Mysterious Matters: Mystery Publishing Demystified
Not sure who the mysterious blogger is behind this one, but he is "right on the money" with his observations. For instance, take a good look at this recent post on Overblurbing, Underselling, and the Dustbin of History. What caught my attention in particular (and kept popping to mind over this last week) is his point #3:
... it's occurred to me recently that today's mystery authors are working harder than I've ever seen to establish themselves. The crop out there right now is fairly desperate to achieve a level of familiarity, sales, and royalties that will provide them with continued contracts and livable income. The word "desperate" may have a pejorative connotation, but I don't mean it that way. What I mean is that so many writers want so badly to be best-sellers, or at least good-sellers; more so than at any time in my career...It's something I (and some of my long-time writing buddies) have noted as well. The blogger of Mysterious Matters then goes on to offer thoughts on why this is so ... mentioning the current state of the economy, and so on. He concludes:
This is why I have said in the past, and I will say again, that writing fiction should never be considered anything beyond a hobby--especially if you have a family to support.At which point I wanted to leap to my feet and yell "Hallelujah!" or some such. Because, truly for 98% of us, this is the case. And people just don't want to talk about it, for the most part. But honestly, if you can't buy groceries and health insurance and pay the mortgage with your writing endeavors, well, another source of income is needed. And there's nothing wrong with that. What's troubling/alarming is meeting folks who think writing fiction is a way to "get rich quick." Hmmm. Kinda reminds me of the Silver Rush in Leadville ....
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4 comments:
Thoughtful, Ann, as usual.
I'm wondering, however, why it is that writers and artists in other fields don't get their due?
There's a long chain from an agent to a publisher to the marketing people to the distributor to the bookseller to the reader. The author is often last in line to get paid. And often expected to donate time, books ... well, you know what I mean.
Yet we (including me!) are grateful just to be in the system where we're taken advantage of like that, as long as we are still "allowed" to write ...
what's up with that?
What's up with that indeed. Consider what an engineer might earn. Or, bring it closer to home: a technical writer. A tech writer with less than one year's experience (according to the website PayScale) makes somewhere around $35K to $50K per year. How many writers of fiction make this much? Not many, I'd wager. Yet both work with words. One type of writer is "valued" (if $$ paid = value), the other not so much. Or maybe it's a "supply and demand" thing... so many people want to be published fiction writers vs tech writers...??
We see the same thing in the music business, or art, or acting. In all of these fields, a very small percentage "make it" .. is it that "creative" people don't know how to manage their careers so others step in and take over?
There would be no publishing business if not for writers, and yet ...
Good question. How well do other people "manage" their careers, I wonder? Nowadays people step lively from one company to another in order to move ahead. In publishing, one needs an agent to guide and direct. Leaping from one publisher to another isn't nearly as easy as switching employers in the work-a-day world. (Of course, we're not talking about current times, which are hard all over for just about everyone!)
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