Essay on the state of the Publishing industry.

[Celestial Dung]

http://salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/ ... index.html

Salon article about a mid style writerand her miraculous adentures of getting published. It's all been said before but it's rather nice to have it said from the point of a view of a writer.

http://salon.com/books/feature/2004/03/ ... index.html

and as a complimentery list...what you can do to to help mid list writers.

I

[keltora]

The problem is, I know dozens of writers who have published twice as many books as this person in half as many years who are up in arms about her daring to WHINE because she has made over $240,000.00 in about seven years time (and that's not even counting how much she had to have made off the ghosted celebrity bio--which had to have paid nearly a quarter mil in advance). To get an advance of $150,000 for your first book is nearly impossible.

The average writer in America is lucky to get $2000+ a year. In fact, members of the Writer's Guild of America were surveyed, and their average annual income from writing was about $4,500. Only a handful get the Big Bucks Awards.

This woman has no right to whine and complain. Instead of asking her agent what to do, she should have been applying her rear end to the chair and writing.

$150,000 is more than I could make in six years at my current salary (and that is including my annual writing income).

Apart from which, what she says about the industry is something that has been said for over 20 years. Nothing in her article is "new."

This is a business. Nobody told her to be a writer.

She should get over it.

Laura J. Underwood