
Philip Hensher stirs debate among authors after refusing to write for free - uladzislau
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/11/philip-hensher-author-refuses-to-work-for-free
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jaredklewis
Well, it does seem unreasonable to call Hensher ungrateful; like anyone
Hensher has no duty to write except when it pleases him.

But Hensher does talk about how this would affect those with aspirations to be
writers and I don't think we should do anything to encourage young people to
become professional writers. Yes, let's encourage them to write, but don't
sell them on the dream of making their living that way, because for all but a
few people, that's just not possible.

Simply, there are lots of people that want to write, but the number of people
paying for writing isn't enough to support very many professional writers. No
different than anything else. I may be a Tai Chi master and want to teach Tai
Chi (I don't even do Tai Chi, this is just an example), but Tai Chi is
something people enjoy doing and there are many other instructor level Tai Chi
practitioners. But that doesn't mean there are enough paying Tai Chi students
to support all of us.

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opminion
There was no link to the actual words each wrote in their conversation, so the
whole brouhaha might be artificially amplified (eg. One party might have been
rude or arrogant, the other might have just reacted).

Besides, there is a confusion in one of the arguments between getting content
for free and getting authors to work for free.

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ChristianMarks
The profound sense of entitlement of professors like Webber can fairly be
called disgusting. Some--make that many--successful academics have no
compunction whatsoever about exploiting the time, energy and experience of
others.

I recently left academia on account on account of the exploitative culture and
then declared an eternal moratorium on low-academic-value, unpublishable or
otherwise uncredited technical work for academia. Perhaps I should start a
movement called Technologists Leaving Academia.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
I will join your movement.

[http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.il/2009/03/profzi-
scheme.html](http://sandwalk.blogspot.co.il/2009/03/profzi-scheme.html)

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GoodIntentions
Not sure how noteworthy this is. Ask any of us to work for free and you might
get the same answer.

~~~
eropple
The noteworthy bit is that writers for such introductions are expected to work
for free.

~~~
petercooper
From the situations I've been aware of, I believe this is certainly true in
the world of programming books. However, typically someone will write a
foreword and have quite a bit of latitude as to what they do, so it's more an
honor than anything.

I asked _why the lucky stiff_ to do a foreword for my Ruby book several years
ago and he did a comic strip! :-) [http://www.rubyinside.com/why-the-lucky-
stiffs-delightful-fo...](http://www.rubyinside.com/why-the-lucky-stiffs-
delightful-foreword-for-beginning-ruby-4550.html)

With more academic books, I've noticed that the forewords are more substantial
and will refer to the contents of the books and other research in a more
precise way. As such, I suspect they're a lot more work, whereas you could
bash out a good 3-4 page foreword for a programming book in a few hours if you
had the relationships or experiences to lean on.

