
Philip Pullman: professional writers set to become 'an endangered species' - ollysb
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jan/06/philip-pullman-society-of-authors-open-letter-fairer-terms-for-writers
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Someone1234
Only 11.5% can now make a living wage because there are more writers, on more
platforms, but with total reader's remaining roughly similar. And a lot of
these writers are using self-publishing platforms like Amazon.

Nobody is forcing writers to use traditional publishers. If they're only
giving you 25% of the ebook revenue then move to Amazon who do either 35% or
70%[0].

I will say I WISH creative types (artists, writers, etc) all made a living
wage, but unfortunately the market is too saturated since the barrier to entry
is low-ish (although the barrier to success is higher).

[0]
[https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30F3VI2TH1FR8](https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30F3VI2TH1FR8)

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sho_hn
Something to think about when suggesting that killing jobs by robotic
automation will just drive people into more creative endeavours. The demand
for everyone to do creative labor just isn't there.

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TheMagicHorsey
You are thinking about things incorrectly I think.

Lets say that ubiquitous automation reduces employment in many manufacturing
and service sectors. Prices will fall in those sectors, abundance will
increase. People will need to spend less of their income for these goods and
services. The additional income will be used for other things. Some of the
other things will be things like books, music, etc.

If you doubt what I say, think about how spending patterns changed when the
economy went from 90% employment in agriculture to 2% employment in
agriculture. Prior to this transition, something like 70% of wage was spent on
food. Afterwards less than 10% was spent on food.

In the future, something like 10% of income might be spent on all non-digital
goods and services, and 90% of income might be spent on the virtual economy
(games, books, music, film, etc.)

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ryanmaynard
Would you happen to have a link, or a few keywords, that would aid in finding
the agricultural employment percentile shift?

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TheMagicHorsey
[http://ourworldindata.org/data/food-
agriculture/agricultural...](http://ourworldindata.org/data/food-
agriculture/agricultural-employment/)

~~~
ryanmaynard
Thank you for this!

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gaius
There will always be a well-remunerated home for terrible writers at the
Grauniad.

