On Automation

I’ve seen discussion on automation come up, usually in discussions about raising minimum wage for fast food workers. It goes something like this:

“Well, if they raise the minimum wage, then the person will just get replaced with a kiosk.”

A thought which shows a lack of vision in what I see as the actual problem.

I was reading about robots in fast food restaurants, and the comment, which was a few years ago, was that the machines that could assemble your food were going for $40,000 a piece.

Ok, math time. Let’s assume a restaurant is open from 5 AM to 11 PM, which is 18 hours. Open every day of the year. So, 365 days, 18 hours per day, $7.25 per hour minimum wage is: $47,700.

Meaning that we, humans, are already more expensive than that machine. It would take less than a year to pay off.

But that isn’t the real problem. The problem isn’t “they will replace low paid workers with robots” the problem is “they will replace us all.”

When I talk about automation, here is what I mean. The guy who owns the fast food company will hit a button.

“Siri, we need three new stores in Ohio.”

“Yes sir,” Siri replies.

Siri (or whatever the digital assistant is at this time) then searches the areas for where there is land for sale, and cross checks that with any historical trends they have. Finds three plots that will be suitable.

She then tells the A.I. lawyers to draw up the purchasing paperwork. Once the land is purchased, those same A.I. lawyers then submit the planning and zoning paperwork.

The A.I. architects tailor the current designs for the spots, and send the build list back to Siri who purchases all of the necessary raw materials.

Those materials are shipped via driverless truck to location, where robotic construction crews are already waiting. Those crews work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week until the store is finished.

Then driverless trucks deliver the internal robots: they make the food, they clean the store, the load and unload shipments.

From there, the store opens, driverless trucks deliver the food, robots process orders and make the food. Hell if you want, their own driverless cars and drones can deliver the food to whoever ordered it.

Oh, and all those robots? Built by robots. We already do that now.

Not a human needed.

The impact alone, economically, of driverless trucks will be immense. Truck driving is one of the last areas where a high school graduate can sustain a middle class life.

Think your job is safe? I doubt it.

Here is another one. You decide you want to watch a movie.

“Siri, I’d like a space western type movie, light comedy, anime style, no make that photo-realistic.”

“Alright, I will let you know when it is ready.”

From there, an A.I. writes the movie script, animates it, renders the movie, and sends it too you.

“I included the novelization for your as well.” Siri proudly says.

When we talk automation, we are talking about taking the human worker out of the equation at nearly every level. Doctors, lawyers, pilots, drivers, builders, even artists, all replaced.

What do we do when there isn’t enough work for everyone? When we can’t afford to buy goods made by human hands because we aren’t paid well enough to support each other?

So when we talk automation, the problem isn’t the kiosk, it never was. The problem is what do we hold valuable–humanity or profits?

On Writer’s Pay, Circulation and Short Story Magazines, part one

The comment that the pulp writers were paid 1¢ per word came up again recently. Writer’s, it would seem, haven’t had a raise in years.

So, I was curious. What did things look like then?

Some Numbers

I couldn’t find exact numbers for Weird Tales, though there is a comment that their circulation never got to 50,000 copies per issue.[1] Still, for a monthly magazine, even if we assumed 35,000 copies, that’s pretty good by today’s standards.

In the 1920’s, Amazing Stories had a circulation of 150,000 copies per issue.[2]

It sold for 25¢ per issue, so that is $450,000 a year coming in to cover print, overhead, distribution costs… and paying writers.

And it wasn’t nearly the top dog.

Argosy, one of the first pulps had by 1907 a circulation of 500,000 per issue.

PER. FUCKING. ISSUE.

To put that in perspective. TIME magazine had a distribution of 3.4 million in 2010, which is ~65,000 per issue[3].

Time is the second only to People for weekly circulation.

Reader’s Digest has 5.5 million in 2010, but was only 10 times a year. 550,000 per issue.[4]

Which puts us at Argosy numbers… but it publishes little fiction.

The first Harry Potter book, which is one of the best selling books of ALL TIME sold 107,000,000[5] copies.

Let’s look at some of the genre mags. I found some 2012 numbers[6] for the big three:

Asimov’s Science Fiction: 25,025
Analog Science Fiction and Fact: 27,803
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: 11,510

On Apex’s site they post these numbers[7] for page views:

TRAFFIC

Average Monthly Page Views — 35,500
Average Monthly Site Visits — 20,000
Average Monthly Unique Users — 12,500

Let’s say half of those users buy an issue, which is an ABSURD conversion rate, that puts it at ~6300 subscribers per issue, which is a fucking crime.

Apex is amazing, and deserves Argosy numbers.

Now, to be clear, those are page views, not sales. This is a guess on my part, and does not in any way reflect the actual sales of the Apex. We are taking comparisons here.

Now, let’s look. 1¢ per word in 1926, which is when Amazing Stories started, is about 14¢ now[8].

That would mean that pro-rates of 6¢ a word are not equal to pulp rates of the 1920’s. Pro-rate would be closer to 70¢ per word.

So. Let’s see, 70¢ per word, 30,000 words of fiction per issue, is $21,000 per issue in cost. At $10 an issue, assuming 50% production cost, that’s 4,200 copies you’d need to sell.

Except $10 gets me a 90,000 word novel, and change left over. Hell, if I play my sales and coupons right, I can get two.

BTW, if you use CreateSpace to distribute your title on Amazon, you don’t get 5$ per issue, you get $3.85[9]… Which means you need to sell 5,500 just to cover the cost of the writers. You’ll need to sell more for your editors, cover artist, layout, etc.

To get that $5, you’re charging closer to $13 per issue.

Kindle takes 30% (if you are above $2 per book…), so $3 per copy of your mag, 50% split, means to get that $21,000 you have to sell 21,000 copies. Bump that to $5 per issue, you still need to move 12,000 copies per issue to make that back.

25¢ in 1926 for that copy of Amazing Stories is $3.40 now.

Having fun yet?

What has happened?

Value has changed, but the cost of living has not stopped rising. There are many, many more options for readers, which has diluted that money across the publications.

And, they are competing with movies, music, video games, and the countless things to do for FREE on the internet.

The money is drying up. Money is being spread around. There is so much noise vying for our attention.

Should we charge more for books? Should ebooks start at $10? paperbacks at $25?

Right now the costs of books are low, with ebooks helping keep the cost down in the sub-$5 range.

Publishing is a numbers game. If I can sell 10X more books at 1/2 the cost, I’ll do better. If I can only sell 2X the books at 1/2 the cost, it is better to stay at the price I am at.

That sweet spot for book prices has remained in the $5 range for ebooks, $10 for print.

The typical American has read 4 books in the last twelve months. That’s a median number, meaning half of American read more than that, but half read less[10].

The 2013 numbers of titles published in the US was about 300,000[11]. That is 300,000 books. So, if the average American bought 4, AND all 4 of those were just published in that year, that means each title would sell about 40.

Sold more than 40? someone else sold less. Which doesn’t take into account the book titles from the previous 1,000 or so years we’ve been making books, and the 10,000 or so previous years we’ve been making art.

In other words, there is a cap on the market, even taking into account errors in my very simple math.

As writers, what do we do?

If we demanded 50¢ per word for pro, and 20¢ per word for pulp rates, it would have dual effects. More markets would go under, consolidating, for sure. But with few markets, few voices are being published. Publishers would be less likely to take chances when 30,000 copies need to move just to break even.

If you raise the price of books, fewer people will purchase them. It is not like the American worker has gotten a raise in 30 years either.

Then what? WHAT?

What do we do?

I don’t know.

The answer may be something different. Patreon. Kickstarter. The audience decides what gets made. Maybe the idea the artist can do what they want and get paid for it is flawed. Maybe the idea the audience was going to pay for it in the first place is flawed. Ads aren’t the answer, they are duct tape on a cracked hull.

Consolidation is part of the answer, perhaps. Fewer markets mean more readers per market. But then less opportunity, fewer spots for fewer writers, more voices being lost because publishers can’t afford to take chances on new writers.

Maybe the idea that books should be cheep is the problem. Maybe they should be several times more expensive. Maybe the opposite. Maybe they should be free. And we make money some other way. Bake sales. Swag. Selfies with readers.

More data is needed. I’d love to get my hands on the sales numbers of anthologies put out by the big 5. Or the Year’s Best books. Then again, if an antho moved 15k copies a month it would be a national best seller. More information on world-wide sales as well would give a better understanding of everything.

Maybe the format is wrong. Maybe “magazine” is the dirty word. The idea that short stories should be collected, bound, and put under a cover could be the shift. Already we are seeing apps fill some of these roles, to try a different way to connect writer and reader. Are we short changing things by being bound by the idea of ‘book’?

Maybe short stories just don’t have an audience, and novels, series and longer pieces are where publishing will survive. Short stories are the teaser trailer for your other work.

Because in the end, if the money isn’t coming in, that is going to drive what is available. You need to sell 50 5,000 word stories at pro-rates (6¢ per word) to make minimum wage. Publishers need to sell enough copies to support that, and in return purchase more stories. And none of this gets into the advertising budgets needed to get those sale numbers, or paying your editors and artists.

It is all tied together, all of it. And if that market isn’t there…

What do we do?

We do what we always do. We write. We publish. We do our best.

http://lovecraft.wikia.com/wiki/Weird_Tales ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Stories ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_(magazine)#Circulation ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader%27s_Digest ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_books ↩
https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/forum/topic.php?id=1170071 ↩
http://www.apex-magazine.com/advertising/ ↩
http://www.saving.org/inflation/inflation.php?amount=1&year=1926 ↩
https://www.createspace.com/Products/Book/ ↩
http://www.pewinternet.org/2016/09/01/book-reading–2016/ ↩
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year ↩

Ode To My Phone

Our smart phones have become an extension of our lives. I was using mine the other day, typing away at a chapter on a story and took a moment to think how great this thing really is.

So a nerd love letter from me to my phone.

Communication

The first part is easy, and it should be. Above all other things, we use these devices to communicate. The phone part, sure. Text messaging, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it, there is an app, and we chat… All of us. Inherently I think this is the primary function, and use, of our phones: Talking to other humans.

We love it. And rightly fully so. I can be sitting in a museum in Ottawa and show a picture to my mother who is on vacation in Denver in an instant.

With our phones we are now close, even when we are not.

Camera

This one turns out to be a section on its own. Adding cameras to cell phones wasn’t an obvious thing when it first happened. They were small, took bad pictures, and you couldn’t really do much with them.

Now?

Yes, I have a DLSR and a few nice lenses. I have a few old film cameras and love taking them out.

But my primary camera is my phone. It is an older phone, and yet still takes amazing shots. Coupled with the fact that it is always with me, and it is easily my number 1 camera.

Add in all the effects apps such as Hipstamatic (my personal go-to) and editing is also possible on my phone.

Writing

I recently got a Bluetooth keyboard for my phone. I have a Logitech one that is fantastic, BUT it doesn’t travel well because of its size. So I use it with my phone, but only in certain places.

I wanted one that could go more with me, and so I ended up grabbing an iClever one that folds up, and has a little ergonomic angle too it (my keyboard of choice will always be the Microsoft Natural…)

This paired with a mini stand to hold the phone at an angle, and suddenly I have the hardware combination that turns my phone into something very useful for on the go writing.

I have Byword on my phone, something I’ve raved about before. Also Scrivener as well, which is pretty powerful in its phone edition. DayOne (for now at least, grr subscription fees) for my journals. Notes for… Uh, notes. Evernote as well. Even Pages / Word / Google Docs.

All in a little package that folds up, comes apart and fits in my pocket.

Art

I’m not good at this part, but still I love it. I have a few drawing apps on my phone, mostly Sketchbook is the one I use, but Paper and Sketches Pro are also great.

I can doodle away, anywhere, and make some neat things. I’ve seen what people with actual drawing skill can do on these little apps and it is amazing.

I have worked on book covers on my phone before, using Pixelmator to edit some files on the go.

And More…

Duolingo to learn Spanish. Buddify to practice meditation. Amazon to buy things. Podcast apps, Scanner Pro which will let you scan in documents by taking picture of them. Spreadsheet apps. Libib which I used to categorize my books. Run keeper and MyFitnessPal to help with my body.

My phone is my main source of music these days. Purchased, streaming, ripped from CD and synced over.

Ebooks from many sources for reading on the go.

And of course the Internet itself, in my hand for whatever new need pops up.

News, weather, reminders, grocery lists, calendar, all there.

Why did you write this?

Other than an excuse to use my new keyboard? (That’s right, composing this on Byword on my phone.)

I have friends in all kinds of places, doing all kinds of things.

A reminder of the versatility of the tool that someone already has can be a good thing. As someone whose first computer when he was a kid was a Mac Classic, I can say the power available to us in our phones is amazing.

Just from a publishing standpoint, I could write a book, edit a book, make the cover using pictures I took, produce a PDF and ePub file of that book, ALL on my phone.

And yes, specialized tools will always be better, but not all of us have those, nor can afford them. And it isn’t “making do” if it works. If it is working, then we are working.