= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
James_Miller comments on How can I strategically write a complex bestseller? (4HS001) - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (40)
Sarah Wynde
The average DIY writer makes $10,000 year. A minimum wage job pays $14,500/yr assuming no work expenses. If lottery tickets return less than 70% of money you pay for them, then writing is indeed more lucrative.
Say you have three writers, two earn zero and one earns $30,000 a year. Two of the three writers (most writers) would be better off "getting a minimum wage job and spending their entire paycheck on lottery tickets" than writing.
It would depend on the variance of the lottery. But my first impression of the quote was that it was referring to high variance lotteries that offer the chance of becoming super rich, rather than low variance lotteries that can't make you rich but will usually return a portion of the money you spent.
At any rate, the survey found that about 1 in 10 authors earn enough money to live off writing alone. Those are tough odds, but nowhere near the 1 in 175,000,000 odds of winning the Powerball.
Most people are quite bad at writing, but also, most people working at minimum wage jobs are not getting paid to do something they enjoy.