
Why I Am a Bad Correspondent (2015) - gmays
https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-correspondent.html
======
lukejduncan
“my books are bought by enough people to provide me with a sort of middle-
class lifestyle, but not enough to hire employees”

This actually surprises me. With someone as thoroughly read and prolific as
Stephenson I would have expected a much larger financial reward. Are the
economics of publishing really that bad or is he just being modest?

~~~
spc476
It's that bad. Very few writers can make a living just off writing novels. I
have a friend who wrote, six? seven? novels and just couldn't make it as a
novel writer. There's just too much competition [1] these days.

[1] Not only with other people who are writers, but with the attention of
potential customers (games, movies, surfing the web, etc).

~~~
stunthamsterio
Completely this. I'm currently working on a novel with a view to publishing,
but under no illusions that it's going to make any worthwhile money. For that,
I have my day job and technical books (Which as far as I can make out are far
more profitable then novels on average).

The Society of Authors
([https://societyofauthors.org/](https://societyofauthors.org/)) do some
excellent work on this front. Basically, to make money writing you have to
either be a _machine_ and put out a lot of content, or get lucky and build a
fan base that is willing to wait for infrequent releases but buy all the
copies.

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jamestimmins
In addition to being very humbly and respectfully written, I suspect that this
is not unique to successful authors. That we'd all benefit similarly from this
focused effort, but it's so foreign that we don't know what we're missing.

~~~
jordanpg
The same line of thinking applies to programming, of course.

In practice, however, the life of a programmer is usually split up into too
many tiny async slices by email, chat, meetings, etc. to even attempt to
enumerate here. It's so far the opposite extreme of what he describes here
that it's like ironic comedy.

Makes me feel like I'm doing life all wrong.

~~~
codr7
I've been doing pretty much what he describes for three years now, except
writing code and sharing it with the world for free [0].

After spending 13 years writing software professionally in everything from
major established corporations to consulting and startups.

I don't have that many options for health-reasons, and I'm privileged to live
with a partner who pulls most of the economic weight.

But I can't imagine doing it any other way anymore.

[0]

[https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/tree/master/v1](https://github.com/codr7/g-fu/tree/master/v1)

[https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl](https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl)

[https://github.com/codr4life/snabl](https://github.com/codr4life/snabl)

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mjcohen
This is really hard to read - dark grey on a black background.

~~~
zulln
[https://outline.com/https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-
am-...](https://outline.com/https://www.nealstephenson.com/why-i-am-a-bad-
correspondent.html)

~~~
cgoecknerwald
Also- 'reader view' on Firefox.

