Recently some sacred cows were gored by Larry Correia. Sick of people leaving two-star reviews on his books because George Martin, David Gerrold and Patrick Rothfuss couldn't be bothered to finish their epic fantasies, Larry told their disapointed fans to suck it up and move on. Epically, as he usually does.
But then, Chinese bot farmers decided that the Sacred Pillars of Fandom had been defiled and they needed to smear Larry. Again.
This rant is what my brain would do if it could. ~:D
In the middle of said rant, regarding Rothfuss, Martin and Gerrold, Larry asks a question:
“How much did these vapid fucks screw over their own industry?”
It may interest one and all to know that there is a number for that. The number is $8600.00.
$8600 is the -median- (not the average, but the most common) annual income from writing in Britain. The bulge in the bell curve, as it were. Which means that Dead Tree published authors, generally, are not making any money.
Their books, to put it plainly, are not selling. At all. (All those Hugo-beloved tomes? Nope. Not selling.)
Which is not at all surprising, given the collapse of the retail book business. Which collapse was inevitable given the Woke TM garbage that passes for science fiction/adventure/fantasy these days.
You guys know what the TOP SELLER is in comics these days? Manga. From Japan, you know. In translation, no less. Because why? Because Marvel and DC are all-Woke, all the time. Same for novels, but we don’t have sales numbers for those, because shenanigans.
But you can tell, because authors are flipping burgers instead of writing.
Now, is all this George Martin, David Gerrold and Patrick Rothfuss’s fault? Like, personally theirs? No. Clearly not. This is a publishing-wide phenomenon.
But did they contribute to this decline? Oh yeah. That’s three BIG selling series that they just couldn’t be assed to finish, leaving BIG fandoms disappointed and pissed off to the point where they just stopped buying SF/F books.
Look at it this way. My book sold hundreds of copies. Best case scenario, there are people waiting for the next one. (Its coming, I SWEAR.) If I were to crap out for some reason, those people would be mildly disappointed.
GRRM has -millions- of fans. (I can’t understand why, but he does.) -Millions- of people are disappointed that he’s promised another volume and not delivered.
That’s a pretty big deal. That level of disappointment has had an impact on the sales of other people’s books. Readers just gave up.
And now the median author income is $8600 a year. Meaning the next Tolkien/Rowling/Correia is FLIPPING BURGERS so he/she can eat, instead of writing. Because time spent writing does not make any money.
So, to quantify how full of shit China Mike and the Viletones are, they’re $8600 bucks worth full of it. That’s a lot of horseshit right there.
