出版与作家生涯2021ellegriffin.substack.com编辑精选
写书并不是个好主意
Writing books is not really a good idea
导读
这篇文章讨论靠写书谋生的现实难度，评论区从版税数学、收入预期和写作目标三个角度补充了作者视角。对写作者来说，它值一读的地方在于：写作回报不只体现在销量上，渠道选择和预期设定会直接影响你能不能持续写下去。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
谈写作收入时先算版税：同样卖 5000 本，10% 传统版税和 80% 直销/电子书收入能差十几倍，选题材和发行方式时要一起算。
- 02
把"年薪十万"当成成功的默认标准容易让人失望；借助订阅或读者直接资助（如 Patreon），长篇写作也能得到支撑。
- 03
连载中配合订阅（例如 Substack）可能是小说作者兼顾创作节奏与收入的一种现实路径。
- 04
动笔前先明确目标：若目的是整理研究、得出自己的结论，长篇非虚构本身就成立，不必用销量衡量。
HN 评论精选
同样的销量，版税率和发行渠道决定收入差十几倍；小说作者可考虑连载＋订阅模式。
值得考虑的一个因素是版税率。以 20 美元卖出 5000 本、每本赚 1 美元，你赚 5000 美元（按出版社那部分 10% 版税算，出版社部分约为零售价一半；小说通常卖不到 20 美元，这里只是方便计算）。但同样 5000 本电子书、80% 版税，每本赚 16 美元，就是 8 万美元。Leanpub 就是这个比例（披露：我是联合创始人），用 Gumroad 或博客+Stripe 自己开店还能更高。对小说来说，理想的组合大概是在连载过程中配合订阅发布，目前 Substack 最合适：几千人每月付几美元，你就能过得不错，最顶尖的那批人做得非常好。
peterarmstrong查看英文原文
One thing to consider is royalty rate. If you sell 5000 copies for $20 and earn a dollar per copy, you've earned $5,000. (This math is based on 10% royalties on the publisher's portion, which is about half of retail. And no, fiction books don't sell for $20 typically, but I'm using this number to make the math easy.) Now, if you sell 5000 copies of an ebook for $20 and earn 80% royalties, you earn $16 per copy, and earn $80,000. This is the royalty rate on Leanpub (disclosure: cofounder), but with Gumroad or blog + Stripe approaches you'd earn an even better percentage (if you want to run your own store). For fiction, however, the dream combination is probably publishing in-progress with subscriptions. Currently it seems that Substack is the best for that. If you can get a few thousand people to subscribe for a few bucks a month, you could do well. The people at the top are doing really, really well: https://stratechery.com/2021/sovereign-writers-and-substack/
收入预期可以放低；读者直接资助（Patreon／打赏）是小众作者可行的补充收入。
要是有这类信息的时间序列图会很有意思：过去靠写作谋生是不是更容易？想必某个时点达到顶峰，文章暗示那已过去，但过去多久了？是能靠写作成功的绝对人数减少了，还是只占总人口的比例下降？另外我觉得 10 万美元年薪的预期有点高，这几乎是美国家庭收入中位数的两倍，而这工作还能在林中小屋里做。我也知道有些作者转向 Patreon：N.K. Jemisin 就开了个著名的 Patreon，让她辞掉工作全职写作。我个人曾直接给喜爱的一些中游作者捐过 100 多美元，他们的作品对我阅读生活影响很大。顺带一提，我以前读得更多，但现在每年至少还会买三四本全价书。
asdfasgasdgasdg查看英文原文
It would be interesting to have a timeseries plot of this sort of information. Did it used to be easier to make a living as an author? Presumably there was some point at which the ease of making a living as an author peaked. This article suggests that time is in the past, but how far in the past? Has the absolute number of people who can make it as an author decreased, or just the relative fraction of the human population? So many questions. I do also think that the expectation/standard of a $100k/year salary is a bit high. That's almost double the US median household income, for a job that can be done (some would argue is best done) from a house in the woods. I also know that some authors are turning to Patreon. N.K. Jemisen famously started a Patreon that allowed her to quit her job and begin writing full-time. I personally have donated >$100 directly to favorite midlist authors who have made a big impact on my reading life. FWIW, I used to read more, but I still buy at least three or four full-priced books a year.
明确写作目标；为小众读者写作、追求个人结论，比追逐大众市场更能写出好东西。
目标很重要，必须承认这一点。如果你只对收入感兴趣又在写小说，数字对你不利——正如作者所示，写作不是直接收入的好来源。但如果你就某个个人话题积累了大量研究，想把线索梳理到一起并得出自己的结论，长篇非虚构大概是唯一管用的工具，不管出不出书。各种小众类型还有很多间接收益。把一切归结为钱，你不会开心。现在人人都能出版，结果大多数书都不怎么样；有人打趣说今天出版的书绝大多数根本不该出版，至少就面向大众出版而言我基本同意——只是出版不一定非得那样。我今年要开始写另一本书，之前每本读者都不到 1000 人，我开心得很，事实上完全不想面向大众出版。在我看来，只从大众市场角度看写作，是写出一堆高度定向的垃圾的最好办法，人人都在写下一版连载通俗小说。所以不管为多大的读者群写作、写得多好，最后都只会是（相比之下）平庸之作；但如果你写得还算好，聚焦在一个极其精准的小众……
DanielBMarkham查看英文原文
Goals are very important to acknowledge. If you're only interested in income and are writing fiction, the numbers are against you. In general, as the author shows, writing isn't a great source of direct income. If, however, you've accumulated a lot of research on a personal topic and want to gather the threads together and reach some personal conclusions, long-form non-fiction is probably the only tool that's going to work, whether you publish or not. There are many more indirect benefits for various niche genres. If you reduce it all to money, you're not going to be happy. Everybody can publish now and as a result of that, most books are not that great. One wag said that the great majority of books published today shouldn't be published at all. I tend to agree, at least in terms of publishing for a wide audience. It's just that book publishing doesn't have to be like that. I'm starting on another book this year. Each of my previous books has had less than 1,000 readers and I'm happy as a clam. In fact, I really don't want to start publishing to a mass audience. In my opinion, looking at writing only in terms of a mass audience is the best way to start writing a lot of highly-targeted trash. Everybody is already trying to write the next version of serialized pulp fiction. That's why, in my opinion, no matter how well you write for any sized audience at all it's only going to end up being mediocre (by comparison). If, however, you write reasonably well on a laser-focused extremely small niche that you have great passion for? You win even if you get only seven readers. Beat the game by not playing by the rules they give you.
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