Hallo CK,
interessante Meinung, die "Der Standard" über die Schriftstellerei veröffentlicht.
Zum Thema "Autor und Markt" hier ein Artikel aus dem "Writers Digest" (Auszug):
"Do you want to become a writer or do you want to make money?
You think the two are synonymous? Not with the frequency you might suppose.
If you want to make literature and a name for yourself as a really fine writer, you must face the fact that your market will be confined to a few quality magazines that pay low rates and to book publishers. If you believe you have it in you to be another O'Neill, Lewis, Hergesheimer, and are willing to endure the necessary years of struggle and apprenticeship, go to it; you'll succeed eventually and make enough money to live a very full and happy life.
If, however, you want to write not for the sake of making literature, but of making a living, making money, in what seems to you to be an agreeable way of doing so, and if you want to accomplish this with the least possible delay, then forget literary ideals and concentrate all your efforts on creating what the great mass of the reading public want and are willing to pay for.
There are two main divisions in this field - the white paper magazines and the rough paper magazines. It is in regard to the latter that we are concerned in this article. Rough paper magazines - wood-pulps - are very numerous, roughly they number more than a hundred, and their reader following goes well into the millions.
From the few hundred thousand of the first years of rough paper magazine appearance, this market has broadened satisfactorily and has now attained proportions that are very worthwhile to reckon with. When you consider that in numbers, approximately one out of every twenty men, women and children in the United States each month read a wood-pulp, you have an idea of what a source of entertainment and enjoyment to the people of the country this type of periodical has become. It is too big a market to be taken lightly from any angle, too filled with possibilities to be looked upon disparagingly. ...
Granted a measure of natural gift and normal erudition, it should not be difficult to enter this broad field as a writer. To maintain it in an assured position of monetary success requires a measure of study, adaptability and whatever work may be necessary to attain facility and skill. ..."
Der Verfasser heißt Joseph T. Shaw und war zum Zeitpunkt des Artikels (1934) Redakteur der Publikation "Black Mask", einer Art Groschenheft mit hoher Auflage. Publiziert wurden dort u.a. die frühen Geschichten von Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler und Cornell Woolrich - Autoren, die heute in einem Atemzug mit Zeitgenossen wie Hemingway, Faulkner oder Scott Fitzgerald genannt werden.
Mir gefällt diese schnörkellose (sehr amerikanische) Einstellung zur Produktion von Literatur. Wer sich über die Regeln des Geschäfts beklagt, sollte besser die Finger davon lassen.
Sonntägliche Grüße sendet
Sir Thomas
