
What gig workers can learn from romance writers - ohjeez
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180119-what-gig-workers-can-learn-from-romance-writers
======
keenerd
> _Three practices set romance writers up for success: they welcome newcomers,
> they share competitive information and they ask advice from newbies._

That last one is interesting. People entering a field do so for a reason. It
might just be to do a job and get paid, but it could also be because no one is
making what they want. Newbies unconsciously represent gaps in the market
where someone with better execution could make a killing.

Brb, got to dive beginner programming forums and look at the types of projects
that are so pressing that someone is willing to learn how to program.

~~~
Balgair
Wow, great idea!

In relation to HN, there is also the noob-submissions section:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories](https://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories)

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amsilprotag
How much of the genre's success can we attribute to an inclusive culture? I
would guess it may have helped level out the income curve - a $10,000 median
annual income is higher than I would have guessed for a saturated, hit-based
industry.

But in terms of aggregate genre growth, I think the Kindle and iBooks/Audible
helped much more. Seeing the three-fold increase in romance author income
coupled with the halving of other authors' income from 2008 to 2014 suggests
that readers really altered their preferences to avoid being seen with a
physical romance novel.

It feels like a similar phenomenon occurred with scifi/fantasy, judging by the
audible best seller list.

[https://www.audible.com/adblbestsellers](https://www.audible.com/adblbestsellers)

~~~
exolymph
> readers really altered their preferences to avoid being seen with a physical
> romance novel.

I'd be cautious about coming to this conclusion so definitively. The vast
majority of romance readers are women, many in a cultural milieu that differs
from yours. Reading romances is not universally looked down upon — several of
the highly educated women in my family do so unabashedly, for example, as do
I.

E-reading is also cheaper and consumes less space than physical books. The
number of niches and options therein exploded with self-publishing. I suspect
that those factors are more important than avoiding the potential
embarrassment of someone seeing you reading Danielle Steele. But I wouldn't
put high certainty on my guess either :P

~~~
kaitai
Overall agree... even with Danielle Steele comment... but what about
paranormal reindeer shifter novels? Or erotic menage a trois set in Victorian
England? There are plenty of "simply sweet" books you wouldn't mind being
asked about on the train, but there's a wide swathe of books you might not
want to explain!

E-books solve a real "fat-tail" problem in romance at the same time that they
allow discretion in public places. These days only Amazon knows you've got a
thing for hot billionaire Navy SEALs who turn into otters at night. A physical
bookstore would not be able to stock all Chuck Tingle's novels and turn a
profit, and people in towns too highbrow to stock romances wouldn't be able to
buy them without mail-order. (In some towns it can actually be really hard to
find romance novels for sale on paper, and there's a huge bias toward the
NYTimes bestsellers.)

~~~
DrScump

      Or erotic menage a trois set in Victorian England?
    

Ha! A former colleague who was a Tech Writer later followed her dream and
became a published author specializing in Victorian era historical romances.

She was particularly thrilled at her first contract because she most loved to
travel to London, and now she could write off the travel costs on her taxes as
research.

------
pavel_lishin
I wonder how much of a writer's success is balanced between being a good
writer, and a good marketer. How much give is there? If your prose is
excellent but you're bad at getting your book in front of eyeballs, you'll
almost certainly fail - but how bad can you be as an author, while still
making money by being a better salesperson?

~~~
klenwell
Having a good headshot probably helps, too. I guess it would count as a key
component of one's marketing package. I'm reminded of this Adam Gopnik article
on a discovered Shakespeare portrait:

 _And that Shakespeare was good-looking as a young man, before he lost his
hair and puffed out from home-cooking, seems at least likely, on the fixed
general principle that writers who become very celebrated in their youth, as
he did, are, to a first approximation, almost always good-looking. Byron and
Shelley, Mailer and Updike and Salinger, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Tennyson,
Lowell, Ted Hughes—all celebrated in their youth, all not just O.K.-looking
but an oil painting, each and every one. There are many good funny-looking
writers, but it’s hard to think of good funny-looking writers who get famous
young. Funny-looking writers, at least funny-looking male writers, get famous
late—Samuel Johnson and Sinclair Lewis and John Milton and Philip Larkin all
come instantly to mind—or else they don’t get famous. They get read, but they
don’t get celebrated._

[https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/adam-gopnik-
look...](https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/adam-gopnik-look-here-
upon-this-picture)

~~~
cgh
Thomas Pynchon is a counter-example. "V." was published when he was 26 and was
nominated for the National Book Award. Here is his "headshot":
[http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2013/08/23/23-thom...](http://pixel.nymag.com/imgs/daily/vulture/2013/08/23/23-thomas-
pynchon.w245.h368.jpg)

Of course, he was already becoming famously reclusive by this time so maybe
he's exempt from this rule.

~~~
klenwell
Perhaps that's even why he opted for the reclusive strategy.

Anyway, I love that headshot.

~~~
jessaustin
No kidding! I've found my new avatar...

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rsbartram
The GIG economy is growing bigger and bigger by the day. Here in Los Angeles
it is thriving and companies like Fiverr are beginning centralize and localize
events that support GIG workers and the economy. [https://latechnews.org/los-
angeles-gig-economy/](https://latechnews.org/los-angeles-gig-economy/)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Is this the same Fiverr that supported the GIG (who's paying you to yell at
me) workers by telling them to sacrifice their health to work?

[https://twitter.com/b_cavello/status/839876313473150976/](https://twitter.com/b_cavello/status/839876313473150976/)

> _Here in Los Angeles it is thriving_

It's thriving, huh? How about the workers themselves? Are they thriving, too?
Or just the economy?

~~~
ggg9990
That ad is targeting the people who _hire_ people on Fiverr. There are almost
no Fiverr gig workers in San Francisco.

~~~
pavel_lishin
None of the "you" pronouns there seem to be aimed at Fiverr consumers.

~~~
ggg9990
They are. I’ve seen this bus stop ad. They are targeting SF entrepreneurs who
need help with video production / logos / design / etc.

