needs substantial editing before it’s ready to publish. I’ve been picking at it for awhile, and still it’s not ready to send out to other editors (or agents).

I’ve been stuck in edit mode for months now, I’ve been finding editing much harder than writing. A common feeling. One writer told me that writing is like a party, editing is cleaning up the next day. Some of my published friends and colleagues tell me it takes a few drafts of editing before it’s even good enough to send to an agent or editor. So I’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of me.

But this article is a bit strange because the author is an agent herself, who knows full well that there’s a ton of editing and a night-vs-day difference between someone’s first cruddy draft and a finished product, for which agents and editors worth their salt will have honed and worked their magic on.

Also a bit discouraging to hear this from an agent, suggesting people’s stories may not be worthy enough to be told. if anything I’d want them to encourage more people to write that story they’ve been thinking about on the train. Can you imagine if JK Rowling heard this and just thought, “she’s right, my story probably sucks, better to just focus on my day job.”

Though the author does clear things up a little at the end of the article to say write a book because you want to write it, not because someone told you to write it.

But in any case, the title is still misleading because people do have books in them. Even if they’re not profitable. Even if the ultimate reading audience is in the single digits. It’s still a book that means something to the author and that small but critical audience of readers.

It’s a relief to read this. I’ve written about 135k words an only managed to edit about 15k so far.

Yeah, I’m finding it very difficult to decide what to keep, what to rip out entirely, what to rewrite.

I blew way past my 75k word target to about 98k words now, and still feel like there’s a bunch more I need to add.

FYI, I’ve found Hugh Howey’s four-part Writing Insights columns on his blog from last year very useful, helped me get thru my draft.

But I’m finding it hard to take his preferred approach to editing of rewriting scenes from scratch instead of altering or spot-editing them. I took a stab at rewriting one of my earlier chapters, now that I know what happens later on, but don’t feel the new version was substantially improved to warrant all the effort.

I think the hardest part for me is killing my darlings, and ripping out the big chunks that I feel are essential.

But I know I need to slog through and get to some point where I can stop picking at it and send out to some alpha readers, then consider actual editors.

I’m still not sure yet if I’ll self-publish or go the traditional route.

Good luck!

One of the most fantastic things technology has given us, really only in the last 20 years or so, is (unlimited) space to store all of these "minor" works and the ability for the 9 people to whom these works will have meaning to find and obtain them.

The fact ppl keep using her as an example of persistence paying off, if evidence of how rare it is.It's good to have realistic expectations.

She’s my example of a novice author who started with nothing more than an idea, a story she wanted to tell, and wound up writing a game-changing series.

I had a relative who once wrote a book about her life, honestly the book was not very good (both the writing style and content), and largely "sold" (or was given away to) only to family (despite her paying for a book run out of her own pocket and shopping it around to bookstores on her own)

Yet she was immensely proud of her book, which she spent years of her life on. As well she should be, while the book didn't meet any commercial success, it had been a longtime goal for her and she told her story to people who otherwise wouldn't have know about it.

A large library happily took some copies to go into their archives. First hand descriptions of events are hard to come by. Chances are it will sit unread in their archives for decades but it could one day be interesting source material for someone.

Let me tell you: there's a lot of writing that is nearly unreadable. Sure, you can do it. It's probably best written down and then gently carried over to the archives, only taken out for a good laugh down the road.

Writing well is like programming. You have to spend some time doing it before its really ready for public consumption. Then you get to be educated in how the sausage is made and then you have a start.

The marathon example is a good one. You need to put in preparation, work, training, sweat, and then you can do the finished product.

Writers have workshops and critiquing circles. They have editors. Review, review, review. Draft, draft, draft.

The author is critiquing the idea that some genius will hike up their skirt and drop out a diamond, which the agent will then pick up and make the genius rich. Takes ten years of sweat to have a 3 minute hit.

I just published my first print book [1] with Amazon CreateSpace.

I learned a heck of a lot technically - I wrote it in LaTeX for ultimate formatting control, then ran it through PanDoc and a bunch of my own scripts to massage the epub how I wanted.

CreateSpace make it extremely simple, in all honesty anyone that has used facebook has enough computer skill to publish their own book.

I also learned a massive amount about writing, editing and so forth. Each new draft I kept saying it was "almost done", then would spend months re-writing entire chapters and paragraphs. Along the journey I read many fantastic books about how to write, and how to make my stories more engaging.

It was an extremely rewarding process. The first time you get a draft copy in your own hands is fantastic - it's staggering and the only thing you can say is "holy sh, it's a real book!" Haha.

I'm already working on my next books, and I plan to write for the rest of my life.

[1] The Road Chose Me Volume 1: Two years and 40,000 miles from Alaska to Argentina - https://amzn.to/2vo3S3G

Sure, that is probably how "professional" writers get good. But we've had good writers before there were all these tools , didn't we? I find it hard to imagine e.g. Bukowski attending a writing workshop.

Some people just have the talent. Others are mediocre and get better with effort.

A more learned historian of literature or theology would be able to provide hard accounts here.

As a general remark, the outsider as genius in full flower springing out of Zeus' forehead is astonishingly rare, and should never be taken to be normative or as an ideal to aspire to. This an ancient principle: there is no royal road to geometry.

I've experienced similar conditions learning to code and write software. Some elitists have beliefs along the lines of, "if you don't already know how / if you didn't learn at a young age, then you're not a true talent, and programming is not really for you." Those kinds of people can get fucked.

I find it fascinating that there are sweet spots for the length of an economically successful book (50,000 words), movie (90-120 minutes), or song (3 minutes).

For whatever reason, even collections of short films packaged together as a feature-length movie are rarely successful. Likewise with short written works packaged as a full-length book. I guess songs were the exception in that multiple songs sold together as an album did work (at least until recent years).

It's interesting to think about how attention span, delivery mechanism, costs of goods, and who knows what other factors, created these target lengths.

I'm fairly sure this was just an illusion. Liking a full album seems really rare, the general sentiment with anyone I talked to about this was that they bought it just to get 2-3 of the tracks available.

Imagine if there was no such thing as a 90-minute movie, and they were all made up of 9, 10-minute movies. They'd appear very successful as well.

But, yeah, the economics of publishing (even in digital) still basically require you to pad a book out to about 200 pages or so even if the topic could fit more into 100 and be more focused as a result.

You do see shorter books coming out from the likes of O'Reilly but a lot of those are sponsored by companies as giveaways. And, if you self-publish, you can do anything you like. But there still seems to be a general attitude that it's not a "real" book unless it's 200 pages.

I've been a professional writer for much of my life, in the sense that for periods of time I've actually been able to eat and pay NYC rent by virtue of people paying me to write things.

But I don't know if I have a book in me. Because every time I try to write things that could possibly turn into a book I read them and they don't sound very good. I know what I'd have to do to change that, namely write a lot every day for a few years until it clicked. But I don't.

But so far I haven't made that a priority, so whatever book might be in me is still there. I think there's a lot of people like that. Many people just can't write and tell stories at all, of course. But many many people can, and would in fact be able to do so compellingly, but they haven't and won't put in the work.

Could you expand on what you mean by this?

problem: you write down something, but it doesn't sound very good

solution: write a lot every day for a few years until it clicked

How is the problem solved by the solution you presented?

The solution is lots of practice.

Problem: I write some code, but it doesn't work very well.

Solution: Write a lot of code every day for a few years.

The implication is that you learn what kinds of things are good and bad through practical experience, rather than simply re-writing the same implementation/prose every day.

But to write a book would still require a lot of practice and trial and error and a serious committment. Which is likely where many others trip up as well.

You probably have to write a few bad books before writing a good one.

Some concepts and interfaces simply can't be shrouded in clickable widgets that command the computer to perform some pre-scripted task. Just like people need to use math directly and require the ability to input and manipulate simple equations, some problems require the creation of small programs--variables, conditionals, and the encapsulation of these things into functions.

Maximizing the utility of computers means everybody should be capable of not only basic grammar or basic math, but basic computer programming. But that doesn't mean everybody needs to be taught to be an author, mathematician, or computer programmer. Rather, actual computer programmers need to design applications in a way that make it simple and easy to apply basic editing, mathematical, and computer science techniques to the task at hand.

That was the original idea back in the day. Then it was co-opted by social movements in a manner that completely misunderstood the notion. Indeed, they have it completely backwards. The way to make programming accessible (and to reduce the outsized power of the programmer class, sharing the wealth) isn't to turn everybody into programmers, it's to make programming a part of every job.

But the fact that programming is largely still the domain of programmers isn't the fault of those social movements. It turns out it's really hard to design interfaces and applications in this manner, and harder still to keep it consistent across unrelated applications so knowledge and experience readily transfer. Arguably the furthest we've ever gotten is early text editors, the shell, and spreadsheets.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....

A lot of people do have a book in them. Unfortunately, it's not much different from the other 20 or so that arrived the same day.

Guessing he's not counting kindle publishing here, but regardless I'd love to know all the little details of why publishing e-books are so difficult

And, of course, editing and typesetting are done once and should be a flat fee, not a percentage of profits.

Finally, "marketing" is something that doesn't seem to happen to most authors.

Then hire a professional copyeditor to do line edits, an illustrator/designer for the cover, and a professional typesetter for the content, a professional indexer if it is non-fiction. Pay for targeted ads to reach 1000 click-throughs of consumers with an interest in your book.

What proportion of the cost was printing?

It is true that a lot of publishers don't spend a lot on marketing. This has noticeably dropped off since 2004 when my first book was published. But it is not true that a publisher who is investing the cost in getting the book out the door is likely to do no marketing. Of course they want the author to market as much as possible. But there will typically be a budget line, at least as big as the advance, often an order of magnitude bigger.

> should be a flat fee, not a percentage of profits

You are welcome to publish via vanity press. Where you pay this flat fee upfront. It is a percentage, for the same reason that investors take a percentage of your business, to distribute the risk. Most books lose money. Most books never make their 'flat fee'.

> via vanity press.

You realize the general procedure recommended in the self publishing industry is to hire a reputable editor, pay them several thousand dollars, and get results that are comparable to assorted well respected publishing companies.

Yes, the author is taking all the risks. On the other hand, given how little authors are paid, I suspect they're taking all the risks anyway.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/03/why-i-do...

The author gets 10-15% of the first copy as well as the billionth copy. (Modulo the "advance", which is actually what most authors are payed for their book.)

In other words, JK Rowling's editor made bank.

>very successful authors (your JK Rowlings and James Pattersons) help pay the bills for the less successful books

The editors don't just take home the money. They're paid a normal salary, and the publishing company uses the money to make additional risks. But these risks are mostly spent on editing costs.

https://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer-...

Does this author live in a world where people write books unwillingly to appease their friends?

I hope not everybody has a book in them, that sounds mildly annoying and not sure if someone could cough that up on demand, unless they need to book it to an appointment that they booked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ C’est la vie.

Disclaimer: everything should be taken reactively literally, no exceptions... straight to the gallows without a cigarette for a passive-aggressive send-off.

However, I usually find that this is not the case. There is no big idea. There is no innate storytelling ability. The genre is not of interest. The true passion is not there. Basic grammar is not there.

So why do they persist with the dream? Exactly because it is a dream. A dream to be published and to get validation from the whole world that they are someone. A dream to be rich and to go on book tours and to be invited in to a premium world of literary events. Like the lottery it is a dream to be the one that gets picked out of the pile of manuscripts for a team of editors, marketing people, lumberjacks and bean counters to devote themselves to their words.

We all want to be listened to and recognition is up there with food and a roof over one's head as a basic human need.

Publishing sets out an awful path for people to achieve these things. As a consequence a lot of wannabee writers are not really cut from the right cloth for it. You have to either be really good or have delusions of grandeur to want to take the path set out by publishing. Unless you really do have a story that does need to be told, some form and genuine motivation not tarnished by the aforementioned dreams of wanting the world to fall at your feet because you are up there with the Shakespeares and Hawkings of this world.

So this creates a situation where the people that really do have a book inside them that needs to be shared are less likely to be the ones putting themselves through the perverse pain that is the rejection world of publishing. In a word, the manuscripts piling up at the publishers really are submitted by the stupid people.

Although writing is generally there to create something for someone else to read, hopefully to enjoy, writing should be like knitting and other hobbies, i.e. a pastime that is personally satisfying to do. There is no reason for someone to read what you have written, in fact you might prefer writing to paper in an open ended way to explore thinking that you might not be able to explore in conversation.

Even though the dialogue is between yourself and the page a little bit of 'rubber duck debugging' goes on. You might find that after writing reams and reams of stuff you have actually sorted ideas in your mind to distil the ramblings into something that can be succinctly summarised into an idea that others can enjoy. The book really might not be needed. If the distillation of ideas has been arrived at before getting to the 'final chapter' then even finishing the work in progress might not be needed and the whole lot can be put in the bin. In some ways word processor crashes of unsaved work can be helpful with this.

We are doing pretty good with video and still images with people being able to do these things for sheer creative enjoyment. Youtube and Instagram are good platforms for people to do video blogs or photo diaries. The feedback works well, some people are happy to do this as a creative hobby. You can do videos about fixing your hamster wheel and not feel compelled that you have to be making the next Hollywood blockbuster mega series. You can post pictures of your hamster doing tricks without feeling you have to be the next Ansel Adams.

The legacy of the publishing industry and the state of current always-monetizing blogging platforms has cut a relatively rough deal for writers who just enjoy the creative fun of writing. Unless you want to restrict your output to mere tweets there is this expectation that you have to be the next J K Rowling. There isn't a happy medium where people can enjoy a modest level of writing and enjoy a modest and socially acceptable reward through likes for doing so. Maybe it is time to move on, to not brush people off with 'you have a book inside you' and to start telling people they have a 'youtube channel inside them'.

It finishes with a satisfying lesson in curmudgeon economics.

...

Anyway... it's interesting that so many people want to write a book. They may be naive, but they do know it's hard. That's why they haven't done it yet.

Indeed,

The article's main conclusion, that not everyone can write a best selling novel or biography, is nearly truism in that there are a few bestsellers per months and millions of people in this country (or any country).

I think it the interest of many average people in being best selling writers, along with interest in making and staring in TV shows, comes from the way that all these forms tend to expose the unique, inner, human characteristics of their protagonists. The urge to have this experienced by an audience is strong. And moreover, it's reasonably plausible that just about everyone actually does have inner qualities, that, if cast in the right light, can be extraordinarily beautiful. "All" that is needed is to artfully allow a jump from exterior appearance to inner experience (a very difficult process but one which when done right, seems easy).

The problem is that such portrayal is hard and making that portrayal accessible is also hard and the competition for doing these things separates the few best sellers from the many literary attempts.

What's even better: from the outside, anyone can write a book. We all tell stories, most of us can read and write, and those are the only technical requirements. By contrast, when you're 50 you know there's just no viable path to say becoming a surgeon or painting like the old masters or finally writing that symphony. The skill barriers are just too obvious and high. But you can start writing a book today, and indisputably, you'll be writing a book.