-Jack here. If you aren’t following Larry on X (@MonsterHunter45), you really should. He’s having a delightful time not being constantly censored. This is from one of his posts over there that we thought should be preserved.
Yo @SteveDiamond80… I think we need to talk about this defeatist horseshit on the show (the WriterDojo). (many of the comments deserve The Voice) What a self-defeating and totally ass backwards take on the business of writing. Guys, I know writing is a challenging business, but the successful mega star of the day making a dollar is not stealing a dollar from you.
When I was starting out the author jealous petty people whined about was JK Rowling, because she was the one making piles of money. They acted like if only the absolute sales juggernaut of Harry Potter didn’t exist, then all those millions of Harry Potter fans would go to them instead. What utter fucking bullshit. If Harry Potter didn’t exist, then odds are they still wouldn’t buy your book, because why would they? They’d buy something else they’d actually heard of, or for many of them, they wouldn’t read anything at all. In reality, all those kids who bought Harry Potter and stayed reading, continued buying books from lots of different people for the next couple decades, expanding in taste and genre. I’ve sold tons of books that are nothing like HP to people who started out reading HP.
So now it is Brandon who is making theme park money. Good for him. Same principle applies. If he didn’t exist then odds are his fans still haven’t heard of you, and you’ve presented no reason for them to have heard of you, or care. His fans who are only into him wouldn’t be reading anyone else, and his fans who read other authors would read other authors they’d actually heard of or had some reason to give a shit about. But is so UNFAIR. Life is unfair. But other authors who you think are more talented aren’t appreciated! Yep. Welcome to the wonderful world of art and entertainment, where quality is only one small part of the overall equation. Brandon also has a work ethic that would kill most of you, and a mercenary business savvy that’s rather impressive. (though I have demonstrated I can defeat Brandon easily in an battle axe fight)
If you want to be successful, take that whole jealousy based concept of fairness and throw it in the trash, because it is defeatist garbage that will only weigh you down. Every single author in the world can name another author who they think is talentless garbage, but who makes far more money than we do. “Ugh. Why does it have to be that idiot and not me?” we whine, and nobody cares. That’s pretty normal for artists, regardless of art form. History is full of artists dunking on other artists they thought they were better than. So what? Get better. Work harder. Switch up your marketing. Figure out new ways to grow your fan base. Improve your craft. Get more product out there. Whining about some other creator because you think it’s unfair they won the lottery and you didn’t, don’t accomplish shit.
As the great scholar Sean Connery taught us in his last performance as James Bond, losers talk about doing their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen. (And yes, I know that’s from the Rock, but he is totally James Bond in it.) But anyways, so it is “disheartening” to see someone else be wildly successful? Then that’s on you. I think George Martin is a lazy dork. I think he’s a one trick pony (nihilistic shocking character death) who writes bloated meandering bullshit who wouldn’t recognize heroism if it bit him on the ass, and since he only works when he’s hungry, and HBO has made sure he’ll never be hungry again, he’s gonna squander his legacy and an opportunity that other writers would kill for. But am I “disheartened” that lazy George got HBO money and I haven’t? Fuck no. It makes me ask what can I do to position myself to get something like that! 😀
Meanwhile, Brandon, whether you’re into his stuff or not, works his ass off and does everything in his power to give his fans exactly what they want. And they reward him for this accordingly. When he was given a Winning The Lottery opportunity (finishing WoT) he seized that moment like a friggin’ Eminem song. Yes, “the money IS THERE” but you certainly aren’t entitled to any of it. Why should those people give you money for your stuff? That’s what you need to figure out.
That is why we #RespectTheHustle
It sounds to me like the writers who are whining that they haven’t broken through to fame and fortune are from the DEI and “everyone gets a trophy” generation.
Just a guess.
Facts:
1. Life is not “fair”.
2. No one is entitled to anything.
3. Anyone CAN achieve anything that their talent and their work ethic are determined to achieve.
Does everyone have the same level of talent or even of luck?
Nope!
Oh well.
GO find what YOU do best and do that.
I *think* the ‘winning’ is in the ‘doing’ and not necessarily in the ‘arriving’, if you’re doing what you really love.
Just my 0.02.
(Or $1.50 with Bidenflation)
😊
The “rich white guys” line does incline one towards that assumption…
Since I’m not active on FB I have no idea what prompted this but “hell yeah”.
I am jealous as F of people who have worked their butts off writing and made, as Larry so eloquently put it, “theme park money”. I started a novel and I started a non-fiction work about motorcycle travel. Neither of them went very far because I wasn’t willing to put in the hours and effort. Turns out I’m not that interested in writing. It’s boring. I don’t want to do it. Would I have gotten theme park money for my books? Probably not but who cares. I didn’t even buy a ticket to the game. So I have no beef with people who did. My jealousy is far more along the lines of “wow, wish that were one of my talents so that I also could write stuff that everyone wanted to read. Instead I’m a hell of a motorcycle mechanic and a hell of a math teacher. I have a couple pretty good volunteer gigs due to some leadership and organizational skills. I’m have enough money that I live comfortably and can do, within reason, stuff that I want to do. I’m content. To those out there who want more, great. Go work for it.
If I were analyzing the roots of this viewpoint I’d probably point back to Marxist theory, that no-one gets rich without exploiting someone else since there is a finite pot of wealth that has to be divvied up amongst everyone. Completely debunked by years of economic theory and practice.
I’ll bet a lot of people would watch videos of someone teaching math concepts through motorcycle mechanics.
RE: “analyzing the roots of this viewpoint” — I believe you are correct. The tone of the comment reads like they believe since Brandon Sanderson is making a ton of money, he must be taking money from other authors that aren’t doing as well.
The reality, as we know, is very different. Sanderson is an excellent author in his own right, but he caught one hell of a lucky break in being chosen to finish The Wheel of Time. He was handed the keys to a kingdom and legacy Robert Jordan spent three decades building. That got his name out there to millions of WoT fans who might or might not have been exposed to his stuff otherwise. But more importantly, he worked his ass off and did a decent job with it.
Also important to remember: Sanderson took on a significant risk when he accepted the role. If he had done a crappy job, those same millions of WoT fans would know him as the man who destroyed their fandom instead of the man who brought it to a dignified end. His career might never have recovered from that level of negative press.
Everyone talks about “winning the lottery”, but forget that most actual lottery winners are broke a few years later; they get handed an amazing opportunity but have no idea what to do with it. As the saying goes, “luck” is where preparation meets opportunity. Sanderson put the work in ahead of time and was prepared when the opportunity dropped.
My guess is, the people griping about his success are more like the Powerball jackpot winners who go on a spending spree instead of investing their winnings, and wind up with nothing. They’re jealous that Sanderson got handed the kingdom keys, but refuse to acknowledge the work he put in before that caused RJ and his wife to choose him — it was not random chance — or the work he put in afterward and continues to put in to keep his career moving. His success didn’t come at the expense of others; it came as a result of his talent and hard work.
There’s a reason that Moses fellah came down from Sinai with a 10th Commandment
What are the odds that the only thing Redacted Twitter Commenter has ever written is some sort of self-indulgent, semi-biographical, “literary fiction” about the struggle of a thirty-something author avatar childless cat-lady to make it in Manhattan as a writer of self-indulgent, semi-biographical, “literary fiction”? Oh, whilst trying to resolve her love triangle between a cardboard cutout of Ryan Gosling and a Justin Timberlake poster of course.
Or a self-insert “Mary Sue” in someone else’s intellectual work.
I haven’t done a Kickstarter (thinking about it for a book I’m still editing), but if I got $2000 for one I would be totally psyched. That’s a merry handful of customers!
The pie is infinite. People don’t seem to get that. Along with the work needed to get a piece of said pie.
The only thing I would add to Larry’s comment is the sheer idiocy of comparing yourself as a newbie author to an established mega-author. That’s like my 10 year old comparing himself to Ohtani and whining that he’s paid more. Sanderson, if I recall correctly, wrote 7 novels before he sold Elantris, all while working nights at a hotel.
There’s a saying, I forget who its attributed to, but he said it takes a million words to be a really good writer. He added, take the money if someone buys any of those first million, but realize its probably not going to be your best novel. Looking at his epic tomes, Sanderson probably wrote 3 more novels after getting his million in until he sold ONE. He’s now many many more deep (35+ I think, but I’m not going to take the time to dig into it all). Of course he’s paid more than you, even if you don’t take into account his business acumen.
>There’s a saying, I forget who it’s attributed to, but he said it takes a million words to be a really good writer.
John D. Macdonald. Author of dozens of mystery novels, including the Travis McGee series..
Fun fact: he got his millions words in about two months, working fourteen hour days seven days a week.
Right up there with authors whining because the Tolkien, Heinlein, Bradley, Pratchett, etc… estates still ring up lots of sales.
You know what the good thing about all those sales is? That there are only so many books by the authors and then readers are going to go looking for other authors.
If it wasn’t for Tolkien then I never would have snapped up Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar books, which lead me to Elizabeth Moon’s, “The Deed of Paksinarrion” series and so on.
There are entire businesses dedicated to book recommendations, in which advertising emails are greedily consumed by readers needing their next fix.
If you can’t sell crack to crackheads…
As momma used to say, “life is unfair. Suck it up, buttercup”.
How can anyone complain about a guy who raised money and funded every current writing project on Kickstarter?
Ya really wanna bitch about something in the Wide Wide World of Writers, then bitch about how formulaic ‘romance’ ‘bodice-rippers’ make much more cash for their authors than ‘legitimate real liturature’ blah blah blah.
Subtle clue. Life is unfair.
And try producing work that is readable, relatable, enjoyable.
Like Larry’s first character we ever meet. Who doesn’t want to kill their boss or at least one of their coworkers? (And then the book gets fun, dark, mean, but stays fun. There’s no slogging through marxist theology or pulling a Roddenberry over killing a brain-eating and controlling slug.)
If you really want to be a rich hack, use AI to create bodice rippers, and self publish one every six months.
The are doing that now, only it is more like every 6 days.
Heck, the joke about “writes serious feminist poetry and teaches women’s lit and a poetry seminar at a prestigious university by day, writes smutty romances and bodice-rippers by night to pay the bills” goes back to the 1980s, at least. (The English professor who write history/historical fiction as Stanly Vestal was chastised by his colleagues because he required his non-fiction writing students to publish an article in order to pass. In the 1930s. Something like 95% of them managed on the first or second try.)
I was talking to a friend of mine who self-published her first collection of short stories. We were talking about the industry, and I made an off-hand about the romance business and she rolled her eyes. She told me she went to a writer’s con and during a “coffee with an author” time, one of the romance authors told the group that she has a literal formula she uses. She is literally just writing to an algorithm. That author is going to be replaced in less than 5 years by an LLM.
Jealousy is never a good look, and it often goes along with a victim mentality. I try to do what I want to be known for instead.
Spot on bud. Dont crab in a bucket your fellow man to try and better yourself. Whether it’s pumping iron, farming, shooting, or writing you pick yourself up through hard work not pull others down to your level.
The whining on this subject is very much like Balph Eubank from Atlas shrugged saying how there should be a law that only 10,000 copies of any book should ever be sold. With exclusions for the kinds of books he would right of course, those would be mandated and sold to the schools. Saying how that would level the literary playing field and expand people’s narrow minded view of enjoyment and learning.
Defeatest, jealous, and even in some cases evil rubbish.
That’s nothing. Directive 10-289 required (among its many, many other stupidities) that anybody who bought a book last year has to buy another copy of the same book this year. To ‘stabilize the economy’.
The usual communism 101 bullshit there, typical zero sum game nonsense. Anyone who hasn’t seen it yet, I highly recommend reading this tweet from an author called Devon Eriksen, who I’d never heard of before, but he correctly identifies the problem with George Martin, and why he’ll never, ever finish his series:
https://x.com/Devon_Eriksen_/status/1831714435549057245
Sanderson had a decent fan base even before WoT. It certainly helped him but I think he would probably have gotten to where he is now even without that.
He’s said multiple times writing WoT probably accelerated his career 10 to 15 years. Not made, accelerated.
In the immortal words of Sturgill Simpson, I’m the king of bullshit mountain, and if you want, you can wear the fucking crown! It warms my heart to see a pretty little snowflake publicly cry over the money they didn’t make because of the hustle they didn’t do. Cry Harder, nobody gives a shit.
Something just occurred to me. You’d never see Brandon Sanderson describe another author’s success as “disheartening”. He seems to be kind at a level I have difficulty understanding and I’m certain it’s part of his success.
I write. I publish. I sell. I don’t market, which is part of why I don’t sell more.
And that’s on me. It’s not the “fault” of readers, not of the market, not of Brandon Sanderson, Larry, Wen Spencer, Sarah J. Maas, Col. Kratman, or anyone else. I’m glad they are doing well to very well!
I waded through her thread. This remark stuck out:
“There’s also definitely an element of luck, and elements of privilege”
Yeah…that’s when any normal person who might be sympathetic to you loses interest. Privilege is the go-to excuse for people who don’t want to work.
I threw money at a Kickstarter from Boom Studios who created a comic with Keanu Reeves. They also did a Kickstarter for a Power Rangers comic. There was the inevitable seething about how people weren’t investing in stories from other authors.
Fine. Say something interesting and people will flock to you.
Luck, I’ll grant her. Luck helps. ‘Privilege’ won’t make people buy books, though. Good writing and competent entertainment, that will get them to buy.
I’m reminded of the scene in John Ringo’s Princess of Wands where the bad guy/gal (whose name I’ve omitted from the quote below to avoid spoilers, and I’d ask that nobody else post spoilers for that story because it is quite a lot of fun) goes on a rant explaining why he or she was committing his/her crimes: it was all out of jealousy of Robert Jordan’s success. The rant goes as follows:
“I’ve been in this business for thirty years! And the man writes tripe! What’s the justice in that? I’ve worked so hard. And he comes out of nowhere and sells a gazillion copies of complete crap! What’s wrong with my books? What’s wrong with people these days that they want unending series that never go anywhere? Nineteen pages on a harvest? Two hundred pages of every single step of every single character detailed? Are people insane?”
All italics in that paragraph are from the original, showing how unhinged the antagonist in that story had become. If you know the real-life person that the antagonist was based on, and it’s not hard to figure out considering John Ringo only changed a single character of the real-life author’s name, you’ll know that the real-life person is not unhinged and would largely agree with Larry’s sentiments here. Jordan made boatloads of money from his series? Well, good for him! But it does make for a very entertaining rant, doesn’t it?
Oh it does, and it rings true for some other people, one of whom used to be a regular chew-toy here. (Did he EVER finish the book he was supposed to be writing?)
No, he died, and Brandon Sanderson finished it from his notes.
For myself, I tapped out after the hundred-page prologue to the seventh novel. A girl I was seeing at the time told me nothing happened in it anyway.
(Disregard, I now realize you were talking about some other troll, and not Robert Jordan.)
Meh. I just gave #1 in Customer Service a dolphin crushing 5 Stars for Larry’s masterpiece of trolling and getting paid for it.
My own stuff is not destined for publication, though I might end up giving it away if I finish it and the internet/TTV readers still work.
Larry, I have a new book coming out, my first in many a year. It is my thinly disguised Star Wars ripoff, but if The Shadow and the Phantom and Catwoman were the children of Han Solo and the princess.
I was hoping, as a fellow Sad Puppy Lord, you would help me publicize it.
John C. Wright
John, are you on Facebook and the Writer Dojo group? I know many there would be happy to spread the word.