Yeah, you only see the good part:
There is many downsides to this "Great times of yours":
1) Too much competition, you know how many books are published every day in paper? add to that all the online stuff.
2) Piracy is a lot easier if you manage to create a good story. "selling books" doesnt make money anymore, the money is now in the movies, tv series, video games, and merchandising, that is were the real money is, and those are very controlled and restricted, how many times have the story of a movie or tv show adaptation been "changed" to fit the "narrative"? You could try to make a comic or manga in the indi side... but there is also a lot of competition there and not enough funding.
3) the offer is so high most readers dont bother to read anything with less that 65 chapters. A lot of great stories with less that 60 chapters are lost in oblivion.
4)since there is a demand for stories with a lot of chapters, many "contracts" or the need of "steady incomme" forces writers to keep a story going over chapter 3000 even when it has gone down the hill since chapter 200, in the end it is dropped and end up being a dead end.
5)Quality has taken a dive, the story is good, yes. But the grammar, the sintaxis, the style is fucked up beyond repair, we are going on our way to Idiocracy at this rate.
*Sips on Brawndo, the thirst mutilator*
So no, is not the greatest time to be a writer, is the easiest time. What makes you earn a huge amount of proffit is exclusivity, now we got too much offer, the value of the product has dropped to crap.
Dont get me wrong, I have read a lot of free stuff, got disapointed a lot of times (hiatus) too. And my stuff is free for the two guys who read it. Still, I miss the quality of the olden days.
1) “Too much competition. Too many books being published every day”
There’s always been competition. The difference is that
before, competition was artificially limited by gatekeepers. A publisher or studio decided whether you even got to
compete. Today,
everyone has the opportunity to put their work out there, which means the real competition is
quality + discipline + strategy.
This isn’t a drawback; it’s meritocracy. The people who are frustrated are often the ones who miss the days when gatekeepers protected them from open competition.
I don't walk the path of cowardice, so competition doesn't bother me.
2) “Piracy… selling books doesn’t make money… movies/games/merch are heavily controlled”
Translation:
“The old business model doesn’t automatically make you rich anymore.”
Correct. Good. That model only worked for a tiny minority anyway.
Yes, the money today is in multi-platform IP. But that doesn’t mean it’s “restricted.” It means
storytelling is more scalable and leverageable than it has ever been. One self-published novel on Amazon can turn into a TV deal, a visual novel, a game, merch drops. Happens
constantly. (Webtoon, Royal Road, AO3, Wattpad, etc.)
Piracy will always exist. It has always existed. It also
does not stop successful storytellers (Brandon Sanderson literally allows piracy of his own books and still outsells almost everyone). This taps into stuff which I plan to touch on in a companion piece on what it takes to be a successful, professional author.
3) “Most readers don’t bother with less than 65 chapters.”
First, that's in your webnovel space specifically, which has its ecosystem. Second, this is just reader
behavior evolving. Audiences today binge. They want immersion and momentum. That’s not bad or good -- it’s a
design parameter. Smart storytellers are using it to build long-form, multi-arc stories (which is what most of us
want to write anyway).
The stuff with 10 chapters that “disappears”… tends to disappear because it’s not satisfying enough to become sticky. If it
were, people would hand-sell it, talk about it, and force their friends to read it. Short isn’t the problem --
impact is. Learn to adapt to things since I can point to tons of storytellers doing short things beyond just prose to get their ideas across in nice packages.
4) “Contracts and steady income force writers into bloated 3000-chapter stories.”
This is a critique of
bad business incentives, not of the era itself. There’s no rule that you
have to drag a story out. Plenty of writers finish cleanly and move on to the next project. The ones who drag things out do it for money because the
market now rewards consistency and presence.
Again: not a sign of a bad era. Just means we need to be tactically smarter (treat stories like seasons, not infinite sprawl).
5) “Quality has gone down. Grammar/style is terrible. Idiocracy is around the corner.”
There’s
more stuff, therefore more
bad stuff. But the
good stuff is
also better than it’s ever been. We’re seeing independent writers producing prose and structure that used to require an entire publishing machine.
Also, the people who complain about “quality these days” usually aren’t looking very far. They just want
their nostalgia. The world still contains Nabokov-level prose, it’s just not wearing a 1960s typeset anymore.
6) “It’s not the greatest time, it’s the easiest time.”
No. It’s the
hardest time to become a success
and the
greatest time for authors.
It’s hardest because nothing protects you from being forgotten.
It’s greatest because nothing stops you from being discovered.
That’s the trade. As I discussed elsewhere, I don't forget the drawbacks, and most know that when I enter my most intense mode, I can become critical. I also believe writers who wish to aim for the top need to pull off three things, which I'll reveal near the end of the week. Regardless, it's a matter of seeing the big picture and knowing the history of things, not just crying because negatives exist. Negatives will
always exist. That's the price of admission. The question isn't "is it hard?" The question is, "Do you still want it badly enough?"
Good to see you back with a new video!
I'm on a streak now with the new video format!
