Supply and Demand for Writers - why it's so hard to make a living as a writer

How many really good writers are there on HubPages?

I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that when I checked just now, there were over 1400 with a HubScore of 90 or better. That's just HubPages; how many do you suppose there might be overall? It must be a very large number, right?

Now consider how many articles all those good writers are producing in a month. One each? Two? More? Average it all out and you have to come up with a mind boggling amount of really good content being produced every day. Thousands upon thousands of really good posts, thousands upon thousands of manuscripts mailed. Probably many tens of thousands.

How much of it gets read? Let's guess that a minute is a reasonable amount of time for a person with average reading skills to read an online post of average length. If our imaginary reader did nothing but read for eight hours, they might read close to 500 articles, but we know that in reality people read far, far less.

How many of the high scoring Hubbers have you read? I have only read a handful.

For content sent to magazines and book publishers, how often is one paragraph quickly scanned by a bored and harried reader and tossed aside?

So if you are one of the people casting out decent content onto the vast sea, what are the chances of being read?

You can see what I am getting at: there are plenty of talented writers.

We see the same thing in any area of talent: many, many thousands of aspiring singers show up for auditions at American Idol and similar shows across the world, but only a very few will ever be commercially successful. Talent certainly plays a part, but luck, circumstance and accident are a large part of who goes on to fame and who does not.

The same is true for artists, actors, and even for stockbrokers and insurance salespeople. Talent is necessary, but there is no shortage of talent. Cream floats, but there is more cream than there is coffee to put it in.

A chance meeting, a lucky break, a casual comment by someone you don't even know; these things can make the difference. A missed phone call, a random computer glitch; things can work against you too.

So what can you do? Be a fatalist and just hope lightning strikes? No, your path is the one that maximizes your chances of hitting the success lottery. You know what those things are; persistence, determination, creativity, hard work. No magic. Just simple, basic things, repeated again and again.

You might never get there. Louis Pasteur said that chance favors the prepared mind, but preparedness doesn't guarantee chance, does it? No, but if you are not prepared, chance can pass you right by.

Remember this too: many successful people will tell you that they failed before they succeeded, sometimes multiple times. Many a successful writer got back enough rejection slips to fuel their fireplace. Some were even told that they never would succeed. But they did, and you might also.

Keep on plugging.

On the other hand

I just happened to catch a rebroadcast of an This American Life episode about a fellow named Duke Fightmaster. It's the story of someone who had a dream and kept on pursuing it against all odds.

It's almost 25 minutes long and it is painful. All along you keep hoping to hear "and then I finally caught my break", but that never happens. Duke keeps saying things like "I thought if I could just keep plugging"..

I wanted to yell at him through the radio. "Yes, keep plugging but sometimes you have to change direction!". This guy thought he had the talent to have his own comedy show. Maybe he does - you can judge for yourself. But talent isn't enough. Just as there are millions of good writers, there are millions of good comics. Luck has to be there and sometimes the only luck you get is bad.

Bad luck?

I don't know if Duke is an example of bad luck or just not even talent. He wanted to replace Conan O'Brien; I don't think Conan is particularly funny or talented, so I'm certainly in no position to judge Duke's shot at that.

Nor are any of us in a position to judge our own talents. Everybody will have some fans, so it's never entirely fair to say "not good enough". At some point, though, you might have to say "not what enough people want" and go off in another direction.

I will say that I would find it richly ironic if that portrait of his failure on This American Life someday brings him success. If it does, please remember that nobody is likely to make a radio or TV show about your grand failure.

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