Greetings, earthlings. Miss Crankypants now officially knows why becoming an excellent writer is so not enough in today’s market. It’s because so many of you aren’t self-publishing and making a million bucks off the worst writing possible. Or perhaps I’m a tad bitter.
I sat next to several excellent writers at Saturday’s Author Faire–which, I’m told, experienced lake effect snow sometime after lunch. It was that cold. I’m not joking when I say they were handing out polar fleece.
These excellent authors sat excellently, hawking their wares (Historical fiction! Set in Africa! Set in India!) like so many pie-men whom Simple Simon is rumored to have met. In between customers, the story was often the same: Excellent Author had already published xxx number of books, but lately the new manuscripts were having trouble finding a home. The stories were too “quiet.”
Excellent Author’s agent was acting bored and not returning calls. Excellent wanted to know why. Also, does she REALLY REALLY have to blog? Because Excellent Author hates that platform stuff, you know, the ending Facebook-Twitter–blog tour stuff that eats into actual writing time like so many hungry moths on a camel’s hair coat.
Yes, Virginia, you really do have to blog and all the rest.
Alternately, you can sit in your writing studio and wait for your bored agent to return your call. Maybe work on that one novel idea you KNOW will never ever sell, because, heck what else is there to do? You can sign up for next year’s Author Faire Freeze-out, where I’ll be more than happy to listen to you complain. In the meantime, don’t blame me if you can’t figure out how to self-publish and make a million bucks.
Look at how the music business changed – the record labels haven’t supported and promoted many but their top earners. Seems that the publishing business is following fast. Got an e-mail from a science text publisher with a whole load of advice on how to promote my textbooks.
Doing most of it now, but I draw the line at videos (not photogenic enough).