You are reading too much into what I said. In no way did I imply that authors do not make money because they are no good. The two have nothing to do with each other.

I clearly said that doctors will not be rich because they are like prostitutes. They have to be physically present to make the money. The pimps make the big bucks from the work of the prostitutes. The insurers, etc are our pimps and they get rich off of our work. As Dr Jones posted in this blog the pimp made the big bucks off the work of the bloggers.

Your inference that authors don’t make money because they’re no good, is like me saying that quacks make more money than doctors so that means they’re actually providing quality medical care. All you’re doing is highlighting the arrogance of doctors who feel entitled and are resentful that their McMansion isn’t as big as a CEOs (and that their cottage is not the biggest on the lake).

Sure GPs make less than specialists (and academics at elite universities) – and medical researchers often make crap money but that’s a different issue – but American specialists complaining about not making enough money seems like sheer greed to me (and many, many other people I’d assume). Particularly since it’s usually accompanied by a finger pointing at someone else who makes more money while totally ignoring how much more than most people make.

Quibbling over such a minor point as my lazy “4 or 5 times” doesn’t really change the fact that medicine is a well paid profession.

It’s not a minor point, and I wasn’t “quibbling.” Education and training matter, and you made it sound as though there were a bunch of people with equivalent training making only $20,000 a year out there. No one’s arguing that medicine isn’t a well-paid profession, for the most part. However, most doctors are not rich and never will be rich.

I never said I was feeling financially squeezed. I also never realized I made more money than J K Rowling. Bank CEOs are really going to be squeezed. Those that run their companies so poorly that they require government bailout (my tax dollars) will be limited to an impoverishing $400,000 a year.

Physicians will never be rich because they are like prostitutes. They have to be there to get paid. Their income range is not that great. A writer can write a book and go away and still collect money from continued sales of her/his book. On the other hand, only a handful of writers make the big bucks and the range between the highest and lowest income is astronomical. Most are doing something else while their books are unsold and unread.

(Had to repost as the system doesn’t like the less than & greater than symbols)

That’s because they are used to mark HTML tags and appear before and after them, in HTML. WordPress interprets them as HTML and gets confused.

I think you may be unaware of what most teachers make and that “under $100 000″ is sometimes 4 or 5 times what some people make

In general, people with 11+ years of post-high school education make more than $20,000 a year. I’m sure there are exceptions (the unemployed, for instance), but as a rule of thumb that’s true.

Being a doctor is a lucrative profession but it’s not, generally, going to make someone really rich (it moves people into the upper middle class bracket, rich to most people but not actually rich when compared to people who are rich). Doctors who get rich generally do so because they invest or engage in other businesses, write diet books and become pop MDs (usually mixing in some CAM for marketing purposes), and are in the business of medicine (rather than just practicing medicine).

Everyone who works or pays their own way through university has student loans to pay back. Doctors, however, have an advantage when they graduate because they step into decent salaries and are seen as solid credit risks. And, of course, some med students train outside of the country where it’s cheaper (Canada, for instance).

As for engineers, sure IT professionals used to be paid a lot. Right now it’s layoffs left and right and plummeting salaries. As a lawyer friend once said to me – the three safest professions are doctor, lawyer and accountant because no matter the economy you’ll always be needed.

Consider also that many of those PCP’s who make well under under $100K and are also under 40years old still have massive student loans outstanding.

Also consider there a lot of very well paid engineers out there making under $100K (especially when you consider network engineers; try finding a really good Cisco engineer for $50K)

http://blogs.nature.com/stories/599

It’s no different from the scam they’re pulling here on doctors. “Oh, your writing will be seen by a wider audience, blah blah, the exposure will be so good for your profile!” Yeah, yeah. I have charities to which I give my time and work away for free, and you know what the difference is? They are honest and up-front about it being charity, and they aren’t using my work to make money for their shareholders instead of their cause.

You can still sell your material yourself, but Wellsphere can underbid you anytime you try to sell your material to anyone, and Wellshpere can publish a book of 5 years of your medical blog posts without giving you a penny. Furthermore, you have no control of what quotes form your content that Wellsphere can cherry pick, amalgamate with other people’s content, and republish in any form they choose.

One blog post isn’t worth much, but one blog site can be extremely valuable. The reality is that for any of the semi-established blogs like Respectful Insolence or Neurologica, the value exchange in the relationship is slanted in favor of Wellsphere.

Consider these blogs already have an established presence on the web, and can exist just fine without Wellsphere, but Wellsphere has nothing if they don’t get content provided to them.

How much traffic is Wellsphere going to bring into any of those blogs? The more content Wellsphere acquires, the less value they end up providing to any individual content provider as they divide their “promotion efforts” across all the content providers. (This is how it becomes a Ponzi/pyramid scheme).

The lesser blogs probably get no more value than the established ones.

They can’t really “feature” 1000 or more different content providers, and the benefit of linking to the content provider’s site doesn’t really provide any value if they reproduce all the content on Wellsphere. (If everything on getbetterhealth.com and neurologica.com were cross posted to sciencbasedmedicine.com, I wouldn’t bother visiting those sites as I could get everything from one place.

What they end up providing is a way for them to acquire IP rights to valuable, needed content in exchange for magic jelly beans.