(urth) OT: R.A. Lafferty estate sale

[Dan'l Danehy-Oakes]

I dunno. With the right management, Lafferty could be the next Phil
Dick. A lot of his stories -- I'm talking more about the short stories
than the novels, now -- would make great movies.

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 1:48 PM, Gwern Branwen <gwern0 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 3:46 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Actually, what's really disgusting is that the high bid is $70K. 23
>> novels, for ghod's sake.
>
> Yeah, that is very high an asking fee for novels that never sold very
> much. ($70k invested over the remaining ~70 years of the Lafferty
> copyrights is *a lot* of money; I can't see how the Lafferty
> copyrights could possibly compete. Some quick figuring with the net
> present value approximations says that at 70k, to be a good
> investment, the royalties/revenue would have to average like $4000 a
> year every year.)
>
> Presumably the target audience is Lafferty fans, or those seeking
> status & prestige (kind of like how Encyclopedia Britannica or the New
> York Times stay afloat).
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes