Discussion

Woman of Letters

bryanrasmussen: > I am giving a huge corporation a product to sell, but I am doing it for a fraction of what it cost me to produce that product.well, relatively huge but the article's own admission.

christkv: Most books are loss leaders for publishing houses very few are profitable and even fewer are massively profitable. They keep publishing books that barely anybody reads because they have to have a diverse catalog.

tclancy: That was a fantastic read, thanks for the link!

bombcar: It's the shotgun approach. Lots and lots of attempts and ride the successes as far as they can.

BigTTYGothGF: > they have to have a diverse catalog.They have to have a diverse catalog because they don't know in advance which books will be the big sellers.

paleotrope: That was worth the read. I did get a bit lost when the writer was talking about the different areas, prestige fiction, commercial fiction, nonprofit fiction.

legitster: This kind of reminds me of the book Get Shorty and the subsequent movie. About a mafia loan shark moving to hollywood and becoming a producer.Elmore Leonard was very familiar with movie producers by that point in his career, and clearly saw a a funny similarly between what a mob does and how Hollywood operates.At the same time, the book is almost a tender mark of appreciation towards the role a producer plays. It's one of the few stories that spotlights what a producer actually does and shows it's importance in getting things done to actually make a movie.

delichon: I hope The Martian becomes the template of a new publishing world. Andy Weir couldn't get any publisher's attention until he self published and achieved 35,000 sales in three months without their help. He succeeded by word of mouth and not publisher's marketing.Almost all of the fiction I read comes by personal recommendations. Including from social media like Hacker News. I haven't stood in a bookstore browsing shelves and reading blurbs in many years but I read more than ever.A publisher provides marketing, editing and distribution. Literary marketing is becoming better in the peer-to-peer form than the old business-to-consumer form. Distribution has become unbundled via self-publishing. Editing is no less important than ever, but it would be so much better if the value from such an individual art can be captured by those talented individuals rather than by corporate.Long live literature, but may Big Publishing fade away into obsolescence.

didgetmaster: It mirrors the venture capital business. Invest in 100 projects. Know that 90 of them will likely fail, 7 or 8 will break even, and just 2 or 3 will succeed. Hope that the successful ones are big enough to cover all the losses of the others plus some.

mistrial9: no - capital intensive business has very different patterns than popular media business. The visibility of the VCs and the visibility of publishing houses has some small overlap. Day-to-day and implementation details, timelines for success.. audience, partners.. so many things are starkly different IMHO

bombcar: Tolkien and Rowling probably combine to be the majority of British publishing revenues ...

conception: Dav Pilkey is basically western comic books right now. One of his books outsells all traditional publishers - Marvel, DC, IDW, etc.

jfengel: The Martian was published in 2011. There are vanishingly few like it since then.Sometimes a book gets picked up purely on its merits. (It helps to appeal to a wealthy target audience.) But on average you'd get richer by getting a minimum wage job and spending it all on lottery tickets.

mikrl: >I haven't stood in a bookstore browsing shelves and reading blurbs in many years but I read more than everMy approach these days is also to pick up social media based recommendations and add them to my ‘large online retailer’ wishlist. I have a large backlog now of stuff I got from /lit/, from here, ChatGPT recommendations, references in other books etc etcThen when I go to the brick and mortar bookstore every month or so I just try and knock things off the ‘large online retailer’ wishlist open on my phone.

jeremymcanally: That's because publishers these days basically require you to have that magnitude of social media presence or they generally won't touch you. If they do, they will do next to nothing to help actually sell your book after it's printed. Very rarely will you see someone who hasn't built a platform already be given any sort of extra marketing or distribution for their work. You'll effectively give them 90% of the sale price for printing and possibly some limited distribution. Publishers used to be tastemakers and make picks and bets based on book merit, but now it's basically like they're just looking for things that would already succeed on their own and injecting themselves into the process.They've basically figured out how to take half of their job and shove it off on the author while they still take their oversized cut. It's pretty egregious in my opinion.I've seen this with all types of publishers, btw, from children's books to technical books. Heck, most technical publishers these days are mostly print on demand, so you're barely getting any unique product from the publisher at all.

ggreer: The Martian is an outlier in its success, but it's far from the only instance of successful self-published sci-fi. Recent examples I've read include The Powers of Earth[1] by Travis Corcoran and Theft of Fire by Devon Eriksen. In both cases, the authors quit their day jobs (I think both worked in software) and are now full time writers.1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Powers_of_the_Earth

djoldman: > ...the employees of Random House don’t need to be paid as much as the employees at Palantir, because Random House is perceived (by its employees) as fundamentally good, something that serves humanity, while Palantir designs software that the government uses to find targets for drone strikes. Jobs at Random House are much harder to get than jobs at Palantir, even though jobs at Random House are paid much more poorly.An interesting take, particularly the assertion that "jobs at Random House are much harder to get than jobs at Palantir." I'd be absolutely 100% shocked if that were true.Generally, the more a job pays, the harder it is to get hired. These are generally correlated with job-obtaining-difficulty:* high pay* required certifications / licenses (law, medical, etc.)* (low) supply of workers with desirable experienceGiven the above, it seems that Palantir jobs would be much more difficult to obtain.

eszed: > the more a job pays, the harder it is to get hiredThat's not axiomatically true, like, at all.The odds of being hired vary according to the supply of qualified applicants vs available positions. Tech companies with large profit margins will be able to offer higher wages than businesses with lower margins - and do so because they're competing with other tech companies, and (for the most part) not companies in other sectors - so assuming pay is a differentiator across domains can't be assumed. Over the long term, pay differential within a sector will motivate more people to become qualified for jobs within it, but at any particular moment cross-sector compensation isn't really relevant to the question.This isn't to say the original assertion is true, as they don't offer any evidence, but it wouldn't be shocking to find out that a publishing company has more qualified applicants per job posting than any particular tech company.

zipy124: And yet I don't know any software engineers in my personal circle who would be willing to work for palantir, and so they must have a fairly hard time finding people willing, thus it can't be as difficult as places where this is not the case (in the same industry).

Bertelsmann (the owner of Random House) is a for-profit corporation just like Palantir (a defense contractor), but the employees of Random House don’t need to be paid as much as the employees at Palantir, because Random House is perceived (by its employees) as fundamentally good

tptacek: Bertelsmann (the owner of Random House) is a for-profit corporation just like Palantir (a defense contractor), but the employees of Random House don’t need to be paid as much as the employees at Palantir, because Random House is perceived (by its employees) as fundamentally goodNo? The employees of Random House don't need to be paid as much because the supply of qualified candidates for those roles greatly exceeds the demand. There are lots of causes of that imbalance and most of them have nothing to do with the perceived righteousness of publishing. It's also hard to get a job in the abusive video game development industry!

jfengel: Some of it has to do with the perceived righteousness of publishing. A lot of those jobs involve holding people's hands, "emotional labor", like nursing and teaching. These jobs are seen as something people (women, mostly) should do because they like being carers, rather than for the money. These jobs end up being paid less than they are really worth, especially since they often involve many hours without compensation.That's hardly the only factor here. In the end it's really about the fact that we appear to have an infinite appetite for blowing people up. ($1.5 trillion, next year, a full 50% increase at a time when we're supposedly needing to cut back.)But don't discount the thumb on the scale against jobs like these. It's a persistent problem in many industries -- so pervasive that it just looks natural.

tptacek: Nursing and teaching are surprisingly well-compensated fields with lots of job security and relatively straightforward entrance requirements. It's also true that both fields are valorized, but plumbing isn't and has the same dynamics. These arguments are all overdetermined.

claw-el: Wouldn’t the supply of labor for a role or company increase if what the company do, books or video games, is associated to what most people see as good, therefore, they are more willing to build their long term skill sets in?That perceived associated goodness is what caused the increase in qualified candidates in the first place?

beedeebeedee: That may be true elsewhere, but not in the US

tptacek: Could you be more specific? I don't know what you're referring to.

mold_aid: Almost certain OP is referring to the fact that nurses and teachers are not well-paid or respected in the US, which I'd like to note as well. Despite this, Public Health as a pseudo-STEM major nearly ranks with STEM fields in general for majors seen as "workplace-ready."Maybe there are too many English majors (I honestly think the supply of careers is too low). But I think the "supply is greater than the demand" is possibly now more an explanatory argument for unemployment rates for Engineering and PT and other such quiescent majors. Certainly there are plenty of Ed majors for a field whose workers fled at pace earlier this decade.Let's assume I'm teaching 25 or so Engl majors right now in a class with publishing as its central focus (hypothetically) at a state school. The students would neither be able to define "small press" nor name the big 5 - even the ones who just came back from AWP. The linked piece, I think, correctly names the romanticized vision of publishing that is divorced from understandings of the cost of living in NYC. I don't also think that college majors are actually all that itchy to get into editorial, whether or not they're all and every single one applying for the same pool of jobs.

tptacek: If the claim is "nurses and teachers are poorly paid in the US", that claim is broadly false. K-12 teachers in major metro areas in the US have surprisingly generous comp packages: well above area median take-home salary with predictable ladders, very good benefits, and defined-benefit pension plans.There are school districts where teachers are poorly compensated, but they aren't the norm over the population as a whole. Teachers are generally well-compensated.Nursing, I don't know where to start.

djoldman: Folks may talk past each other on this.Some people may say that nurses and teachers ARE NOT well-paid because those workers deserve to be paid more than they are.Some people may say that nurses and teachers ARE well-paid because they are generally paid more than median wage.As for some dry facts, median wages: Registered Nurse $93,600 Public School Teacher $64,000 Private School Teacher $57,600 All U.S. Occupations $49,500 https://www.bls.gov/ooh/occupation-finder.htm

tptacek: Complexifiers for teaching: K12 cash comp in major population centers (CPS, SFUSD, Philly, MSP, &c) is sharply higher than that median, and, more importantly, teachers get a huge amount of non-cash comp. Can't say enough how valuable a defined-benefit pension is. All-in comp for a lot of rank-and-file K12 teachers in major metros is competitive with software development (in those regions; obviously excluding SFUSD).

dxdm: Where does the supply come from? You could still argue that people choose this as a career when they have the choice of better-paid ones, increasing the supply of people with the smarts and training needed by the publishers.I don't know if that's what's happening, but it might work towards TFA's point.

chromacity: It probably has to do with the fact that we condition children and adolescents to consider white-collar jobs as more noble than blue-collar jobs, then we tell them that to get a good white-collar job, they need a degree... and then we make STEM degrees hard by subjecting students to more math than most people realistically need. So we have a lot of frontend developers who know calculus and an oversupply of people with humanities degrees.With that degree, you're generally pushed toward jobs in journalism, publishing, graphic design, teaching, administrative functions, and so on. Most of these pay relatively little.

x3n0ph3n3: It's a shame that calculus isn't required by every college degree. Just because I'm not integrating functions during my normal work, doesn't mean I don't benefit from understanding the fundamental principles.

chromacity: Yes, totally. I was about to undero surgery but found out the doctor didn't even know about Laplace transforms and I stormed out.

com2kid: [delayed]

gopher_space: > well above area median take-home salaryFor someone with masters-level education and years of experience?

bpt3: The number of people with humanities degrees who also could successfully obtain a rigorous CS or engineering degree is not very large.I suggest you revisit your hypothesis with a little less bias.

robocat: Would you say the same about learning Christianity: maybe not directly useful for your job, however it is rather foundational to much of English society.

x3n0ph3n3: Yeah! I've found that learning the foundations of religions is a great way to inoculate people from worst aspects of those ideas.

rcxdude: I don't think it's a matter of more 'noble', simply a more comfortable option if it's available to you. It has historically paid better and taken a lower toll on your body. The former is now less true, but the latter is still a big issue.

Nasrudith: Technically yes, but it isn't just goodness. There are plenty of dirty jobs that do good and thus few people want it. The logical extreme is being a martyr - no pay and death but regarded as ultimate good.

Ekaros: Being a farmhand is arguably one of the most goodness jobs. You are feeding everyone else with your labour... Somehow it is not very well paid or very popular job.

tptacek: No.

wisty: Not hugely so. Teaching isn't paid megabucks but that's partly because it's a market for lemons - it's hard to tell a good one from a bad one (and people don't even agree in what it means to be educated, are facts or "critical thinking" more important, how about discipline vs temporary comfort) so there's no high paid super stars.There is a stereotype that teachers are low paid. Somewhat .... but there's a slight premium on doing meaningful work.The whole premise that women are paid far less is kind of wrong anyway (or at best another outdated stereotype).Childless men and women make about the same amount.Women with children work fewer hours and share finances with men who work more hours, and apparently this is an injustice.

decimalenough: This depends wildly on the country, but in many, public school teachers are criminally underpaid.Nursing is also a hard job where the paycheck is nowhere near what doctors can earn.

tptacek: Outside of low-population rural school districts, the idea that teachers are poorly paid --- at least for the last 30 years or so --- comes from people not understanding the value of a defined-benefit pension plan (and, if you want to go that far, that people don't understand the interplay between an annual salary and a huge number of days off work).

mold_aid: >that claim is broadly false.No, sorry, no, it is not "broadly false." K-12 salaries enter at average 40k often with a requirement to enter a graduate program within five years. I don't see that teachers in most states have received substantial increases in salary over any considerable period. They are underpaid.Compensation rates are not "surprisingly good" (surprisingly?). Both groups merit much higher compensation. Your subjective consideration of "well-compensated" may differ from mine and fair enough, but I find generally one's position is more an index of their political beliefs (or sentiments towards unions in general) than any objective standard of what is "surprising" ("a retirement plan? In this economy?).

tptacek: You can just pick a city and Google median/mean salary for their school district to see that this isn't true. For what it's worth, the median cash compensation salary in my own high school district is six figures.The smirking "a retirement plan" comment you made leaves out the important bit: it's a defined-benefit plan. The point isn't that teachers shouldn't have defined-benefit pensions. The point is that those pensions are extremely valuable, and not at all a market-rate perk in the broader economy.It's easy to win an argument with a straw man saying "teachers are overcompensated". It'll be harder for you to contend with the argument I'm actually making.

aworks: I understand the value of statistics. But calculus? I say this, as someone who took 6 semesters of calculus in college.

com2kid: 6 semesters seems like... a lot? IIRC getting a math undergrad at my Uni didn't require that many classes of calc.I think calc 1 and 2 are extremely valuable. The concept of rate of change is fundamental to so many things in life, and understanding "area under the curve" is essential to understanding how many ideas are communicated, including lots of graphs in physics, chemistry, and economics.Beyond that I feel calculus starts getting into specific applications and is less generally applicable to the populace at large.

eszed: The reverse is also true.My current hypothesis is that as AI forces software development down less and less deterministic pathways, I suspect that the value of a basic CS degree will diminish relative to humanities training. Comfort with ambiguity, an ability to construct a workable "theory of mind", and to construct unambiguous natural-language prompts will become more relevant than grokking standard algorithms.

wisty: I think the holdiays are offset by the nature of the job - even the lasiest teachers actually have to show up and work, they don't just type "camera issue" in a WFH meeting then watch Netflix (or do something just as pointless and lazy in a face to face meeting).If you're comparing teachers to nurses, sure nurses tend to have more pay but more hours and harder work. But most jobs that you can do with a BA in English (or any other degree that isn't either extremely competitive like medicine, or in a really high demand field right now), teachers get (at least) similar pay, for a similar amount of work (albeit compressed into the school calender). Especially if you consider benefits, as you point out.

tptacek: I think it's wild that the basis for comparison you have here is remote software developers in meetings. You know that everybody who works retail, manufacturing, hospitality, warehouses, and construction has to show up and work the same way, too?Yes: the kinds of people commenting on HN have it easier than just about anybody in the work force. That doesn't make us a reasonable bar for assessing the attractiveness of a job. Would you rather work as a teacher or a truck driver?

tptacek: Very few professions in the world earn anywhere near what doctors can earn.

bpt3: The reverse most certainly is not true, and even if it were it wouldn't matter.Humanities advocates have been hoping for the demise of valuable STEM degrees for at least the last 30 years. It's not happening for many reasons, of them being: All the skills you listed are also taught in an engineering and rigorous CS curriculum, plus those degrees provide validation that the individual is intelligent and determined enough to complete coursework that most people cannot.

eszed: I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity. But look, I'm not talking about the top ~10%, or whatever: the really smart kids can adapt to whatever gets thrown at them[0]. I'm doubtful that a 50th-percentile or below CS degree / student will retain the value that they've recently had - and given what I read on here about the present job market for new grads on here, that's maybe already happening.Anyway, I had to pick one, my money'd be on philosophy degrees rising in value: they're already sought out by financial firms. Have you seen the sort of analytical / symbolic reasoning they do?[0] In fact, in case you didn't know, rigorous humanities programs and research involve an awful lot of statistics and coding, even though the dinosaurs that run the MLA and most English departments aren't able to handle it.

bpt3: > I dunno, man. The difficulty (and resentment of having to even take them) most STEM majors had in my college-level writing classes causes me to doubt that, as does the general reaction on this board to any kind of problem / domain with irreducible ambiguity.I don't think most STEM majors would be outstanding English Literature (or whatever humanities program you prefer) majors, but I do think they could manage to obtain a degree. Very, very few humanities majors could get an engineering degree.And yes, the writing classes they force engineers to take are largely pointless and not enjoyable. Everyone with a degree got through them though, and I have to imagine the percentage of STEM students who washed out on that and not organic chemistry, compiler design, differential equations, etc. is extremely small (it was 0 out of the hundreds of people I knew at my school).> But look, I'm not talking about the top ~10%, or whatever: the really smart kids can adapt to whatever gets thrown at them[0].Sure. Very few of these kids are going into publishing, because they'll have more lucrative options and will pursue them.> I'm doubtful that a 50th-percentile or below CS degree / student will retain the value that they've recently had - and given what I read on here about the present job market for new grads on here, that's maybe already happening.That may be, but they're still in better shape than a 50% percentile humanities degree holder, who also is having the value of their skillset eroded by AI.> Anyway, I had to pick one, my money'd be on philosophy degrees rising in value: they're already sought out by financial firms. Have you seen the sort of analytical / symbolic reasoning they do?Lol, they are not "sought out" in any sense of the word. Philosophy majors at top tier schools are sought out because everyone at the school is sought out, not because they majored in philosophy.And yes, I took a number of philosophy classes in college as an undergrad because they were easy (have you seen the analytical/symbolic reasoning required of EE or CS majors? It's a lot more difficult that what is required of philosophy majors).

eszed: > [50th percentile CS grads] are still in better shape than a 50% percentile humanities degree holder, who also is having the value of their skillset eroded by AI.That's the crux of it, and right now it appears to me that the ability to write unambiguous natural language prompts - in a variety of contexts, not specifically heavy-duty dev work - is going to be increasingly valuable. The 50th percentile english / philosophy grad is better at that than the 50th percentile CS major - while, at the same time, the bottom rungs of the developer ladder appear to have been kicked out.I'm trying very hard not to make this into a "who's smarter?" question. That's a well-trodden and pointless argument, particularly if money is going to be the measuring stick. Besides, if that's where we're going, the finance bros and C-suite win, and do either of us think they're the geniuses in the room?But, we'll see. We're living in Interesting Times.