The world is full of writers but has this led to the rise of mediocrity? image: philosophyslam.org
When I was growing up, I imagined being a novelist meant I would write for a living. This is not always the case. There is a darker side to the writing and publishing profession, even more disturbing than the constant criticism, rejection and pirating of e-books. We’re not all dedicating our lives to the manipulation of words for entertainment value. Most habitual readers I know don’t realize that gone are the days when writers were intellectuals and academics spending their whole lives with their nose in a book. In 2013 every other person I meet online claims to be a writer, many of them bestselling authors at that.
A writer in this decade is an everyman. You probably know one yourself because anybody can claim the tag now. They could be writing e-books, blogs or letters to the editor of a newspaper to supplement their income, but the fact remains that if you are trying to make a living from writing, your time will mostly be spent promoting and networking, and networking means you’ll come across the type of people who will inspire you to write a murder mystery just so you can make them the victim.
Life just might be creative literature…or at least a series of punctuation marks
What’s brought about this change in the profession? I’m not one of those intellectuals or academics, so I can’t say. I am a person who has had a series of dead-end jobs but naively dedicated the last twelve years of her life to the craft of creative writing, making numerous sacrifices to find fulfillment. To me it’s a vocation rather than a career or hobby because no matter what I do I can’t stop writing. I mentally plot the story of job interviews during the event to cope with the pressure. When my husband had a stroke, I imagined the blood clot that caused it as a series of ellipses in our lives, whereas the birth of my son was an exclamation mark. People I don’t like have faces like twisty question marks and any bad luck I have is merely a comma. I ceased to become part of my own reality a long time ago. It verges on mental illness. This is not particular to a writer in the 21st Century and could be said of anyone so obsessive about the craft at any time.
Now there are so many would-be writers, there is no people’s revolution against the publishing giants, despite what many independent authors, including myself, have thought and said in the past couple of years. There are hundreds like me to whom writing is like breathing but thousands of bandwagon jumpers who rush out book after book then market them in questionable ways. I even had one man send me private messages on Twitter every day for almost a year in an attempt to get reviews for each book his wife has written – a total of twenty three in the last two years.
“Tractor beam” – Dr. Evil
I self published through choice, without knocking on agents’ doors because I knew my novel was too contemporary to wait and within a few years would be dated. Self publishing is what the majority of wannabes do but it tars us all with that opportunist brush. The Internet is awash with distinctly average literature written on a whim by someone who never had ambitions to be a writer and was bored one day so self published on one of the many websites that allow you to do so without a book deal. I suspect many of them aren’t even readers.
Stories of people who have written twenty or more titles over the course of a few months and sold hundreds of thousands of copies both impress me and rile me in equal measure because despite having spent years working at it, as an independent writer without a publishing deal and only Amazon et al behind me, we are all on the same level. For the Silo, Lacey Dearie.
Bookends worth having- courtesy of hiconsumption.com
It is amazing to me how many of us aspire to write and publish a book. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment. Mention to five people “I’m thinking of writing a book…” and then wait for the response. Among the (hopefully) positive comments you get back, I bet that three or four people will say “I’ve always wanted to write a book myself.” Even in today’s age of digital distribution it seems like writing a book – a real, in-the-hands book, is a dream of many.
I know for myself I’ve had that dream, too. I am quite sure I can trace it back to several years ago when I actually did author a book. It’s around 30 pages long, and I bound it with denim fabric wrapped around cardboard. It has illustrations and is written in a “choose your own adventure” style with choices that present themselves at the bottom of each page. It was typed with an old manual typewriter and the copyright page clearly indicates that copying or electronic transmission, of any form, is prohibited without the express written consent of the author. I think I was 10 years old at the time.
In my twenties I dreamed about writing a book on the history of the Amiga computer. I contacted several involved individuals for interviews, some of which I actually conducted and others which I just got a general “yeah, sure I’ll do that” response. The project sat on the back burner, only to be moved around to the side when my next project – a book about the history of two of my family members – reared its head. Research started, more family got involved. Yet, it has sat there. I’m still convinced I’m going to write that project (heck, it could even become a movie) but it sits there on the back burner with the other book. I envision the scenario is similar with all of those other people who say “yep, I’m going to write a book too”. Back burners around the world must be filled with these book projects. It’s a good thing that we are moving more towards a digital age because if all of these books actually got written it would likely overflow our libraries.
In my thirties I was approached by someone who had already written a successful book and had been interviewed by some very major radio and television stations. His previous publisher had ripped him off, illegal translations of the book were out there with no profits coming to him, and now that publisher was in the throes of bankruptcy. He had made some improvements, gotten new illustrations and was ready to release the latest version of the book. He just needed a new publisher. He was even going to provide camera-ready files, a term that doesn’t even apply anymore in the industry. He just needed someone to produce a cover and bankroll the whole operation. It wasn’t my own book, but it was a step into the world of publishing that I had dreamed of being a part of since I hammered out the keys on that old Underwood.
Food for thought: even JK Rowling and her first Harry Potter book were rejected….more than once.
To say it didn’t work out as planned would be an understatement. The book did make it into Chapters, but the monies that were paid to the distributor seemed to evaporate as they also filed for bankruptcy. I did manage to get some of the books back. They currently serve as great insulation in my garage, and I’ve considered burning them for heat this winter. The problem lies with how the old model works. The publisher orders and pays for a large number of books, and then hopes the distributor gets them placed at retailers. The retailers may or may not sell them, and to pay for the ones they have sold, they actually return unsold ones – delaying paying anything until the interest in the book has passed. It’s a nasty, dirty business and one that I have no interest in dealing in again.
Yet the call of writing a book – of crafting something from scratch that comes from deep inside the brain – will not go away. It’s no surprise that many of us would love to take a manuscript and submit it to one of the big publishing houses and have them send us a big advance cheque, but if J. K. Rowling can write a hit like Harry Potter and still get rejection letters, what hope does the average citizen have?
Just like that old bouncing Amiga Ball, (seen here on Syd’s shoulder) writing is about ‘bouncing back’ and ‘rolling along’ when inspiration wanes.
When I discovered the self-publishing site www.lulu.com, I thought it was definitely a dream come true. This site allows you to submit press-ready files and have a book produced for a very reasonable cost. In the past, the only way to get a reasonable unit cost (if at all) on a book was to order a minimum of 1,000 units. Now, the average size book can be purchased for 10 to 20 dollars, and it will be professionally produced and bound. How is this possible? Advanced technology has created what the industry calls print-on-demand and it has changed the game on how all of this works.
I wrote about lulu.com and the process itself several years ago and had a reader write back to me and asked about helping her get the files of her book ready. She had a very unique personal story and had, over the years, written the guts of a book about her experiences. She just had a Word file, however, and had no idea on how to produce the final layout document with a table of contents and so on. I told her I could help her out and provided a cost for her to do so and we took it from there.
The experience was a positive one overall. In the end, we had a few kinks to work out (and she always seemed to find something to change) but we produced a companion website and she ordered several copies of the book for her friends and family. It was a positive experience in the end because she now has her book in a real book format, and although she really didn’t sell that many copies, she did it because she always wanted to record her story on paper. She accomplished that.
It fired me up for working on my own projects. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to tackle first, and then a more brilliant idea hit me out of nowhere. I started working on it. I didn’t have a gameplan other than knowing I was going to work on it until it was done. I was shocked to realize I had spent almost two years doing research alone, but I wanted to produce a quality product. Along my journey I talked to other friends who had also gone the self-publishing route, but had opted for a service called www.CreateSpace.com rather than LuLu. When I looked into the costs of manufacturing, I could see why. CreateSpace.com was much more affordable and for me this was especially important as I was doing a project that was full colour and has a limited audience.
So I switched, mid-book, to a new provider. I noted that CreateSpace.com is actually owned by Amazon, the world’s largest online book retailer. This has to be a good thing, but I’m glad I dug a little deeper into what challenges I might face as a Canadian. It turns out that you are going to need an IRS tax number in order to receive your royalties. That’s understandable. What is not, is the process. I tried calling and was on hold for what seemed like a lifetime, and I finally gave up. I tried faxing. The thing about faxing is you never really know what happens on the other end or where the piece of paper ends up. It’s also so 1999. I waited a few weeks and heard nothing. I tried calling back again and finally got through to someone who told me I actually had the wrong department and would be transferred. After a total of three hours on hold, I finally spoke to another person who asked me a couple of questions and I was a bit confused at the them (since they were not questions on the form). When I showed some hesitation, she went for the kill and referred me to faxing in the application to a different fax number than I had ever heard of. Eventually I just sent the fax to every IRS number I could find. Four weeks later, my number arrived.
I share my pain with you because I am glad that I started the process early on. I would have been devastated to have my project complete only to have it held up from selling due to a paperwork problem. If you are thinking about selling through a major channel like Amazon.com, you are wise to take care of this detail early on.
During the development of my book I took breaks. It can be difficult focusing so much on a single topic and it’s easy to lose your concentration and end up with a scattered project. A colleague approached me about putting together some simple-to-follow steps for a social media presentation I was working on, and I took the opportunity to turn that into a book. It is a small book, called “Mastering Social Media” but it was enough to get my feet wet about working with CreateSpace.com and the process. It turned out to be invaluable experience before my main book was ready.
This past July it finally happened. My book, “Collecting for Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace” was finally released and has been given all five-star ratings on Amazon. I am very proud of the book and all that it took to put together, but I know that the road to get there was not easy. It might seem like it, looking at the final product, but it took all of my experience with the previous books to get there. There are still hurdles… promotion is always a tough thing and reaching everyone you can with such a niche book will be a long slow road.
The best advice I have for those wanting to publish their own book is to just get out there and do it. There are so many options that exist now that the excuses for putting your work out there are now gone. It’s a different world out there – go live in it. For the Silo, Syd Bolton.
This article originally published in the print edn. of the Silo, Summer 2013.
“Do it for the love of it. Ignore the scary things you read about book publishing industry. In fact, don’t read news at all. They will only distract you from writing. Hole up and create.” Ksenia Anske
For aspiring writers- I thought very hard about what to write, and decided to settle on a little advice for aspiring writers. Because if you’re one of those hopefuls, you might get scared too easily and give up. The world of book publishing is changing. It looks frightening. The big publishers are fighting for survival, buying off little companies, merging, you name it. Why? Because big companies like Amazon made it possible for anyone to publish a book.
And the world of indie books is growing. I can imagine any starting writer look at this, get the scare of her life and run and hide, and give up on her dream. Because how can you possibly make it? Moreover, how can you possibly make a living? It’s harder than ever to get through to agents. It’s very intimidating to try to self-publish, with all these scary things to be done: finding an editor, a book cover designer, a text formatter, figuring out how the online uploading tools work, promoting your book once it’s published. If you have any kind of embonpoint in any part of your body, metaphorically speaking, it’s enough to lose it, and your brains too. Just by reading this you’re probably already getting scared. There is no way you will make it, is there? There is.
Let’s for a second imagine that none of this exists. Let’s think that writing a book is something you always wanted to do. Not to make a lot of money. Not to become rich and famous. Not to flaunt it into your former classmates faces at your high school reunion. None of it. Let’s imagine you simply always wanted to write a book because you have a story to tell. It’s bursting out of you. You can’t help it. Like a chronic tosspot with this irresistible draw toward alcohol, you simply can’t hold yourself back. May I say something to you? I might not have enough credibility, or clout, or whatever you want to call it. I have only started writing full time 2 years ago and have self-published only 4 novels so far, but I’ve
Ksenia Anske
been never happier in my life. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor. I started writing for therapy, and never in the million years did I think anyone would be interested in reading my writing. But people do! People read my books! Can you imagine? I still can’t. I still pinch myself. It’s a miracle. There is a lesson I learned from it, and I keep shouting it at every corner. I want to shout it here, to you, so that you will hear me. It’s very simple. You can do the same.
Don’t be intimidated by the amount of books already published (I know I am, still). Don’t worry about making a living (I know I am, still). Don’t even think about wether or not anyone will read your books (I think about it, too). That doesn’t really matter. What matters is, while you write your book, you get a high which no other drug can give you. You are so happy. When you hold your finished book in your hands, the only other experience that can be compared to it is maybe that of holding your child in your hands for the first time. It is your child. It’s your story. You did it. Funny enough, if you write it for yourself, you’re more likely to find readers. If you forget about the business of book writing and think about the art of book writing, you will produce something extraordinary.
The Writers Retreat inspired by the garden retreats of two literary greats – Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw – whose properties are under the care of the Trust. – See more at: http://www.scottsofthrapstonblog.co.uk/2012/06/a-magical-connection/#sthash.xvVzvEtp.dpuf
Know what it is? You will make yourself a little happier, and with that you will make people around you a little happier, and with that you will make the world around you a little happier. Now, imagine what happens when you write your second book, and your third, and your fourth. Do it for the love of it. Ignore the scary things you read about book publishing industry. In fact, don’t read news at all. They will only distract you from writing. Hole up and create. Pour your everything into it, do it so well, that people will want to see what the deal is about. It’s what happened to me, still happening. It’s what will happen to you. So go ahead, write that book. You know you want to. You know you can. I know you can. The rest will happen on its own. For the Silo, Ksenia Anske.
