Аннотация: A throw with a hook. A carrot for a sheep. A reflections on the modern Literary World.
A throw with a hook. A carrot for a sheep. Reflections on the modern Literary World.
Since some time, letters began to come to me by e-mail. In them the link was made to some "Union of Writers".
What is the Writers' Union? According a logic, this is an organization that defends the interests of writers and readers.
However, when there is a tendency to the complete and final destruction of the national book market, all the so-called writers try particularly not to protest against this anti-civilization process.
Why is the national book market collapsing? There are many reasons. For example, because a writer, a financially independent, a thinking independently figure, may seem dangerous to someone ... He is inconvenient for authoritarian orders, conditions. That such a figure does not appear, you need to take care in advance. To create conditions difficult for survival (unbearable) for all participants in the national book market - for example, for authors, for publishers, for the bookselling network, for literary agents ...
If the so-called writers are silent, seeing how the national book market is being destroyed, if the literary organizations formed from the so-called writers prefer not to notice this process, then personally I do not consider these people as writers, and these organizations as writers' associations. These are not writers - but (overt or covert) accomplices of the destruction of the civilizational foundations of a normal European society.
Where do emails come from almost every day? And sometimes - two or three letters in a day?
A more interesting is the question: by what money is all this activity carried out? Apparently, on a state budget money... Some skillful community settled next to the state budget pie and catches the crumbs... I assume there is some kind of grant or other form of "budget support..."
The Russial citizen feels, that necessary to adapt. [Although he became an element of a someone else 's performance, of a someone else 's staging.]
Letters come - let they come. I was deleting them without reading.
But today an especially interesting letter came. His theme: 'Why should I pay money for publishing my book?'
'This question is often asked to us in messengers and by phone, so today we publish an article with a detailed answer.
So why should the author pay for the publication of his book, although, some twenty years ago no money from writers was taken, and even vice versa, paid commissions [royalty] from sold copies. '
I read this interesting explanation.
First of all, because someone did that. A doubtful thought. If a person is a writer, then he is different from a ram in a herd. If he is a ram in a herd, then he is not a writer.
Secondly, as they explain to us, now there are a lot of beginning writers. There is a lot of competition between them.
Let's go by the most short road to the essence of case. You, a novice writer, can risk by 40,000 (forty thousand) rubles - or by a more big amount of money - and try to gain popularity.
There is such a principle: to hang a carrot in front of a donkey to encourage him to move forward.
The approximate circulation providing the payback of a published book is 40,000 (forty thousand) copies.
In order to sell such a circulation, a national book market must to exist.
A qualified publisher takes part of the risks and does a lot of useful for a sale of books. The publishing house produces not a worthless thing, but a cover of a normal quality, reflects on illustrations, organizes advertising, monitors sales, and so on.
At a normal movement of the case, an author of the book is more or less sure that the book will look normal, that it will be at least externally interesting for readers, that its official circulation will go to a book trading system (and not the secret circulation made in half-underground printing houses in some distant edges, of which many residents of Russia can guess about), that the publishing house will take care of advertising (and will not, for unknown reasons, plunge the book into the depths of its vast website), etc.
By definition, the author cannot do of a many useful things for a selling of his book - if he is engaged in creative work. His attempts to assume the functions of a publishing house and a book trading system are obviously doomed to failure - with the exception of absolutely fantastic cases and a special staging ('carrots' for donkeys), a combinations for simpletons.
A separate topic is the book sales system ... Answer a simple question: Can the author print the circulation of his book (even at his own expense) and start selling his own book in the underground transition? Or - to sell own book in a combined way - not only in the underground transition, personally, but also - using a mail system?
Legislators give out a product that is not so easy to understand. Intuition tells me that the author's personal sale of his own book will raise many questions ... With a particularly unfavorable version of events, you can break away from the creative process for several months or even years ...
But after all, the income will be like that of some oligarch. A separate topic is subsequent tax reporting.
If not everyone can find an answer to such a question (about the author's right to personally sell his own book), then how will some elementary individual book-carriers [книгоноши], ofenyas [офени], small and large booksellers find the answer? ...
Books - in conditions of a ruined book market - are usually published in circulation of 2-3 thousand copies.
How do a modern publishing houses function (in Russia)? ... How to explain it... There are algorithms ...
'You still have a questions? Write them in a response letter or contact us: ... " (" ... the author pays 20% of the costs, but not less than 42 thousand rubles ... ").
April 29, 2020 10:17
Translation from Russian into English: April 30, 2020 08:24.
Владимир Владимирович Залесский 'Бросок с зацепом. Морковка для баранов. Размышления о современном Литературном Мире.'.