This is Not Your Mother’s Publishing Career

 

I’ve been a professional writer for a long time. Since my teens, if we want to be precise (take my word, that’s a heck of a long time ago) and I’ll be the first person to admit that almost everything I used to “know” about publishing has changed over the past few years. And yet I still hear many of my fellow writers referring back to the “good old days” of publishing or making career decisions based on what was true ten years ago.

It’s not like up-to-date info isn’t out there, so maybe it’s simply that we all want to harken back to those kinder, gentler days of yesteryear when writing wasn’t the job du jour and we weren’t competing with roughly 45,000 (according the bureau of labor statistics – and not including technical writers) other scribes for shelf space.

I can’t help thinking it’s kind of telling that one of the best attended panels at RWA was the one on Depression, so I invited my dear pal L.B. Gregg to discuss five ways in which publishing has changed for good. (Or for worse. But either way, there’s no turning back.)

 

So considering reason for this widespread author depression, I think one of two things could be going on:

 

1 – A lot of authors have unrealistic or faulty expectation of how the new publishing paradigm works. In other words, mostly what we read about are success stories, and this creates the false notion that everyone else is successful. Or that if we’re not successful, we must be doing something wrong.

OR

2 – Authors have a perfect understanding of how the new publishing paradigm works and feel that it’s not possible to do everything it takes to get on top or stay on top.

 

L.B. – I’m no mental health expert, but depression is an illness and not caused by 1 or 2, but certainly 1 and 2 don’t help for those of us who struggle. There wasn’t a person I spoke with who attended the panel on depression who wasn’t profoundly moved by the panel’s willingness to share their experiences and to tell them, you are not alone. Hand in hand with talk of depression, there was much talk of burn out—more than I’d ever really heard before. Conference wide. I’m not sure if that’s because I wasn’t really listening before, or because burn out is more widespread now that everyone is trying to keep to this impossible pace.

 

And of course, there were plenty of wide-eyed ingénues in attendance who had no idea what was ahead of them. I feel I helped them by keeping things honest. Good luck. Godspeed. This is a new publishing world.

 

Speaking as someone who suffered major burn-out three years ago, absolutely! Which leads us to…

 

Brutal production schedules

 

Once upon a time writing a book or two a year was considered productive. In fairness, only a small percentage of writers earned a living, but in fairness only a small percentage of writers earn a living now writing two, three, four times that.

 

L.B. – But that living, when they earn it, is quite nice. I imagine.

 

When it’s good, it’s good. When it’s bad, it’s terrifying. Trying to make a living in any of the arts is an insecure way to live. According to the Author’s Guild, annual median earnings for authors of fiction is currently around17K. I don’t know many authors who can survive on 17K.

 

And there’s not much of a retirement plan.

 

Given that romance has the lion’s share of the genre fiction market, romance writers tend to do a bit better in the earnings department. But even if the earnings are doubled I don’t know many authors who can survive on 34K.

 

The brutal production schedule is self-inflicted, more often than not, but it’s self-inflicted because that’s what you have to do to earn a living, which is, for most writers, The Dream.

 

With hundreds of new books published every single week, discoverability has become a key issue.

 

L.B. – Man, remember the good ole days of ’07, ’08 and ’09 when there were like seven m/m titles in a month or week?

 

And we’d read them all!

 

L.B. – And we knew each other. Of course, that was B.K.B. Before Kindle Boom. No one had an e-reader back then. You used your Palm Pilot. Or e-bookwise or something. You read on your desktop.

 

I did for sure.

 

But I digress.

 

If you’re established, you’re fighting to keep the attention of your existing readers while building your base. That means steadily producing commercially appealing fiction every couple of months.

 

L.B. – My biggest problem with that expected output is how anyone can produce a high volume and maintain a personal life. Mental wellbeing, relationships with family, and physical health suffer.

 

My second biggest problem with that sort of schedule is as a reader, when I do like an author, I see the same name so often with so many books and covers, honestly, it’s a blur. I can’t remember which books I’ve read and they all start to look and sound the same (Not your books, of COURSE).

 

Uh YEEah. But I agree wholeheartedly. I see authors racing to build backlist, but the books are almost interchangeable.

 

L.B. – As more books come out over a shorter span of time, the quality tanks.

 

Right! I used to say quality fiction but the fact is, “quality” is subjective — commercial is quantifiable. You’re either selling enough to make a living or you’re not. Which also means these “commercially appealing” works have to be of a certain length so that they can be priced high enough that the author can earn enough to afford to keep writing. Four short stories priced at .99 each will not produce a livable wage. Four novels at 6.99 might.

 

L.B. – Funny you should say that. I was on Twitter the other day and one of the first tweets that popped up on my stream thing was: There’s no reason for an ebook to be 6.99. This a complaint by a blogger. I wanted to say– Yes there is. People have mortgages to pay, but we live in a new world that believes downloading music for free isn’t stealing and that anything on the internet is theirs for the taking… DON’T GET ME STARTED.

 

I know. We’re one glass of wine away from ranting.

 

These are people who think the price of a book is based on paper, ink and freight costs. They are also, one assumes, people who bitch about lack of editing and lack of copyediting and poor formatting and lousy cover art – but those things all cost money. Oh! And then, believe it or not, the author’s time and effort is worth something too.

 

But you have readers out there who will argue—sincerely—that last point, and thus we have depression. And we have authors who give up publishing because it’s just not worth it. I suspect-–though I don’t know if there’s data to support it-–that we have more author turnover now than ever before. Because we have burnout like never before. Is it realistic to try to produce four novels a year? I ask you!

 

L.B. – No. But unfortunately, if you’re not getting a blip on the radar every three months, you may as well start all over again. I speak from experience.

 

 

That’s true. I see it too. By month three, sales are crashing. There has to be something new coming down the pipeline. Though you then risk glutting your market—especially if you’re not taking the time to get your work edited and proofed AND giving yourself time to recharge.

 

Anyway, if you’re still trying to break in, the situation is even more challenging. You’re competing with everyone else trying to break in as well as existing writers, the backlists of these established writers (both legacy and indie) public domain works, and fan fiction.

 

L.B. – That’s where free and .99 does work.

 

That’s true. At least to an extent. I don’t think it works like it used to, and I think it works better for known quantities than unknown quantities. A lot of readers have become leery of too-good-to-be-true pricing, but a lot of readers also don’t care. They just want something to read. They don’t follow authors so much as price point. That’s something new in publishing, and from an author standpoint, it’s pretty demoralizing because those price points are generally not sustainable.

 

So how do writers resolve this Discoverability dilemma?

 

Well, here’s the perfect point at which to segue over to L.B.’s blog. In fact, it’s a little bit of a lesson in Discoverability!

 

To continue reading, click here.

 

 

L.B. Gregg –When not working from her home in the rolling hills of Northwestern Connecticut, author L.B. Gregg can be spotted in coffee shops from Berlin to Singapore to Panama — sipping lattes and writing sweet, hot, often funny, stories about men who love men. Buy her books here: www.lbgregg.com

 

Josh Lanyon – A distinct voice in gay fiction, JOSH LANYON is the multi-award-winning author of nearly seventy stories of male/male mystery, adventure and romance. Josh is the author of the critically acclaimed Adrien English series, including The Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews award for GLBT Fiction. Josh is an Eppie Award winner, a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, and the first recipient of the Goodreads M/M Romance group’s Hall of Fame award. Find out more at www.joshlanyon.com