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Nuvendil on 11 August 2017
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librarian13579 said:
Nuvendil said:

You're now taking the perspective lf the artist.  Your original point was from the perspective of the consumer.  Yes, an artist will often continue on as a hobby if they make no money on their art.  But from the perspective of the customer, they have effectively stopped.  Because those works will never be seen.  Thats what I was getting at.  The whole idea that regardless of sales, we as consumers will always get books from authors we like is just plain wrong.  They may keep writing, but if no money comes of it they will not continue to be published.  And if their publishing house goes out of business, they can be thrown for a loop if they weren't a major success before.  

I feel like there are so many modern methods of dissemination that an author who was dropped by traditional publishing houses still has avenues to connect directly to their fanbase. Like CreateSpace / print-on-demand, Patreon / Kickstarter, and the whole gamut of social media.

Sure, they might not be able to reach a mass market again, they might write less frequently, and they might get demoralized for a while, but they're not completely destitute. They can survive and they can still get books out to people. It's happened to one of my friends in the past. And maybe, in time they might be able to sign on with a different publisher.

If a company's latest game bombs and they can't find additional funding / their parent company shuts them down, that's it. They disappear (or effectively disappear) every single time and all of the artists who made the dream happen disperse and work on other IPs. It's tragic how the video game industry destroys incredible teams of people on a whim, but that's the nature of such a fundamentally volatile industry so heavily reliant on sales.

Independent self publication has made it easier yes, but it's still a challenge.  Cause now instead of competing with the cream of the crop for the attention of a senior editor, now you're competing for attention in a mass of people ranging in skill from really good to bafflingly incompetent.  So to have a chance to be noticed, muchless successful, can cost a not insignificant ammount of money.

So it's easier, but still a challenge.  Bad sales can seriously limit any artist in any field in terms of distribution.  That's what I was trying to say.

But it is worse with any creative work that requires a team.