Oh, there's definitely a market for it. Netflix, Amazon etc. pay big fees for the A-list movies they show which means they can't just offer the full library of "decent" quality film making for ever, even if the licence-holders let them do that, which they don't. That means they have to take what they can get at as low a price as possible simply to fill their lists up. It explains the upsurge of in-house film and TV series making which would have been unthinkable a decade ago when the prevailing management wisdom was always to stick to core business. It also explains why around 45% of all the offerings online are now foreign language. 

I don't think the analogy can be taken too far. There are hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of e-book self publishers. And the average person who feels they have a movie in them is more likely to head for YouTube or Vimeo than set up a production company.

They're probably encouraged by the general, abysmal level of most mainstream stuff.

Indeed. There are plenty of supposedly top-notch movies that would be no better than the dross if it wasn't for shed-loads of cash and better acting. As my first witness I call Interstellar which was launched as some sort of high-concept equivalent to 2001 A Space Odyssey. Well, tbh I have my doubts about 2001 other than it being a being a pretty amazing feast of visuals, but Interstellar is a definite stinker plot-wise. It has all the hallmarks: plenty of clever scenes, a big bag of ideas, but a resolution that is so fuzzy and blurry in its smoke and mirrors nonsense that they might as well have had Gandalph appear, wave a wand and declare that it's all OK now. When I look at the serious debates around nonsense like this or the mangled Reader's Digest philosophy of something like Arrival, I can't help but notice the contempt poured on a film like Jupiter Ascending which never aspired to being more than entertainment.

Interstellar was hilariously bad. I just started watching Nolan's Dunkirk which, hopefully will continue along a more grounded (/believable) track. Granted it is history-based fiction rather than speculative.

I've haven't done the sums for a while, but my novel Jackdaw - which, I make no bones, is a pot-boiler; but, I hope, a tolerably good pot-boiler - had made me £1,300 about a year ago, even given the niggardly percentages of Amazon. I do sincerely thank reviewers ;-). I deliberately wrote it as a movie, but alas, Hollywood has not yet bitten.

That's not a bad amount by any reckoning. Particularly when you bear in mind that the average income for people who identify as full-time authors in the UK is in the region of £13,000. 

 

Yours and others' reviews always help. I always get a boost in sales after a review. I don't know how Amazon's algorithms work, but the word gets out somehow.

Fuck me, that's dreadful. There must be some very, very bad writers among them.

There are some very, very, bad writers amongst the world's best sellers.

Conversely, I know some wonderful writers who hardly scrape pocket money from what they turn out.

Mrs.D, a prolific reader has remarked how some recently published* works sport dumbed-down plots and weirdly mangled and ungrammatical Engrish (punctuation optional), seemingly pitched to the modern, sub-literate audience. (I'm content with perusing picture books mostly) Yeah, it's not about the quality.

*actually printed with hard covers, fulsome praise quotes and everything, available in the lieberry.

Indeed, some of the stuff churned out by even some quite respectable publishers is desperately in need of more editing. It's a sign of the times; most authors earn publishers next to nothing so don't get the editorial oversight they need because it's expensive. Successful authors are often handled with a light touch so as not to jeopardise the money flow - and they often need as much if not more editorial control. Commerce is king in the end. And that explains the endless flow of celebrity shit masquerading as everything from writing for children (hard to find a celebrity who doesn't think they can somehow write for children) to great art.

Dan Brown was the one who floored me. I picked up The da Vinci Code out of a sense of obligation when it first ran away with itself. I wasn't hoping for Austen, but I was expecting basic syntax and the rational use of words.  Don't get me wrong: the narrative rattles along energetically (if predictably) enough: but I'm not sure I've read worse English in any professionally published work.

Yeah, I didn't want to mention him because I suppose he is doing something well - and I think you've hit on it. The stories rattle along and are easy to follow. But, my God his writing is utter shit. No grasp of grammar at all: commas in the wrong places, sentences that end in the most implausible. Constant use of pointless and almost meaningless adjectives, adverbs and analogies: the very wealthy man glanced at his watch... Oh and the ridiculous over-use of ellipses... Then there are simple mistakes because he grabs at ideas he thinks he knows. My absolute favourite, 'P a n d o r a is out of her box.' I can't help wondering whether Dan thinks his masterwork, the Da Vinci Code, is actually based on fact rather than being mainly plagiarised from another load of old bunkum (The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail) by authors who were completely taken in by a hoax perpetrated partly for fun, and partly as a bit of self-promotion by some French tricksters.

Incidentally, the earnings figure I quoted of £13000 came from figures the Society of Authors published a couple of years ago and it seems that this applies to writers of novels, short stories and book-length non-fiction work. I'm assured it's possible to earn a great deal more (3 or 4 times as much) if you put the famous novel on the back burner and concentrate on magazine short stories, filler pieces bordering on journalism, journalism, competitions, commercial blogs, etc. etc. That does surprise me and I suspect that in order to achieve this one would need to work very hard indeed.

 

Just out of interest, why is there some kind of word filter on P a n d o r a? Doesn't appear to be something I've set in the past so I assume it's forum wide. Maybe/maybe not.

Only Dora The Explorer would know that, and she's out of her box.

Love it!

I do vaguely remember something - but only vaguely, wrote the question posing writer of the post. Perhaps I'll do a search like a fox...

I have NO idea. Maybe one of Kenny's mischiefs? Lost to the mists of time.

Possibly an anti-piracy related thing from back in the olden days?