Robert E. Howard Readers discussion

I'm reading "Self Publishing Attack" by James Scott Bell, which is about writing and self publishing and trying to make some sort of career out of it. I perked up when Bell started talking about Robert E. Howard. He was making the point about how Howard made a living out of writing lots of different kinds of stories for many different markets. This goes against the so called "branding" idea, which is that a writer should pick one genre and stick to it, and use a different name if they simply must write in a diffferent genre. Howard didn't do that and Bell seems to be suggesting that this is possible today in the ebook self publishing world. Anyway, always nice to see mention of our favorite writer this way.

Neat!

Vincent wrote: "Neat!"

Absolutely!

James Scott Bell certainly knows what he's talking about! If you're going to go the traditionally-published route, your agent and publisher will no doubt want to brand you, because your books will be far more marketable (and publishing is a business). This is why many successful authors pound out books under various pseudonymns. But if you choose to go the self-published route (as many authors today do), you have a choice. Even so, your brand name creates expectations and marketability.

In the pulp days, I believe that authors were expected to write in many genres because the public reading appetite was so voracious and publishers needed mountains of material.

Brian wrote: "James Scott Bell certainly knows what he's talking about! If you're going to go the traditionally-published route, your agent and publisher will no doubt want to brand you, because your books will ..."

Yes, Bell was talking about even now using cover art and blurbage to indicate clearly the genre you're writing in whenyou self publish. I've been trying to do that but I can't say I've had huge success

Traditional publishing has always made use of cover art to define the genre and hook the reader (Frazetta's great Conan covers definitely spurred sales of the re-issued paperbacks!).

Success in self-publishing (or any form of publishing) is a long road. It helps to have more than book for readers to get interested in!

Brian January

Brian, I've done one western, one memoir, one fantasy, and one crime/horror collection on my own so far, and there are my other books from the publisher. Sales have been slow but better than no sales. :)

It does help to specialize in one genre because readers do read genres!

Brian, I will blame Howad and ERB. They were my models. I'm considering using pseudonyms for specific genres though, so the name recognition would be across a genre rather than general.

Charles wrote: "I'm reading "Self Publishing Attack" by James Scott Bell, which is about writing and self publishing and trying to make some sort of career out of it. I perked up when Bell started talking about R..."

Howard did write under pseudonyms for some of his stories;check into it; you'll see that he did. As to whether he was trying to avoid being branded i rather doubt; maybe the publisher at other mags suggested he use a pseudonym; that is what happened to Dean Koontz in his early published books.

I know Howard used one a few times, mostly for his "naughtier" stories. And I read Koontz's essay about when he was forced to use pseudonyms and how it hurt him in his opinion. I think for me at this point it might really be more of an experiment than anything else.

I read somewhere that REH used pen names because he sometimes wound up competing with himself. I can't recall if it was having 2 stories in one issue of a magazine or in different ones, though. Maybe both.