Luke Ahearn's Blog: If you want to write, write. - Posts Tagged "creative-writing"

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t like people who are buttholes. It took me a long time to figure out that most people are real buttholes. Whether they mean to be or not, I can’t say, but one thing’s for sure, you shouldn’t be listening to them. So what am I going on about this time? Buttholes! What does this opening rant have to do with dealing with buttholes? Nothing and everything; I assure you.

Second paragraph. A new beginning. I’ve always bristled at how certain people like to paint a dark picture of the world. They discourage others, talk about the odds, the chances, the competition; everything you have going against you in any endeavor. They would have you give up before you even start. It isn’t a coincidence that these same people rarely accomplish anything of significance. In my experience, most people who have achieved anything of significance are the most supportive of you joining them on the mountain top.

Buttholes either have no dreams, or doubt they could ever fulfill them if they did; so they sabotage your dreams. You say, “Life gave me lemons, so I’m going to make me some lemonade.” They say: “You’ll never make money; no one likes lemonade anymore. Do you know how many lemonade stands fail every hour? Did you hear about the guy who died after drinking tainted lemonade? He’s suing anyone who’s ever made lemonade, and I’m talking pink lemonade too. Lemons are expensive; so are ice and glasses. How are you going to afford all of that? You’ll never make enough to pay it all back. You are crazy! What the hell has gotten into you? Lemonade? Are you serious!!!!???? If life gave you lemons who the hell are you to question that?”

One of the buttholes’ favorite tricks is to present you with anecdotal evidence to support their crap view of life. They love to present and misrepresent articles, facts, surveys, and other sources of information to support their point. One such article the buttholes love to cite has been circulating the Internet for a while. It was written by a publisher talking about how print publishing is dying a rapid death. Buttholes are either stupid, or malicious, and are misrepresenting this article as proof that trying to write and publish a book is just stupid. They know they will never complete a book, and if they did they wouldn’t have the guts to put it out there, so they want to discourage you.

Ok, read this article first CLICK ME!. It contains the original text for the article entitled, The Ten Awful Truths about Publishing and the reply by another writer. You will see why I am on this rant. A publisher wrote the original article detailing the awful truths about print publishing. My responses are directed at the buttholes and not the original author.

“1. The number of books being published every year has exploded.”

This is because we no longer have gatekeepers who were forced to choose a limited number of books to publish for practical reasons. We no longer have a choice of a few books to read in any given month. Now we have the choice of a lot more books (good or bad) which sounds like growth to me. The original authors’ point was that this is bad for print publishing. The buttholes like to frame this to mean that there’s too much competition for writers. But, while there’s more competition; there are also vastly more tools and opportunities for writers to promote their books. You will see in the coming replies that things have never been better for a writer (or any creative type for that matter).

“2. Book industry sales are declining…”

This pertains to bookstore sales of printed books. Publishers still don’t quite consider self-published books real books. That is changing rapidly. I am not sure of the numbers, but when the average book cost drops from around twenty dollars (print) to a couple of bucks overall (eBooks) the gross number is going to drop. When the enormous costs of dealing with printed books are removed from the equation, less is actually more in this case; more for the readers and writers, anyway. There is more to this point that I’ll touch on later.

“3. Despite skyrocketing e-book sales, overall book sales are still shrinking.”

This is the same as the above answer and actually proves my point. Skyrocketing eBook sales mean that writers are getting more money as a whole. People are abandoning print books for the cheaper, easier to get, and more plentiful eBooks. The pie is larger and now mostly feeds the writers and not giant corporate publishers. Writers and readers are still benefitting from this change.

“4. Average book sales are shockingly small, and falling fast. Combine the explosion of books published with the declining total sales and you get shrinking sales of each new title.”

He means per book sales are shrinking. Now that we have more choice, we aren’t forced to purchase one of ten books. You are going to see fewer books making huge sales because there are so many more books to choose from. People are spreading their reading money around a wider area now, and the writer gets a larger percentage of book sales; so, we no longer need ten mega-best sellers a year to keep a mega-publishing company afloat. Now we have niche, variety, innovation, and of course a mountain of shit (sorry, ‘tis true, dear readers). Individual readers have more choice and more writers are getting more of the money.

“5. A book has less than a 1% chance of being stocked in an average bookstore.”

This is now irrelevant. Fighting for shelf space was the print boy’s game; we don’t play that shit no more. Now the fight is…there is no more fight. Writers write, readers read, and a book has a 100% chance of being available to a worldwide audience forever. Who wants to be on a shelf anymore?

“6. It is getting harder and harder every year to sell books.”

Books have always been a hard sell. They sold almost exclusively by word-of –mouth, and that’s what the Internet is; a big old word-of-mouth machine. I’ve published many books with traditional publishers, and they know that running ads and big marketing campaigns for a book is ineffective and is, in fact, usually done to appease a famous author. The sales really happened when a rep from the publisher spoke to a purchaser for a big bookstore chain, and they decided what would go on the shelf that week. It was a very small number of books based on the purchasers’ opinion more or less. Now an author can work at selling a book forever. Some authors are on their third and fourth books when readers discover them, at which point all of their books start to sell.

“7. Most books today are selling only to the authors' and publishers' communities.”

Writers are primarily readers. It makes sense to market your book to other writers. Since getting a book sold relies on word-of-mouth, a writer can reach a global audience with words from their mouths. The most effective marketing you can do for a book, or almost anything on the Internet, is to write. Write blog postings, articles, comments, interviews, etc. (I assure you my motives are pure with this blog posting; it is sheer coincidence that I just released an awesome novel Euphoria-Z that I am sure you would love). Using Goodreads, Library Thing, Twitter, Face Book, LinkedIn, and other social sites you can keep your audience updated on your writings as they are released. The Internet is starved for content, (not spam and ads) so, create the content you are so good at and love to create. It’s gold man.

“8. Most book marketing today is done by authors, not by publishers.”

And it has always been this way. Publishers rarely marketed books. They sell to bookstore purchasers and get very few books on very limited shelf space, and for a very limited time in their closed system. That system isn’t the one that writers and readers are using anymore. He even admits in the original article that authors are almost solely responsible for a book’s success under the old way. Now authors have a hell of a collection of tools at their disposal. Authors are now capable of marketing a book better than a publisher ever could (not that we all do the work we should, but that’s another post).

“9. No other industry has so many new product introductions. Every new book is a new product, needing to be acquired, developed, reworked, designed, produced, named, manufactured, packaged, priced, introduced, marketed, warehoused, and sold. Yet, the average new book generates only $100,000 to $200,000 in sales, which needs to cover all of these expenses…”

Two thoughts here; first, I disagree with the original author. Music, games, movies, and apps, have loads of new introductions and require as much, or more, work. He’s never developed a computer game… that’s obvious. And everything he lists is either no longer needed (acquired, manufactured, packed, stored, and shipped) or we are responsible for, by his own admission. Authors develop, name, market, and price our work. A smart author will get a cover artist, a few competent readers and an editor, and that’s all that’s needed to produce a professional level book. You do need to be able to produce a decent book to begin with, but a few good readers will help you mold it into a far better book and an editor will keep you from being embarrassed and getting one-star reviews based on bad grammar, punctuation, etc. And people do purchase books by their cover, so a decent cover is a must.

Second, a book doesn’t need to make 200,000 dollars to generate more money for the author in the new system.

“10. The book publishing world is in a never-ending state of turmoil.”

And so is the rest of the world.

The original article should have been titled, The Ten Awful Truths about Print Publishing.

For fiction set in the present, I use a common name for whatever period or region I am writing about. I spend very little time choosing a name. I usually go to Google and type in something like “most common boy names 1955” or whatever year the character was born, and then choose from the list. The reason I choose quickly is because I like to let the character own the name. Think of the common first name Michael. Now add the common surnames Myers, Corleone, or Scott. These three names evoke three very different images of a man created by the characters themselves.

In Euphoria-Z, Tug is the nickname that Abel Tugerson goes by. The nickname really says the most about him, evoking the image of a tugboat or a chronic masturbator who tugs a lot. I named him Abel Tugerson without thought and as his character evolved, the nickname emerged. I then rewrote the introduction of his character, introducing him as Tug from the beginning.

“Abel Tugerson, Tug to everyone and anyone since he could remember, stood in the bed of a beat-to-shit pickup truck as it rolled slowly down the 101. The truck was covered in rotten flesh and putrid streaks of gore.”

Of course, there are stories where research and thought is required such as a sci-fi novel with an alien race or where the character’s name might be part of the fiction, but mostly I just get it done so I can write.