Comment by ricardobeat
8 hours ago
A little tangent, but
> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time
How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.
In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet
Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century. An “advance” was a loan from your printer and you paid it back even if the book failed.
> Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century.
Plus ça change...
I was reading about 19th century Russian writers recently. Very few of them made much money and some like Turgenev and Tolstoy were personally wealthy.
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Very few people made a living on writing. Poe was one of the first to attempt, and it didn’t go well for him.
What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?