| > Wikipedia's list begins in 1605, four years prior to his death, and in Germany I’ve generally seen it listed that Shakespeare died in 1616. EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shakespeare > No one writes anything that is worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject. That requires you to reject all the people we just talked about. It is to suggest the world would be no lesser without Moby Dick etc etc. The most generous interpretation is it’s a delusional take where the people he admires must have written it for the sake of art despite living off their art for years. A classic true Scotsman argument devoid of substance. > You seem strongly wedded to your views and unwilling to consider alternatives. I’m perfectly willing to engage with reasonable debate but you keep bringing up inaccurate or meaningless points. Books sales aren’t dependent on mass market advertising, you can make a good living if 25,000 people buy your book that’s an infinitesimal fraction of the market. There’s ~1 Billion English speaking book sales per year, most people can’t hack it despite today being the easiest time to be an author ever the arts are difficult. It’s not a problem of publishers, it’s not a problem of readers, it’s solely an issue of people deluding themselves into thinking they are more talented than they are. |