Spider Star
The human colony on the planet Argo has long explored and exploited the technology left behind by an extinct alien race. But then an archaeology team accidentally activates a terrible weapon...
Read More.Praise for Star Dragon
"Seldom does a storytelling talent come along as potent and fully mature as Mike Brotherton. His complex characters take you on a voyage that is both fiercely credible and astonishingly imaginative. This is Science Fiction."
-- David Brin"Star Dragon is terrific fare, offering readers a fusion of hard science and grand adventure."
-- Locus Magazine"Star Dragon is steeped in cosmology, the physics of interstellar travel, exobiology, artificial intelligence, bioscience. Brotherton, author of many scientific articles in refereed journals, has written a dramatic, provocative, utterly convincing hard science sf novel that includes an ironic twist that fans will love."
-- Booklist starred review"Readers hungry for the thought-provoking extrapolation and rigorous technical detail of old-fashioned hard SF are sure to enjoy astronomer Brotherton's first novel."
-- Publishers Weekly"Mike Brotherton, himself a trained astrophysicist, combines the technical acuity and ingenuity of Robert Forward with the ironic, postmodern stance and style of M. John Harrison. In this, his debut novel, those twin talents unite to produce a work that is involving on any number of levels. It's just about all you could ask for in a hardcore SF adventure."
-- Paul di Fillippo, SCI-FI.COM
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The Future: Writing as a Career or Hobby
November 1st, 2008
I was talking to Mike Resnick at a convention and he remarked about the print run of his first book, which was close to six figures. Now, he’s a good, big name writer, but new writers in SF today as opposed to decades past rarely have print runs at that level and the average is much smaller. There are more books published today with smaller individual audiences, which, all in all, is a good thing for fans. I would rather have a wide choice of reading options, with some being exactly what I want.
But this downsizing is going to continue, and with electronic publishing, transform. E-books are not the standard in publishing yet that MP3s are in the music industry. I don’t even buy CDs any more, and keep everything on my ipod.
It may take another decade, but we will get to this technology with books, too. It may not be amazon’s kindle but it will be the ipod version of the book. I am living abroad right now, and it killed me to only take a dozen or so books with me to Brazil, but I took my entire music collection.
What I am getting around to is the notion that the business model for books will break soon much as it broke for the music industry, and more recently the movie industry. There will have to be a new model.
The big winner in music has been itunes, the first system where large numbers of people paid for legal music downloads. On-demand movies have been somewhat successful, too, although this industry will need to meet new challenges as compression technology and bandwidths improve.
Books are next.
Even if a business model similar to itunes pops up with success, the lower risk involved in publication given the potential elimination of printing and shipping fees will likely mean more books published with even smaller audiences and smaller advances. On average.
What I am getting at, which I indicated in my title, is the notion that even fewer writers are likely to be able to make a full-time living at writing. There aren’t many today, but there do seem to be more than when Resnick broke in, perhaps a sweet spot in terms of numbers. I am suggesting that while there is still some money to be made by writers, it is going to get harder to make enough to live on very well (and I don’t think most full-time writers live in the lap of luxury).
My full 12-month salary as a professor in the physical sciences just broke six figures (including the summer salary I can pay myself when I have research grants). The figures that open writers like John Scalzi provide suggest they don’t make this much, which is consistent with what I hear from friends who don’t publish their incomes in public. It would take a really big book to convince me to move out of a tenured faculty position to write full time at this point.
So, I know I am not the first to make this point and won’t be the last, but writing is likely to remain in some sense a hobby for me (a very, important business-minded and passionate hobby) but not a full-time gig. I also think this is going to an increasing rule in the future.
You can google up alternative models to my itunes for books proposal. The thousand true fans thing, for instance, and other variations of patron systems. But I think there’s a likelihood that a lot of the artists of the future will be better described as hobbyists.
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As a note of clarification, I did indeed make over $100k last year from fiction writing, and this year I expect to make at least that much as well. You may be thinking of the fiction writing sum I noted for 2006, which was $67k.
That said, your larger point is not in contention, as I am an outlier in terms fiction writing income.
I’m not sure that this is such a bad thing. After all, a writer who knows he can only write a book every three or four, five and so on years knows that there only so much books in him, which (hopefully) makes him choose much more carefully what he is writing about. I rather read a writer who has published only ten excellent book in his lifetime than fifty.
I agree completely that fiction writers in the SF/F/H genre will have a more difficult making a full time living. The ones that do generally pump out several novels a year to make the six figure incomes.
I also believe that availability of ebooks will spread work faster and cheaper, but I think a lot of people will still want paper because it works anywhere you have light.
OTOH, the gen X and Y and future Z have/will grow up conditioned to gain their data on a screen and in a very portable fashion, making ebooks more mainstream.
Change is inevitable.
but reading books on a screen sucks serious monkey nuts. a person can read so much online before their eyeballs punk out on ’em. at least most people. even though i’ve grown up on computers and whatnot, i still hate to read more than a blog’s worth at a time on a computer screen. but either way some kind of change is overdue
John, yes, I believe I had the 2006 number in mind as I was rushed and did not look up a more recent number. Congrats on breaking six figures with the writing!
Cuyler, we will have better e-reading tech in coming years that will more closely resemble paper.
I think we will see more writers trying to write full time taking on more obligations and contracts, with some decrease in the level of quality on average, before the system breaks. I could be wrong about it breaking, however, but I don’t see a lot of evidence to convince me otherwise.
Of the 75-odd books I read this year (so far), 25 were on a eBook device. (I also own those 25 books as hardcovers). I’ve pretty much stopped buying paperbacks; if I can find a reasonably-priced, DRM-free eBook, I’ll buy that.
As for being in Brazil, should I not torture with the fact that my eBook reader as some 2,500 texts of various lengths on it (and it is less than half full)?
I just bought a kindle. I was thinking of asking you if you want one for Christmas. I think you would like it.
Ohhh…if he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it. Just think of me as the brother he forgot to mention!
Hey, Fred, it was on my amazon wishlist already! It would be nice to carry all my books with me the way I carry all my music now.
Stephanie Young: “I also believe that availability of ebooks will spread work faster and cheaper, but I think a lot of people will still want paper because it works anywhere you have light.”
I agree. Besides, there are many people who will never give up the books due to sheer sentimentality. Personally for me, the contact with the paper is sacred. Not to mention that to take a book in the bed is much more convinient than to take a laptop.
Cheers,
Sabina