Posted: 02 Apr 2014 08:07 PM PDT
More Author Myths - Russell Blake
With thanks from http://russellblake.com/
Last week I covered the top 8 most insidious falsehoods I’ve heard about being a self-pubbed author. This week I continue my rant and tackle a few more:
9) We are artists, above the vagaries of commerce and filthy lucre. Sure we are. Until we want to make money by selling our work. At that point we’re in the book selling business, which is a commercial enterprise involving the production and sale of books. In the case of self-publishers, of books we have written. Our author selves may well be artists, but if you want to avoid being a starving one you need to develop the skills of a publisher, not an author. They are different. You need both.
At the risk of being obvious, if you want to make good decisions for your book selling business, ask yourself the questions you’re grappling with as though you were deciding on selling and packaging other people’s books. That removes you as the author from your publishing business decisions. Which is as it should be. If you wouldn’t sink a grand into packaging someone else’s book on making bass lures out of Coke cans, you probably shouldn’t be doing it for your own, either. Or put really simply, if something looks like dead money, don’t waste your, or your readers’, time, regardless of who wrote it.
If you don’t want to, or can’t, develop those skills, start querying agents, because you won’t have a good self-publishing experience. Uploading your screed on Amazon does not a successful or viable self-publisher make, any more than printing a thousand books and having them in your garage will make you a successful traditional publisher.
10) Your muse cannot be forced to dance. Of course it can. If you were a writer on 24 or CSI or SNL you’d be expected to perform every week or you’d be out of a job. Most who work hard enough to get those gigs don’t want to lose ‘em, so they perform. Whether they feel like it or not. Whether they’re particularly inspired or not. The notion that you need to wait for your muse to decide to infuse you with story is fine if your books sell 10 million and you can afford to wait 4 or 5 years between each one. If that’s not you, you need to develop two things: a work ethic, and a system to inspire yourself.
One technique I use is to ask myself how I can make this book, or this chapter, the best I’ve ever written. You get completely different answers depending upon what questions you ask yourself. “How can I consistently write 5K a day and enjoy it?” will get you a different answer than “How am I ever going to do this?” If you’re stuck, ask better questions.
11) Everyone’s got a book in them. Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Given that most people are by definition average, most people’s books will also be average, which is to say, mediocre or middling. Yours too. If you want to be above average, you need an edge. Talent could help. But working hard to develop your grasp of craft will result in a far better result than relying on talent. Which means if you want to be a writer people are willing to pay to read (be they agents/publishers, or readers), you need to learn the basics of your craft: grammar, spelling, story structure, vocabulary. Far too many sit down and start writing believing they’ve been blessed with unique properties that will enable them to write books people want to read without having done much, or any, of the work to become competent at what they’re doing. Guess what the odds are that turns out well? The same as everyone else. Or actually, far worse, because even if 99% of all books fail to find an audience, that includes a boatload of competently executed books. If you don’t know how to write, your odds are way worse than that blended average.
If you want to make your book exceptional, expect to have to work at becoming an exceptional story teller and writer. In my experience that doesn’t happen by clicking your heels together and wishing it were so. It requires effort. A lot of it. Which means you need to study how to write a good book and learn about things like echoes (repeated words), how to vary sentence structure, how to avoid things like head hopping, etc. etc., unless you have a miraculous gift that’s one in ten million. In other words, expect to have to spend time learning your craft.
I get told I’m a big meanie for saying this. But if I were a piano teacher, I wouldn’t be considered mean if I told students they needed to spend a lot of time and energy getting good enough to be paid to perform. If I were teaching ballet and I told aspiring ballerinas they could expect to spend years before they’d be even close to competent, I wouldn’t be labeled mean. If I taught cooking, I wouldn’t be a buzz kill if I told aspirants they’d need to spend years learning the ropes. Even if you wanted to do something as workmanlike as being a cosmetologist or a plumber you’d expect to spend a while learning which end of the scissors or wrench to hold, and yet many hopeful authors’ plan amounts to, “I’ll just write a book and see how it does.” Or worse yet, “I’ll write a book and it should do well, on account of how special I am.” Here’s the newsflash: nothing worth doing’s ever easy. This, especially. If you think this is going to be easy, you came to the wrong dance.
12) I’m too busy to read. Who’s got the time? This one kills me. How in the hell do you expect to be a good writer if you don’t read a lot of good books? Intuition? Divine guidance? Magic? It’s like saying you plan to be a movie director, but don’t have time to watch films. Then how do you know anything about that which you are planning to do? Look, I understand we’re living in an instant gratification world where, if we can imagine it, we feel entitled to it, but that isn’t how this works. In order to master something, you need to do a lot of it (practice) and you need to model successful examples (reading/studying writing). Reading a lot is how you do the latter. There’s no way your writing’s going to be very good if you don’t read a lot. Sorry. Make time for it or find some other pipe dream where you don’t have to work to master it.
13) So-and-so hit big without marketing/with their first book/is illiterate/sucks. Sure. Anything at all’s possible, and you could be the one in a gazillion. But the odds are better that you won’t wake up tomorrow or will be killed by a falling coconut. Or paralyzed on the way to the market. Singling out the exceptions that defy explanation is a fun game, but it’s not particularly useful unless you can reproduce that success, which you won’t be able to. Because you aren’t them, in the same time, place, market, with the identical set of circumstances, experiences or contacts. Sorry. You aren’t. So pointing to no-talent hacks whose books sold big, while amusing, doesn’t mean your business plan should amount to “be a no-talent hack, too.” Pointing to books that defy all odds and are breakouts is a great pass time, but if it doesn’t enable you to predict the next breakout, it’s useless. Whenever I hear a variation of this, I shake my head because I know I’m hearing a rationalization for failure.
14) I don’t have time/energy/money/whatever to do this right. Fair enough. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head. But as I’m fond of saying, don’t expect full-time rewards from part-time effort. Figure out what the average part-time, unskilled or marginally skilled job pays, and that’s what your expectation should be based upon if you haven’t invested a ton of time mastering your craft (the skilled part) and can only allocate a few hours here and there (the part-time bit).
This one always pisses people off. “But that’s not necessarily true!” If not, why, exactly, not? In what world does putting in time “whenever you can” translate into a successful career at anything (and please don’t point to #13 and some outlier who was a lightning strike)? That’s not to run down those who don’t write full time. I can completely sympathize. For years I wrote whenever I could, practicing, learning my craft, while I did other things. But I didn’t expect to make full time money at it. I didn’t think it was good enough for people to pay to read. I may be many things, but delusional in that regard isn’t one of them. My expectations were reasonable: I expected to get better over time, and maybe get good enough to write for a living, or at least to be proud of what I generated as being worth readers’ money.
That’s just on the writing side. If you intend to query, you better make damned sure your work is frigging brilliant or you’ll spend forever getting rejected. Perhaps not full time, but you can spend years getting that one book just right, so that can accommodate a part-time schedule. But if you want to be a vocational self-publisher, you also have the full-time job of being the publisher, in addition to being the writer. That’s a ton of responsibility and two full-time jobs you’ll be doing part-time. So what’s your expectation?
I think the biggest killer in this business is having unreasonable expectations. They’re a recipe for disappointment. So many seem to believe that they can put something up on Amazon, after having practiced little or not at all learning their craft, and having invested nothing in editing, packaging, etc., and yet somehow do well. It’s akin to announcing oneself to be a master chef, after having spent a lifetime microwaving TV dinners and dining on fast food, and expecting folks to line up for your culinary masterpieces when you have little idea how to boil water. Not even in the movies does this turn out well. Be honest with yourself. Figure out what it will take to achieve your dreams, and then get ready for some serious sacrifice and work. Maybe you’ll get lucky and be the next EL James, but odds say not so much. Get clear on what a reasonable expectation is, then devise a plan to achieve it.
15) I’m good. I can self-edit. Why throw away money? I can’t tell you how often I hear this one. Usually by novices who grossly overestimate their own competence. Their logic goes, hey, I know how to write, so I’m qualified to edit my own stuff. Except, mmm, not so much. For instance, one writer might understand the basics of grammar, and then use the same word six times in three sentences while approving stilted dialogue that sounds idiotic and wooden. Another may simply not know they’re getting half of it wrong. I can honestly say that 99+% of serious authors I’ve met appreciate and understand why professional editing matters. Those that argue against it invariably are trying to figure out how to produce the cheapest product, not a quality one. And they will also be the loudest to howl over all the “unfair” and “mean” reviews as their sales stall to nothing. I’ve gotten to the point where I rarely try to argue this anymore. If your girlfriend or buddy or second cousin says they can edit your work, and saving those few hundred bucks are representative of your approach to this highly competitive business, knock yourself out.
That’s my slice of reality from the ink trenches this week. If you disagree, or think I’m a party pooper, that’s your right. I get paid exactly the same for being right as being wrong on this blog. It’s your career, not mine, and I’m just trying to share what I’ve learned along the way. Take it all for what it’s worth.
With thanks from http://russellblake.com/
Last week I covered the top 8 most insidious falsehoods I’ve heard about being a self-pubbed author. This week I continue my rant and tackle a few more:
9) We are artists, above the vagaries of commerce and filthy lucre. Sure we are. Until we want to make money by selling our work. At that point we’re in the book selling business, which is a commercial enterprise involving the production and sale of books. In the case of self-publishers, of books we have written. Our author selves may well be artists, but if you want to avoid being a starving one you need to develop the skills of a publisher, not an author. They are different. You need both.
At the risk of being obvious, if you want to make good decisions for your book selling business, ask yourself the questions you’re grappling with as though you were deciding on selling and packaging other people’s books. That removes you as the author from your publishing business decisions. Which is as it should be. If you wouldn’t sink a grand into packaging someone else’s book on making bass lures out of Coke cans, you probably shouldn’t be doing it for your own, either. Or put really simply, if something looks like dead money, don’t waste your, or your readers’, time, regardless of who wrote it.
If you don’t want to, or can’t, develop those skills, start querying agents, because you won’t have a good self-publishing experience. Uploading your screed on Amazon does not a successful or viable self-publisher make, any more than printing a thousand books and having them in your garage will make you a successful traditional publisher.
10) Your muse cannot be forced to dance. Of course it can. If you were a writer on 24 or CSI or SNL you’d be expected to perform every week or you’d be out of a job. Most who work hard enough to get those gigs don’t want to lose ‘em, so they perform. Whether they feel like it or not. Whether they’re particularly inspired or not. The notion that you need to wait for your muse to decide to infuse you with story is fine if your books sell 10 million and you can afford to wait 4 or 5 years between each one. If that’s not you, you need to develop two things: a work ethic, and a system to inspire yourself.
One technique I use is to ask myself how I can make this book, or this chapter, the best I’ve ever written. You get completely different answers depending upon what questions you ask yourself. “How can I consistently write 5K a day and enjoy it?” will get you a different answer than “How am I ever going to do this?” If you’re stuck, ask better questions.
11) Everyone’s got a book in them. Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good one. Given that most people are by definition average, most people’s books will also be average, which is to say, mediocre or middling. Yours too. If you want to be above average, you need an edge. Talent could help. But working hard to develop your grasp of craft will result in a far better result than relying on talent. Which means if you want to be a writer people are willing to pay to read (be they agents/publishers, or readers), you need to learn the basics of your craft: grammar, spelling, story structure, vocabulary. Far too many sit down and start writing believing they’ve been blessed with unique properties that will enable them to write books people want to read without having done much, or any, of the work to become competent at what they’re doing. Guess what the odds are that turns out well? The same as everyone else. Or actually, far worse, because even if 99% of all books fail to find an audience, that includes a boatload of competently executed books. If you don’t know how to write, your odds are way worse than that blended average.
If you want to make your book exceptional, expect to have to work at becoming an exceptional story teller and writer. In my experience that doesn’t happen by clicking your heels together and wishing it were so. It requires effort. A lot of it. Which means you need to study how to write a good book and learn about things like echoes (repeated words), how to vary sentence structure, how to avoid things like head hopping, etc. etc., unless you have a miraculous gift that’s one in ten million. In other words, expect to have to spend time learning your craft.
I get told I’m a big meanie for saying this. But if I were a piano teacher, I wouldn’t be considered mean if I told students they needed to spend a lot of time and energy getting good enough to be paid to perform. If I were teaching ballet and I told aspiring ballerinas they could expect to spend years before they’d be even close to competent, I wouldn’t be labeled mean. If I taught cooking, I wouldn’t be a buzz kill if I told aspirants they’d need to spend years learning the ropes. Even if you wanted to do something as workmanlike as being a cosmetologist or a plumber you’d expect to spend a while learning which end of the scissors or wrench to hold, and yet many hopeful authors’ plan amounts to, “I’ll just write a book and see how it does.” Or worse yet, “I’ll write a book and it should do well, on account of how special I am.” Here’s the newsflash: nothing worth doing’s ever easy. This, especially. If you think this is going to be easy, you came to the wrong dance.
12) I’m too busy to read. Who’s got the time? This one kills me. How in the hell do you expect to be a good writer if you don’t read a lot of good books? Intuition? Divine guidance? Magic? It’s like saying you plan to be a movie director, but don’t have time to watch films. Then how do you know anything about that which you are planning to do? Look, I understand we’re living in an instant gratification world where, if we can imagine it, we feel entitled to it, but that isn’t how this works. In order to master something, you need to do a lot of it (practice) and you need to model successful examples (reading/studying writing). Reading a lot is how you do the latter. There’s no way your writing’s going to be very good if you don’t read a lot. Sorry. Make time for it or find some other pipe dream where you don’t have to work to master it.
13) So-and-so hit big without marketing/with their first book/is illiterate/sucks. Sure. Anything at all’s possible, and you could be the one in a gazillion. But the odds are better that you won’t wake up tomorrow or will be killed by a falling coconut. Or paralyzed on the way to the market. Singling out the exceptions that defy explanation is a fun game, but it’s not particularly useful unless you can reproduce that success, which you won’t be able to. Because you aren’t them, in the same time, place, market, with the identical set of circumstances, experiences or contacts. Sorry. You aren’t. So pointing to no-talent hacks whose books sold big, while amusing, doesn’t mean your business plan should amount to “be a no-talent hack, too.” Pointing to books that defy all odds and are breakouts is a great pass time, but if it doesn’t enable you to predict the next breakout, it’s useless. Whenever I hear a variation of this, I shake my head because I know I’m hearing a rationalization for failure.
14) I don’t have time/energy/money/whatever to do this right. Fair enough. Nobody’s holding a gun to your head. But as I’m fond of saying, don’t expect full-time rewards from part-time effort. Figure out what the average part-time, unskilled or marginally skilled job pays, and that’s what your expectation should be based upon if you haven’t invested a ton of time mastering your craft (the skilled part) and can only allocate a few hours here and there (the part-time bit).
This one always pisses people off. “But that’s not necessarily true!” If not, why, exactly, not? In what world does putting in time “whenever you can” translate into a successful career at anything (and please don’t point to #13 and some outlier who was a lightning strike)? That’s not to run down those who don’t write full time. I can completely sympathize. For years I wrote whenever I could, practicing, learning my craft, while I did other things. But I didn’t expect to make full time money at it. I didn’t think it was good enough for people to pay to read. I may be many things, but delusional in that regard isn’t one of them. My expectations were reasonable: I expected to get better over time, and maybe get good enough to write for a living, or at least to be proud of what I generated as being worth readers’ money.
That’s just on the writing side. If you intend to query, you better make damned sure your work is frigging brilliant or you’ll spend forever getting rejected. Perhaps not full time, but you can spend years getting that one book just right, so that can accommodate a part-time schedule. But if you want to be a vocational self-publisher, you also have the full-time job of being the publisher, in addition to being the writer. That’s a ton of responsibility and two full-time jobs you’ll be doing part-time. So what’s your expectation?
I think the biggest killer in this business is having unreasonable expectations. They’re a recipe for disappointment. So many seem to believe that they can put something up on Amazon, after having practiced little or not at all learning their craft, and having invested nothing in editing, packaging, etc., and yet somehow do well. It’s akin to announcing oneself to be a master chef, after having spent a lifetime microwaving TV dinners and dining on fast food, and expecting folks to line up for your culinary masterpieces when you have little idea how to boil water. Not even in the movies does this turn out well. Be honest with yourself. Figure out what it will take to achieve your dreams, and then get ready for some serious sacrifice and work. Maybe you’ll get lucky and be the next EL James, but odds say not so much. Get clear on what a reasonable expectation is, then devise a plan to achieve it.
15) I’m good. I can self-edit. Why throw away money? I can’t tell you how often I hear this one. Usually by novices who grossly overestimate their own competence. Their logic goes, hey, I know how to write, so I’m qualified to edit my own stuff. Except, mmm, not so much. For instance, one writer might understand the basics of grammar, and then use the same word six times in three sentences while approving stilted dialogue that sounds idiotic and wooden. Another may simply not know they’re getting half of it wrong. I can honestly say that 99+% of serious authors I’ve met appreciate and understand why professional editing matters. Those that argue against it invariably are trying to figure out how to produce the cheapest product, not a quality one. And they will also be the loudest to howl over all the “unfair” and “mean” reviews as their sales stall to nothing. I’ve gotten to the point where I rarely try to argue this anymore. If your girlfriend or buddy or second cousin says they can edit your work, and saving those few hundred bucks are representative of your approach to this highly competitive business, knock yourself out.
That’s my slice of reality from the ink trenches this week. If you disagree, or think I’m a party pooper, that’s your right. I get paid exactly the same for being right as being wrong on this blog. It’s your career, not mine, and I’m just trying to share what I’ve learned along the way. Take it all for what it’s worth.
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