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Re: Winding Down the February Discussion
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 09:22:54 -0500
I think Malinda makes an important point. A number of posts in the past couple of weeks have alluded to quitting in the face of rejection.
I mentioned the NYT article (Long Odds for Authors Newly Published by James B. Stewart in the New York Times) which also touches on the issue of rejection. That in turn ties in with a discussion that was had on another listserv sometime in the past couple or three months. The question was why do Caldecott awards go 65% to male illustrators and why do Newbery's go 65% to female authors? The answer pretty quickly arrived at was that those ratios appeared to reflect the proportion of illustrators and authors working in those particular fields.
In researching the issue, there was an interesting data exercise (I don't recall if it was online or offline). In most fields of competitive endeavor, particularly those with objective measures of accomplishment, elite outcomes are highly correlated with intensity of purposeful effort
(hours per week) and duration over time (years of effort). Correspondingly, there is a very high discount of perceived value that arises from discontinuities in effort. For example, in the general labor market, the probability curve for reemployment at comparable position and wage levels declines slowly after a severance but then usually plunges around the six month mark. In other words, the market doesn't attach much value to prior work experience after a six month interruption.
To test whether the work intensity/duration phenomenon was relevant in the children's illustration field, I looked at all the Medal and Honor Caldecott award winners over a five year period in the 2000s. Another group of people put together a list of quality illustrators that they thought had been overlooked in that time frame. I compared the average years since first publication (as a proxy for duration) and average number of books (as a proxy for intensity of effort), between the two groups.
If the work intensity/duration phenomenon that is well documented in other fields is also true in children's book illustration, we would expect the winners of Caldecott awards to have a higher intensity and duration rate than non-winners. And they do. The Caldecott winners had an average of 19 years experience in the field with an average of 23 books published. In contrast, the perceived overlooked population had an average of only 8 years in the field and 13 books published. Tellingly, among the overlooked candidates, there were only four that had intensity/duration numbers comparable to the Caldecott winners. Of those, two had already won a Caldecott award, just not in the period looked at, and one was a foreign artist who did not qualify under award rules.
The point is that recognition at elite levels (such as with prestigious awards) can have a material impact on financial outcomes, but winning such an award is in part a function of intensity and duration of effort. Malinda's injunction to Not Give Up! is highly relevant to the probability of future success and future financial rewards. Whether the long lag time between effort and reward and whether the low probabilities of desired outcomes makes it worthwhile to an individual author is a different matter. There are other rewards than just the financial ones but it is important to be aware of the facts, choices, and trade-offs.
Charles
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Received on Tue 04 Mar 2014 08:24:17 AM CST
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2014 09:22:54 -0500
I think Malinda makes an important point. A number of posts in the past couple of weeks have alluded to quitting in the face of rejection.
I mentioned the NYT article (Long Odds for Authors Newly Published by James B. Stewart in the New York Times) which also touches on the issue of rejection. That in turn ties in with a discussion that was had on another listserv sometime in the past couple or three months. The question was why do Caldecott awards go 65% to male illustrators and why do Newbery's go 65% to female authors? The answer pretty quickly arrived at was that those ratios appeared to reflect the proportion of illustrators and authors working in those particular fields.
In researching the issue, there was an interesting data exercise (I don't recall if it was online or offline). In most fields of competitive endeavor, particularly those with objective measures of accomplishment, elite outcomes are highly correlated with intensity of purposeful effort
(hours per week) and duration over time (years of effort). Correspondingly, there is a very high discount of perceived value that arises from discontinuities in effort. For example, in the general labor market, the probability curve for reemployment at comparable position and wage levels declines slowly after a severance but then usually plunges around the six month mark. In other words, the market doesn't attach much value to prior work experience after a six month interruption.
To test whether the work intensity/duration phenomenon was relevant in the children's illustration field, I looked at all the Medal and Honor Caldecott award winners over a five year period in the 2000s. Another group of people put together a list of quality illustrators that they thought had been overlooked in that time frame. I compared the average years since first publication (as a proxy for duration) and average number of books (as a proxy for intensity of effort), between the two groups.
If the work intensity/duration phenomenon that is well documented in other fields is also true in children's book illustration, we would expect the winners of Caldecott awards to have a higher intensity and duration rate than non-winners. And they do. The Caldecott winners had an average of 19 years experience in the field with an average of 23 books published. In contrast, the perceived overlooked population had an average of only 8 years in the field and 13 books published. Tellingly, among the overlooked candidates, there were only four that had intensity/duration numbers comparable to the Caldecott winners. Of those, two had already won a Caldecott award, just not in the period looked at, and one was a foreign artist who did not qualify under award rules.
The point is that recognition at elite levels (such as with prestigious awards) can have a material impact on financial outcomes, but winning such an award is in part a function of intensity and duration of effort. Malinda's injunction to Not Give Up! is highly relevant to the probability of future success and future financial rewards. Whether the long lag time between effort and reward and whether the low probabilities of desired outcomes makes it worthwhile to an individual author is a different matter. There are other rewards than just the financial ones but it is important to be aware of the facts, choices, and trade-offs.
Charles
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Received on Tue 04 Mar 2014 08:24:17 AM CST
