surviving the biz

Here’s the thing about writing, especially writing fiction: You do it alone. In your head, sitting by yourself, your mind splits itself into three or ten or a hundred personas. These characters talk to each other, conflicts blossom and a story takes root and grows.  If writing is going well, you lose time. You fold in on yourself and disappear into your own mind. Your subconscious becomes superconscious. When you come back into the world, you may be surprised to see that it’s raining. Or the sun has set. Or the dog has peed in your slipper.

The kind of focus that generates a story comes easily to a few writers, less easily to most of us who write. Solitude — the ability to isolate oneself, to live inside the mind — is what makes writing possible. So it makes sense that authors tend to be introverts, but even for those of us who are introverted by nature, the necessary mindset is often elusive. Some writers are so desperate for solitude, so frantic for focus that they’ll go to great lengths to impose it on themselves.

Victor Hugo. Imagine him naked.

Demosthenes, an Athenian orator and contemporary of Plato and Aristotle, shaved half his head so he’d be too embarrassed to leave home.

Maya Angelou shut herself into a hotel room and wouldn’t allow housekeeping in until things got fragrant.

Victor Hugo had his servant hide all his clothes and wrote naked to stay focused — and in the house.

Friedrich Schiller had to have a desk drawer full of rotting apples in order to focus on writing.

Dickens had nine little objects that had to be on his desk when he wrote, including a figurine of a dog fancier surrounded by puppies.

Here’s a question that might occur to a logical, impartial observer of writers: if you must have solitude to write, but the getting of solitude is so difficult, why? Why write? Why are so many people enamored of the idea? Scratch a plumber, a pediatrician, a tug-boat pilot, and a would-be novelist emerges.  Any traditionally published writer is aware of this, because the plumber, pediatrician and  tug-boat pilot have said as much, to his face. What is less clear to me personally is if the people who are so enamored of the idea know what they’re getting into. From all different angles, do they have any idea?

I have no research to back this up, but I have the strong impression that many people want to see in themselves the next millionaire author.  My first bit of advice: If you really want to write, make sure you’re not doing it just for the money.

The Authors Guild published results of a study on author income in 2015  (you can download the pdf here) with some unhappy truths: the majority of authors earn below the poverty line. Worse than that: Since 2009 authors are earning less, and because the Authors Guild wants you to understand what that means, they provide this graphic:

click for a larger image

If writing were easy, maybe people would do it for fun. But it isn’t easy, as Orwell points out in his usual forthright way:

Consider the conundrum basic to the pursuit of publication:  The writer is (most usually) an introvert with a goal. The end result of all her solitary inward-turned creative endeavor is a story, and stories require an audience. You need solitude, and you need an audience. There’s a disconnect there. A built in neurosis, which can be defined very simply as ‘arising out of inner conflict.’

There are a couple ways to get an audience. You send out your stories to friends and family; you join a critique group, you post your work online. And this may be enough of an audience for you. You’re not worried about getting paid; you just want to be heard.  If you do want to earn a living writing, your options are narrow. You find a traditional publisher, or you self publish.  Either of these options presents you with a conundrum. You need solitude to write, but the publishing business seems designed to deny you the solitude and peace of mind you need.

In the film Stranger than Fiction, Emma Thompson is a novelist in a deep rut and unable to finish her overdue work. Her publisher sends her an assistant: confidante, cheerleader, mentor, played by Queen Latifah. Quick hint: this doesn’t happen. If you can pay for this kind of help yourself, great; otherwise, don’t hold your breath.

There are writers successful enough to afford publicists and marketing experts and others who will shield you from the crass side of getting a book out there, but most of us aren’t in that crowd.   In the here and now, a writer who wants to be published has to interact with a wide variety of people. Agents, editors, and all the dozens of people who are involved in getting a book out to the public. A good agent will run interference, but s/he can’t play the game for you. Then, in the current market, you find yourself dealing with bookstore owners and clerks, book reviewers, book group coordinators, social media groups, and readers.

I hear you asking: what about your editor?  That assumes (1) that the novel is already under contract and your editor isn’t juggling 20+ authors and novels and has nothing better to do than to sit down with you over a long lunch twice a week; or (2) that you’ve hired a private editor (again: refer to the diagram above).  So the answer: you need other writers, people who understand the process, who know something about plot structure and point of view.

Finding a writing group is not easy. We need each other, but we’re introverts, we’re anxious, we’re underpaid, and we’re creatives with egos. Let’s say you have found the right group, people who are at approximately your same skill level and you all click, you get and give solid feedback, the feedback helps you polish your work, and your epic novel (on the colonization of Mars, or twin sisters in a death battle over an inheritance, or a depressed teenager) starts to come together.  In the modern day you have two choices: you can try to find an agent who will try to find the right editor and publishing house, or you can self publish. And this is where the real crazy starts.

 It doesn’t matter which route you go, it’s crazy all the way. Even before the 2008 crash publishing was as stable as a drunken sailor;  since that point it is more like the shuffleboard court on the Titanic. On top of that, the new technologies have created a crisis that will take another twenty years to sort itself out. Unfortunately, we — you and I — we live in the here and now. This is our circus. These are our monkeys.

The truth is that publishers are terrible business people who indulge in a lot of magical thinking. They buy hundreds and hundreds of novels every year and toss them  (and their authors) carelessly onto  ever-more-crowded world stage.  Introverted people who are most comfortable, who actually need solitude to create their work are pushed into this chaos. Today it’s not enough to write; even if you have a traditional publisher, you have to take responsibility for your novel’s success, and that means either hiring professionals, if you have 25K or so extra lying around, or teaching yourself how to do it. Which is a drain on your mindset and sense of self and the solitude you need.

Your writing will suffer for your writing.

There are legions of stories about hard drinking writers sitting together, talking about writing and stories and human nature. Because writers in this situation are often drinking and because they are introverts and prone to depression, they get into arguments and, sometimes, fist fights. The worst of that generation was Norman Mailer, who head butted Gore Vidal right before they were supposed to walk onto the Merv Griffin show together.

Mailer acted out before that term had any currency. He once tried to bite an actor’s ear off, he regularly punched people in the face, stabbed not one but two wives, and got away with it. Mailer was a violent alcoholic who could tell a story. Underneath the crazy he may have been a traumatized and depressed introvert. Or he may have been a narcissistic self indulgent sociopath and ass.

The worst writer craziness has to do with alcohol and drugs, but not all of it.  A large proportion of our kindred suffer from bipolar disorder as well as depression. Robert Frost was a depressed introvert, possibly bipolar, and according to Wallace Stegner, a prima donna. He demonstrated that nicely one year at the Breadloaf Writers Conference. While the poet Archibald MacLeish was giving a reading, Frost started a fire in the back of the room. Just a little fire. Easily put out. So MacLeish did not stop the reading, and Frost stormed out in a huff.

To this point I’ve been focusing on traditional publishing, but there’s just as much, if not more, craziness in the newer world of epublishing. At first glance it seems like a good idea: cut out the middle man, those publishers who are great at gatekeeping, but not so good at tending their own gardens. The problem: cutting out one middle man just leaves a hole, and in the way of all things, vacuums get filled, these days, mostly by Amazon. And by scam artists. People who want to teach you how to be a self published success. For a price.

Of course, they haven’t done it themselves, but they can do it for you. Log into any social media site and identify yourself as a writer, and you will get to know these people right away.

Those who write and want to be published are vulnerable. They are driven, and needy, and clueless, lambs to the slaughter. Even experienced people who should know better are so desperate for a way into publishing that they fall for these scams. I personally know a physician who was writing a medical thriller, an extremely intelligent, successful woman at the top of her field. She was so focused on this novel, on the acknowledgement that it would bring her, that all common sense went out the window and she paid out some five hundred dollars to one of those online organizations who will so gladly show you the way.

She would never fall for somebody trying to sell her aluminum siding, or for a down-on-his-luck Nigerian prince who writes pathetic emails. But she did fall for somebody who recognizes her wish to be an indie published  writer, and that person goes in for the kill. I would call that crazy behavior on her part, but it’s understandable, how it happens.

Google the phrase “self publish my novel” and you’ll get 3,940,000 hits in a matter of seconds.

I have been pondering this nuttiness for most of my adult life. As it turns out, there is, I think, a fairly simple answer. This quote is from Jhumpa Lahiri:

It was not in my nature to be an assertive person. I was used to looking to others for guidance, for influence, sometimes for the most basic cues of life. And yet writing stories is one of the most assertive things a person can do. Fiction is an act of willfulness, a deliberate effort to reconceive, to rearrange, to reconstitute nothing short of reality itself. Even among the most reluctant and doubtful of writers, this willfulness must emerge. Being a writer means taking the leap from listening to saying, ‘Listen to me’.”

Of course at this point you have to consider Hemingway. He yelled ‘Listen to me’ and people listened. The whole western world listened. And still he ended his own life, as successful and well received as he was. Maybe people tell stories and work to get them published because they want to be heard, or maybe that’s just one small part of the larger mystery of why we do what we do. Certainly for Hemingway, being heard was not enough.

So you have to ask yourself, will you be satisfied with being heard by what will probably be a fairly small circle of people, for little monetary return? Are you willing to invest not just your mind but your peace of mind?  If so, then arm yourself, and sally forth. I look forward to reading your novel.

fighting tooth and snail from The Marginalized Art of Snail-Fighting in Medieval Europe; because publishing has always been crazy

Two years ago Mick Rooney at  The Independent Publishing Magazine reviewed a British publishing outfit called Unbound, which is a new approach based on crowd-sourcing.  That is: you go to their site, read about an author and a book that author is proposing to write, and if you really want to read it, you pony up some money. When the funding goal is met and the book is written, it goes to press and eventually you get a copy.

I vaguely remember reading about Unbound and wondering if it might actually work.  Just today it came back to mind because Raphaela Weissman, a local author but someone I don’t know personally, emailed to say that she was launching a campaign through Unbound for her novel Monsters.  Raphaela originally had an agent and got great feedback from publishers, but in the end nobody took Monsters on, and thus she decided to proceed with the help of Unbound. Her launch page is here. With all this in mind,  I went back to find and re-read Rooney’s review of Unbound.   

It’s going to take me a little while to figure out how I feel about Unbound and that needs to happen before I can commit to anything.

If I knew Raphaela personally I might be tempted to contribute to her crowd-sourcing of the novel just to be supportive of a friend. And that is probably Unbound’s major weakness when it comes to lesser known writers. Monsters may be a fantastic novel, but whether or not it ever sees the light of day depends on how well Raphaela can push the crowd-sourcing.  She has about 90 days to hit the mark. The review at IPM summarizes:

Since Unbound was founded in 2011 [this article was written in 2014], it has successfully funded and published 54 books. There are currently 5 books funded by more than 50%, and 36 books below the 50% funding target. According to this article in the Telegraph UK, each funding project on Unbound needs the support of about 2,500 reader/patron pledges — ranging between £10 and £250. There are various levels of support depending on the amount of each pledge; typically, £10 would provide the reader with a digital copy and access to the author’s community ‘shed’; £20, an additional limited edition hardback; the reader’s name mentioned at the end of the book as a supporter; a signed hardback edition; tickets to the launch party; or a personal appearance by the author (about £750).

Unbound is interesting because it at least is honest about the way it operates. The author is responsible for raising the money necessary to get the book published. They estimate the cost for everything (except the author’s time, which is not calculated and no advances on royalties are paid), come up with a figure, help the author with the launch webpage, and then wait to see if s/he can make it happen. Once the author reaches a certain stage — somewhere about 70 percent of the estimated cost to publish — they step in. 

Traditional publishers go about this from the other end. They never tell the author what they think it will cost to publish the book. Instead they offer an advance and assume the costs of publication up front. So for example they might estimate that it will cost them $25,000 to get a book into print and out into the marketplace (and don’t ask me to verify that number; I’m basing it on the numbers Unbound uses). They assume that cost and offer the author money as well, let’s say $20,000 advance on royalties (which in this day and age would be very good). So that’s about 45K the traditional publisher commits before hand. If the book flops, that’s money the publisher loses. The author is unlikely to ever sell another book to a traditional publisher, but that 20K advance doesn’t have to be paid back.

As soon as the author finished the book and hands it over, the pressure begins. Once public relations teams would take over at this point, but these days — unless you are already a superstar, in bookselling terms — you are expected to be directly and deeply involved in marketing through social media. If the book fails it may be because it wasn’t strong enough or the timing was bad, but it will also be because the publisher put no money into promoting the book. Without promotion, it’s almost impossible to for a novel from a new author to gain a readership. I’ve said before that I truly dislike and resent the way publishers burden writers with marketing and selling their work. For most of us it’s torture and generally not very effective — unless they are already widely read with a large, loyal readership. And then the whole enterprise is beside the point, anyway. 

So I’m not sure what to think about Unbound. I have a large and loyal readership, but even so I find it hard to imagine that a minimum of 2,500 people would invest a minimum of $20 before I’ve ever finish writing the novel.***  Another thing: without an advance, how do I pay the bills while I’m writing the novel? The traditional publisher has that much confidence in me, at least. Of course, here’s where Unbound beats the traditional publisher. Penguin or FSG gives you somewhere between ten and fifteen percent of the amount the book sells for, but with Unbound you get 50 percent — an even split with the publisher.

Unbound is trying something different and attempting to move beyond a model of publishing that doesn’t really work anymore. For that they deserve credit. How well they are succeeding is something I can’t tell without investing a lot of time in reading more about them, their authors, and the individual case histories. Something I can’t afford to do because I have a contract, and a novel to finish. 

In the meantime I wish Raphaela Weissman well and I truly hope that the Unbound approach works for her. I’m just not sure that I can climb on board at this point.

***NOTE: Please do not comment to tell me that I’m right or wrong about this; I’m not considering crowd-sourcing, and not looking for encouragement in that direction.