Christopher said:
This is a completely ignorant and insulting statement. A freelance writer is, financially speaking, a small business. What if you were talking about, say, an accountant or a coder? There are plenty of people today whose work consists of sitting in front of a computer entering data; there are whole businesses that revolve around that. So it's absurd and completely disconnected from reality to claim that such professions have no overhead. Of course writers have overhead -- the cost of the computers and storage media we use, for one thing, as well as the cost of printing and postage (since some editors and markets still require hardcopy submissions), the cost of research materials such as books and videos, the cost of travel to conventions and signings, the cost of maintaining a post office box, things like that.
Well lets take a computer programer, 3d designer, video game designer, for example. They do have one legit overhead, the cost of the computer. After all, a low budget lap top isn't going to cut it. He/She will need a very fast computer. With multiple operation systems and a ton of software (all of which must be lawfully purchased and not illegally downloaded). Thus I could see a 20 grand computer system being a tax deduction, and overhead, along with an internet bill. However, I don't think it's accurate to say that the house, the car, your food, your wardrobe, etc, is overhead. You might get away with the IRS giving you a tax break, but your car and your house is not overhead.
I co-owned a pizza shop. There was lots of overhead. The rent on the building, trash pickup. The ingredients that made up the food. The heating and cooling units. The tools used for cleaning, sanitizing, and maintenance. Paying qualified repairmen to fix every little thing that broke to keep everything up to regulations and warranty, and of course, the people who worked there. That is overhead.
The rent on my house is not (in spite of the fact I need somewhere to live). My house electricity bill, my car, gasoline for the car, my clothing (besides uniforms). The cost of paying the kid next door to mow my lawn to keep my lawn up to community code, so that I don't lose my house. These things are not overhead and do not dictate the cost of a pizza.
You claim publishers still want hard copies. OK, than your printer, and paper, and ink, and postage. That's over head.
I'm not sure I am willing to buy into this "the computer and storage media". See, you're going to have a computer regardless of whether not your a writer, retired, disabled, pizza delivery guy. And let's face it, outside of some programs like your favorite text editor, text to speech engine, OCD program, and in spite of the fact there are perfectly good free-ware programs out there that do all of this, I am saying "your favorite" programs, and I agree that can be an overhead.
The computer itself? Nah, I don't think you need to crossfire 4 Nvidia GTX 680's while running a RAID on the 12 fastest SSD's, on a server motherboard running two Intel Xeon E5-2690 processors. A $10,000 rig is not necessary for writing an ebook. So I am willing to believe some of that as overhead, but not all of it. Again, the IRS might think differently. But hey, just because you can tell the IRS that your trip to Hawaii, in which you stayed in a 5 star hotel and eat at nothing but 5 star restaurants for a month, is a business expense because you're writing a book about a guy who goes to Hawaii, and he believes it, doesn't mean I'm believing it and calling a $100,000 month vacation "overhead on your book".
Hmmm, I might have to put in about $200,000 worth of plastic surgery, and tell the IRS it's a business expense, I am writing a book about a man who gets plastic surgery and how it changes his life, it's an inspiring tail about the benefits of vanity.
Now back to the argument of "my time is my overhead". You see, if you are locked into a contract, I'd be willing to believe that. Because so long as you are under contract, you are incapable of making a living by any other means. Whereas if you are not under contract, you are capable of making a living by any means you may find.
Your paragraph below the one I quoted basically makes an argument that your life, your house, etc, when you are "self employed" is an IRS tax break. And as I tried to say earlier, it might be a tax break, but it is not overhead.
Overhead is specifically the cost of material and labor that go into the making of a product, or provision of a service. It is not the cost of your living needs in general.
If I am working out of my house, my rent is not overhead because I would be paying that rent whether I owned my own business or not. Again, the IRS, and that red taped bureaucratic stuff involving business license and restrictions, may have such a standard concept as "the house is his place of business, thus his rent is part of his business" but that's some bureaucratic nonsense, it is not a legit cost of an electronic file that you hammer out on your keyboard on the computer that you were gonna own whether you ever wrote or not. Hey I got a computer, and a word processor and a printer, and internet, and a house mortgage, and property tax, and car insurance and electricity bills and water bills and house maintenance fees, and I am not a writer!
Overhead is materials and bills that would not exist for you if you didn't have your business. Dude, you'd have a house and electricity bills and a computer whether or not you ever wrote a book. Again, I'm willing to cut some slack for your "favorite premium-ware programs" and your printer, paper, ink.
Again, what the IRS and politicians writing laws to help small businesses consider a business expense, and what real overhead is, are two different things.
christopher said:
Did you actually bother to read the entire passage you just quoted? Because he answers you right there. Yes, you could do it yourself, but it's easier to get the final edition scanned.
I'm not talking about looking at the changes your editor made, and then typing them in; I'm talking about bypassing the editor (unless you are contractually bound to send it to an editor first).
Furthermore, am I right in assuming that if you send a txt file to your editor, they make alterations, and then mail you a printed copy of their changes, while keeping the digital file on their computer? If so, time to get a new editor.
Chris, if you needed me to translate something into German for you, and you emailed me a .txt or .doc or .pdf file with your English words, I would not translate it into German, print it, send the printed copy to you by UPS. I would translate into German, and then email it back to you in whatever format you sent me the English copy in. And any one who wouldn't do it that way, is retarded.
But you scanning it would be easier than retyping the whole thing. But would make for one fat ebook, unless you translated the picture into text using an OCD, which has terrible accuracy. But the key here is to do your own proof reading editing, etc, by passing the third party altogether, or at least have them send you the digital file, or find someone who will.
Christopher said:
You really have no comprehension how insulting you're being. You talk about writing a book as if it were easy, but if you ever tried it, you'd find it to be one of the hardest things you've ever done. Writing a book means months of work, sometimes years. That's a huge investment of labor, and yes, there are expenses that have to go into that as well. If nothing else, spending months writing a book means that you're not using that writing time to sweep floors or sell burgers or code software or whatever, so that's money you're not making while you're busy writing. So it's only fair to get paid for that time you spent on the project, which, again, is an awful lot of time.
Dude I just hammered out a 58 page Original Series Star trek fan fic in one month (would have taken me 2 weeks but I had to take 2 weeks off due to health problems). So 58 pages in 2 weeks, not bad. It is located here on the forum
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=189583
Now you're liable to glance at it and after the first few paragraphs say "it's crap!" and you're probably right. It was my first attempt at writing, and I am a high school drop out. And because I am not trying to make a living off of this and sell it, I only proof read it once. Had I gone over it and over it, I could have shaped it to perfection, within the limitation of my writing ability.
Oh wait, but that's a post on a web forum, not an ebook. OK, fine "exports as .pdf, uploads to website"
http://www.razorsreviews.com/depot/Star Trek - The Worst Enemy.pdf
There ya go, click the link and it opens as an ebook in your browser. Want to copy it to your hard drive, just click "save" and save it to your hard drive. Now, if I gave a crap about making a penny off of this I would go through the trouble of getting copyright permission, and then forcing you to hand over a credit card to access the book. But I got no copyright permission to sell it, so it's free.
I'm just saying, 2 weeks, and I hammered out a 58 page ebook, and it didn't cost me a penny.
christopher said:
Which you can do far better with the help of an experienced, professional proofreader or copyeditor, who also deserves to get paid for his or her labor just like anyone else does.
Yes it would be easier. And I am willing to concied that there are people who are great at writing, but can't emotionally deal with the tedious task of editing. Or, who simply ramble too much (like me) and need an editor to cut through the BS and remove unnecessary gobble-dee-gook. And of course, if you do this, the editor needs to get paid for their time. But you have to ask yourself "do I have the time to edit this myself?" And, "Do I have the money to hire an editor?" And make that personal disission.
Christopher said:
It still is. The Internet makes a few things easier, like delivering a manuscript to a publisher or doing research. But it hasn't changed as much of the process as you imagine.
It used to be there was only two ways to get your book into the hands of other people.
1. You submitted it to a publisher that actually liked it. The chances of this... next to impossible, it's like getting a million dollar music contract, it might happen, but it ain't likely.
2. Buy a printing press and physically press these books yourself (very very very expensive investment) , and then pay a property owner to allow you to stand outside their shop with a little news stand, and shout "Greatest novel ever written! Only ten dollars! Get your copy of the soon to be legendary sci fi novel, only ten dollars!" at the top of your lungs all day.
You want to know how easy it is to get your "ebook" in the hands of people? This easy
http://www.razorsreviews.com/depot/Star Trek - The Worst Enemy.pdf
Chris, if you mean "it's just as hard to earn a living being a writer today as it was then" well OK that might be true.
Christopher said:
Again, dead wrong. You're forgetting the fundamental principle of capitalism that labor has value. Anything that people need to work on doing is not free, not in a capitalist system. And yes, people do need to do work in order to market and publicize e-books.
labor is an interesting concept. Some would argue that because our money is not backed up by anything, it is worthless, and the only true value money has is the "labor" in which it can buy. Others will explain that labor has no value at all.
A youtuber by the name of Amazing Athiest Has this 12 minute video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlHxOTw-lXc&feature=plcp
At 6:16 to 7:30 he talks about labor having no intrinsic value. The example he gives is "If you stand in a field swinging your arm back and forth all day, you're labor is worth nothing. If you stand there swinging your arm back and forth, but you're holding a hammer, and are framing a house, your labor now has value."
Labor in and of itself is not a tangible thing, its value is based upon what it accomplishes. Therefore labor is not an over head, but a laborer is. A laborer is someone you pay to perform a task. The wage paid is determined by how much someone is willing to do it for.
Again, the value of labor is what it accomplishes; not in how much money you need to pay your rent. After all, work at McDonalds and you get minimum wage; that won't pay your rent but oh well.
Or maybe here's another way for you to look at it. I wasted 2 weeks hammering out a 58 page story. Well Chris, I never read your work, but I am willing to believe your work is vastly superior to my own. Do you honestly think that my 58 pages of a star trek book is equal to the professional quality of one of your books?
Although it might take me and you both 2 weeks to hammer out 58 pages, you charge money, because your labor produces something of value. My amateur writing presumably has no value, thus I uploaded the ebook to my site for free. But Again, we both have rent, and electricity bills, and we both wasted 2 weeks of typing. Your labor, sir, has value, mine does not.
Christopher said:
How do you make a living?! How would you feel if your boss told you that the 40 hours a week or whatever that you devote to doing your job is not worth anything, so he's not going to pay you for anything beyond the cost of whatever physical materials you use in your job? Think about that before you claim that the idea of time having value is "nonsense."
I'm currently crippled and thus collecting disability. Hopefully I will not be crippled permanently.
But before that, I made money doing many different things. And I got payed different wages based upon my productive value.
When I worked at a grocery store I made $5.00 an hour. When I worked at a construction site I made $12 an hour.
When I worked in school, I got paid nothing. Had it been college, I would have worked twice as hard and paid them.
When I worked at Lil' Ceasers, I made $7.50 an hour. When I worked at Pizza Hut, I made $5.50 an hour for the same work.
In spite of it being the exact same job, I got a different pay check. Why? The answer can actually be found in that video I linked you to.
When me and my band played, we made 120 a week, divided three ways, that's less than a dollar per hour (after all, we had to jam all day long and write songs all day long).
And we had a ton of overhead. Had to buy expensive gear, and travel a lot.
But we didn't put that into account for how much we charged to play. We charged what bars were willing to pay, and on average it was 120 for the whole band. According to our need for rent and electricity bills and the investments we made in our equipment, we should have been charging $1,500. Unfortunately no body in their right mind would hire us for that. Thus we did not dictate price, the market itself did. We were not in demand, thus we made diddly squat.
Your personal living needs do not dictate the value of your labor. It might dictate how much you "feel" like charging someone. But it will not dictate what people will actually pay. That was a point I was trying to get across. The market dictates the worth of your labor, not your needs. This isn't Marxism where you are paid according to your "needs".
Chris, I think you might be confusing my rant on this to mean "you don't deserve that much money" or "you shouldn't get paid".
You deserve to get paid as much as people are willing to pay.
My argument is that your time is not overhead. And the cost of an infinitely reproducible digital file is not the same as a physical book which includes paper, ink, glue, physical distribution, and machinery to print the ink onto the paper, per each book.
Allyn Gibson said:
The supply-and-demand curve model of pricing doesn't apply to Star Trek fiction because there is no product from another seller that can be had at a lower price. Pocket Books has a monopoly on Star Trek fiction, and they can set the prices of their products as they see fit. As a monopoly, they have that power and they price consumers out of the market.
I am talking about eBooks in general, not just the Treks.
