Disclaimer: I am far from a career author. I’ve made enough money to buy a few fifths of whisky and some diapers for my baby, so needless to say I’ve got a long way to go. The following plan reflects this outsider (re: possibly ignorant) perspective.

The idealized author spends his time alone, churning out typewritten manuscripts to meet constant deadlines. He drinks. Probably smokes. He’s respected. He vacations in tropical seclusion, but still, even with the changed view, he writes. He has no day job. He is an author. Writing puts his kids through college.

There is a reason this image contains a typewriter. Much like the machine itself, the idealized author is all but extinct. I think a lot of writers would like to go back to this model. Is it possible to not just retain the author career, but to make it thrive?

Given the following set of assumptions, I believe it would be possible to bring back the author career:

1. Content will continue to outweigh consumption
2. The marketplace is spoilt by free content, and much of that content will continue to be free
3. eBooks/eReaders will be a primary content medium within the next decade
4. The cost to produce and distribute market-quality products will continue to fall

More authors are producing more content than ever, so it’s fair to say the larger onus is on the publishers to bring back the career. The problem is that publishers have no incentive right now to court authors in the way they once did. Publishers have the above items #1 and #2 going for them. A culture of expected free content coupled with an overflow of content, means authors have been trained to work for cheap or free.

But, authors have items #3 and #4 above as important pieces of leverage. If publishers don’t adapt to the changing market, and work with authors to do so, then the publishers will die. Because authors have the ability to create and distribute their own work, and because they have been trained to work for nothing, authors have little to lose by abandoning the publisher. Without authors, publishers die. Without publishers, authors continue.

What can be done?

1. Consolidate the agent and publisher roles. Basically, this combined entity should act as a time and beaurocracy manager for authors. Today, authors have the ability to publish and distribute their own content without the help of agents and publishers. If this Pub/Agent composite can give authors time to write, then they will ultimately be given the sort of consistent product that the marketplace loves. Marketing thrives on trends. Giving authors time is the way to nurture trends.
2. Increase author royalties. As media becomes electronic, the savings on overhead and distribution must be passed on. Court your talent, publishers. I’ve read the arguments against electronic media being cost-savers for publishers, and I just don’t believe them.
3. Embrace the eBook paradigm shift. As a reader, I haven’t yet fallen in love with eBooks. As a writer, I am very excited by the possibilities. Instead of fighting to keep print alive, fight to make eBooks thrive. eBooks have the potential to increase the pool of readers, much as the iPod did for music enthusiasts.
4. Brand yourselves as independent records labels do. Make fans out of your press, not just out of your authors. I won’t go into much depth here about this, but we do have an episode forthcoming at the Welcome to The Velvet podcast on this topic.

What can writers do?

1. Provide consistent and brandable content. As Dan Holloway says in the comments at Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works blog, “If you are writing for the art, by all means try your hand at getting an agent, but don’t be upset if you don’t get one – and if the feedback is that you should be more commercial in order to get one, then make the decision – do you want to write for the pay packet, or do you REALLY want to do it for the art? And if it’s the latter, don’t expect to be picked up, or blame the publishers when you aren’t.”
2. Prove that you can provide that content. As Jane Smith says in a response to the above comment, “I think that a big reason that most writers make such a paltry amount is that there are lots of people out there who call themselves writers but who only really dabble with writing: they sell an article every now and then, take several years to write just one book; sure, they’re writers–but not full-time, serious writers.”. A career author must write as though it is a career.

I want to sit alone and write fiction for a living. Help me do that. Make me believe.

photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaywalk/

*neither James Patterson nor Stephenie Meyer wrote this book**

**Thank fucking God***

***though I wouldn’t mind their sales. Get to it, asterisks readers.

I’ve been accused of being a bit of a literary snob. Mostly by best-seller groupies who smell like trade paperbacks and poverty. Why don’t you go save a few dimes at a used blog store, and leave the shiny new posts to those of us with taste!

/UNDESERVED SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT

My justification for being a literary snob (literob?) always has been that if a book is best-selling and intellectually easily accessible, then it likely isn’t confronting dangerous (i.e., important) topics. I want to believe that fiction should be more than entertainment. For the most part, I still agree with this logic. But a few months ago, at the AWP Conference in Denver, CO, I came to a bit of a realization, with some help from author Tod Goldberg.

I realized that despite any drive to challenge the established format or structure of fiction, it is the story itself that keeps readers reading. I wanted to believe that a unique concept, or beautiful language, or inventive formatting alone could carry a book-length work. But no, it cannot. A book told from the perspective of a cancerous cell? Conceptually unique, but no. A book intimately describing that cancerous cell? Beautiful language, but no. A book giving dialog to every cancerous cell in a body, matching the text color to the cell color? Inventive formatting, but no. A book that imbues a cancerous cell with character traits similar to a human while putting that cell in a morally conflicted position? Sure.

My fault rested not entirely with the assumed intellectual ease of commercial (vs. literary) writing, but also with the ill-conception that plot-driven genre fiction is somehow weaker and easier to write than a high-Art piece of literary fiction. This opinion was birthed in college, where I first began to read and write. Had I read as a child, I may have understood the basal importance of plot long ago. But my literobbery was rooted in college, too late to let aesthetics matter. I was a head case (vs body case) from the beginning.

Now, five years post-graduation, a degree in-hand, and without a writing career that nullifies a day job, I’ve started to wonder about the role a university education plays in a writer’s life. Note: I wouldn’t trade my university experience for anything; I love being a literob. But I do wish that a stronger focus would have been placed on the writer’s career, and less on the writer’s life.

If someone loves to weld, they go to a welding school to learn to be a professional welder. If someone loves to write, shouldn’t they go to a writing school to learn to be a professional writer? The key word being “professional,” meaning, to get paid doing so. 

photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lepoolpe/

Things need to change. I need to blog more. I need to have interesting things to say. Yes, that is the correct order for those last two items. Blogs, generally, are dumb. So many of them tend to be self-infatuated messes. The argument that this egotism is their exact purpose stands, true. So perhaps my contempt is like me at an orgy: so many people doing it must mean it’s fun, but every time I try one, I leave with a bad taste in my mouth. Gross.

I read plenty of industry blogs, which I see as more an evolution of the commercial print world (magazines, trades, etc.) than as an evolution of the private world (diaries, journals, bathroom stalls). So, maybe I am meant simply to avoid the diaries and try to make this blog more about the industry.

Problem: I don’t know much about “the industry.” I don’t even know what industry that would be. Publishing? Authoring? Is drinking an industry?

So my question is, what is useful? What is my unique knowledge? Or if not that, what is the unique perspective I can offer? Here’s a list of possibilities:

• I edit the OWC site, so I know some about small presses and “outsider” authors
• I write fiction, so I know about lying
• I have a lot of concepts for niche products, so I could give away million-dollar product ideas for free
• I’m really good at eating pop-tarts. The trick is to turn them upside-down before eating, so that the icing touches your taste buds directly. Shit, there goes that blog post.
• I know a little about podcasting
• I once helped nurse a bird back to health after nearly hitting it with a lawn mower (yes, “nearly.” The bird was emotionally traumatized)
• I marketed my debut story collection, Charactered Pieces, with a zero-dollar budget, so I know how to spend a lot of time not writing constructive fiction. Related: I blog

Any of these sound good. Why do you, dear reader, come back to a blog? What would bring you back to me?

photo credit: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid

With all the talk of dwindling advances, shrinking sales, and too many scribblers willing to saturate the bookshelves with crap, Writers (with the admittedly douchey capital “W”) must become more creative in monetizing their efforts. I anticipate the recent Amazon Kindle decision to open its interface to the blogosphere at large will ultimately impact blog-structured web zines like Literary Saloon and The Elegant Variation, acting in much the same way traditional door delivery currently works. But until a collective schism happens, what are those of us who produce longer, less blog-friendly works supposed to do?

Jeremy C. Shipp, author of Vacation, Sheep and Wolves, and the forthcoming Cursed (Raw Dog Screaming Press) recently adopted the subscription model for some of his own short fiction, a venture dubbed Bizarro Bytes. Quite simply, a subscription to Bizarro Bytes guarantees 12 previously unpublished short stories, delivered one per month. Interesting idea, to say the least.

I asked him what he hopes to accomplish, and what he thinks the greater implications, both positive (earning money, gaining fans, etc.) and negative (the stigma of a produce-without-passion model, etc.) may be:

I started Bizarro Bytes because I want to connect more directly with my readers.  I’m hoping to create an interactive environment, without the conventional walls between reader and writer.  Some people might not like this idea, but the great majority of the feedback I’ve received so far has been extremely positive.

I’ll always publish some of my future stories and books in the traditional way, but I’m excited about creating a direct link between myself and my readers.  While I have my qualms about the civilized world, I’m a people person.  And already, via Bizarro Bytes, I’m getting to know my readers more personally.  They’re helping to support me and my family, and for that, I’m going to send them my best work.  It’s a wonderful exchange.

A wonderful exchange, indeed.

Nathan Tyree, mid-author of the uniquely materializing Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski Fistfight in Hell, took to the online auction block for some inspired writer’s fuel. Tyree held an eBay auction in which the winner was to become a character in the aforementioned Waits/Bukowski titled probable masterpiece. He netted a nice $107.50. Not bad, definitely good  for a few beers to see him through the project.

I asked Nathan the same questions:

My reasons for the auction were three fold: Money, attention, direction. I figured that the gimmick could make money in a few ways: someone would pay to be a character in my book (about a 100 bucks was the most I expected to get and I did a little better than that), plus the notice (read “buzz”) would sell more copies of the book, plus the auction winner would become a partner and help sell copies to their friends and family. I also thought that the buzz around the auction (plus the follow-up notice-like this) could interest a publisher. The main thing, though, was that this would force me to produce a new novel on deadline (I work best when forced to).

There isn’t any real produce-without-passion model here. Basically I came up with the idea for a novel in which the “second lead” was malleable. The narrator is set, but I thought I could (with some finesse) work basically anybody into the secondary character. In the end I got lucky. My auction winner was a woman who used to be stripper and had a coke problem, then cleaned her life up. That’s a character I could have made the lead, if I didn’t already have such a compelling character to write about.

Differing reasons behind the endeavors, but important no matter how one approaches the concept. Writers want to make money and fans. And sadly, not many of us are worthy of a celebrity sex tape.

Chris Goldberg’s recent article at the Huffington Post states that men, in general, simply do not read. “But is it our fault?” he asks. “Or have publishers just given up trying to publish and market books that we want to read?” A sadly self-fulfilling prophecy? It’s true that we need writers, and publishers with the balls to market them, but in this case I think change must start with the audience.

It wasn’t until college that I finished reading my first full book. As a child, I would watch my mother devour entire Danielle Steele novels weekly, appalled by the twisted logic that would bring a person to waste their time like that (with reading, not necessarily with the chosen author). I had video games to play.

Then, in college, I found Octavio Paz’s “The Blue Bouquet.” Later Chuck Palahniuk. Then Craig Clevenger. Then Brian Evenson. And on. In a land of Adult Swim cartoons and beer bongs, both of which I loved (and still do, to an extent) I discovered that there was room for books. The trick: finding something I liked.

It’s not about good TV being better than books. It’s about good TV being easier to find.

Reading doesn’t have to mean endless Victorian novels, canon classics, flowery prose, and romance. Reading can be visceral, bloody, if you like, violent, angry. In a word, reading can be Male.

Goldberg says that “…it’s gotten to the point where a lot of the more business-savvy literary agents won’t even bother to represent a young male novelist anymore.” This probably doesn’t mean much to the casual reader, but it should. If we don’t show that a market exists, then the publishers won’t believe that it does. Goldberg goes on to question the career potential of some of our best-selling Male authors had they been forced to debut today:

“Would Hunter S. Thompson or Kurt Vonnegut or Brett Easton Ellis or Jay McInerney or Alex Garland or Chuck Palahniuk even get book deals if their debut novels were written today? How can we make reading novels — and writing them — cool again for guys under thirty?”

These books, these authors, are out there (knock on my door, for fuck’s sake). They just aren’t given the contracts and the shelf space. So, as we approach this new year, I have a resolution for you: make it your duty to introduce a guy to a good book. It beats spreading crabs, and it doesn’t itch as long.

Some things to keep in mind:

• This is not about promoting a book that you like. This is about opening a guy up to a book that he might like. Not you; him. Like a blowjob for his birthday.

• Be careful. Given the manly nature of dudes, it is important that you approach with reasonable nonchalance. For example. “wanna get a beer and read a book?” Notice the ninja-like verbal dexterity demonstrated by presenting the word “book” AFTER “beer.”

• Guys HATE being told what to do. Even more, they hate revealing weakness. To agree to someone else’s idea makes him feel inferior. Treat reading as an option; something to do on the off chance that he gets tired of snorting motor oil and building robots out of used car parts.

• Finally, and seriously, know what your Male friend likes and do some research on a book in line with those interests. Not a non-fiction, toilet book about sports records. A novel. Give him characters and a bit of blood.

Any other ideas? Share a comment.

The path to book sales shouldn’t be paved with white smiles and checkerboard slacks. When dealing with a product that has neither life-sustaining value nor infomercial superfluence, sales might best be treated as a byproduct of a well-manicured relationship. One between author and audience, as well as among the audience members themselves. Book groups exist. George Foreman Grill groups do not.

Which is why world of mouth is a valuable route to book sales. People talking and sharing opinions, with no explicit intention of selling a product = a perfect, mutually respectful form of consumerism.

Word of mouth has adopted a kindred form online, though isn’t really “of mouth” in this mutated guise. Fan lists such as Amazon’s Listmania! help connect like-minded readers, which would logically seem to drive sales (though no hard sales data exists that I could find; although online customer reviews seem to have a “casual” effect on book sales). Forums like The Velvet and The Cult, built around specific authors and genres, promote grassroots and guerrilla “word of screen” sales as a residual effect of the social media platform.

An evolved generation of authors and publishers has learned to leverage these relationships not just as part of a sales campaign but as a component of their overall philosophy. Another Sky Press focuses on building a fanbase before building sales* . Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman’s passionate post-sale reaction to their pre-sale mishap would impress even the most convinced fan-centric seller. Then there is Tim Hall and his handmade slipcase series.

I can almost picture Tim Hall, sitting on his living room floor, watching TV, using the downtime to assemble these slipcases. Essentially, inviting the future reader into his living room, taking the reader/author relationship to near awkward-morning-after levels (in the best of ways). These aren’t mass products. These are one-of-a-kind tokens of genuine appreciation.

Sure, their materials are likely would-be scraps with no intrinsic value, and it’s obvious the gesture is ultimately meant to sell books, but the true power lies in the implied relationship they create. I’ll be reading Hall’s books with a more subdued pessimism than I might otherwise with a completely unknown (to me) author. And when Hall releases his next book–and should I not like these initial offerings–I’ll be more willing to give him another chance.

The take away here is that reader/author relationships are just that, relationships. Leave obsessive sales up to those who produce utilitarian staples and fluff gadgets. When it comes to selling experiences, as books are, a relationship should be part of the package.

*ASP claims not to track sales in a way that validates this theory, but their conviction is contagious

An Abebooks bookseller is trying to get a quarter of a million dollars for a collection of signed Barack Obama books. To put this into perspective, a signed copy of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s first book goes for 20K. L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought goes for $8.07 (but to be fair, this converts to 1 Bajillion Quagnars).

This begs a few questions: 1) what’s the point of a signed book, 2) what makes a signed book more desirable than an unsigned book, and 3) what’s so great about this particular signature?

I am a signed book nerd, and even I don’t know the answer to the first question. So, instead of waxing eloquent I’ll instead jump to question two. The short answer: an implied communion with the author.

Personally inscribed copy of Jesus Son by Denis Johnson. I'll let you sniff it for a quarter.

While the internet has changed this relationship considerably, there is still a sense of proximity with a signed book that an unsigned book just doesn’t provide. It is sort of the hipster’s creed: “I have an investment in our community that runs deeper than yours, and this signed cd/book/indie film/celebrity organ proves it.” So really, it comes down to bragging rights among an already incestuous community of like-minded nerds. Once part of such a cloistered group, it takes a bit more digging to unearth the leverage necessary to become king of the nerds. With books, that leverage is often the signature. Or better yet, the signed first edition, first printing of a short run university press collection of essays that most people didn’t know about until it was printed posthumously within a series of collected works. “So as you can see, I deserve that nerd crown you poser,” says the vitamin D deprived book hipster, or bookster since I’m hip enough to make up words like that.

Don’t confuse my last question (what’s so great about this particular signature?) as a condemnation of the man’s importance. I am just questioning how his signature could possibly be worth $250,000 to anyone. Let me step back and make the obvious argument that booksters such as myself struggle to avoid: the words within the covers are the same damn words, signed title page or not.

Marketing a book in an increasingly visually driven society is a tough role. Not to mention the ever decreasing number of people who actually read (books that is, not this stupid blog). According to statistics from sources that sound legit* 80% of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year [2002]. I’m hoping this figure can be taken literally to mean that these families did not physically purchase the book as a single group, with each member holding an edge of the book and simultaneously placing it on the bookstore counter. I would have never thought any family to do such a thing, so really the 20% of families who do is pretty eye opening. Unfortunately, the literal interpretation is a ridiculous dream. The truth is, most people simply do not read books.

But don’t fret my fellow 20%-ers. Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment banker** says that each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines. Why is this good? Because more and more authors are turning to just such TVs (or computer monitors; they’re both square and full of pixels) in order to push their wares.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Douglas Coupland’s 3 spot campaign for his novel, Gum Thief (a YouTube page)

Dennis Cass’s spot for his memoir, Head Case:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxschLOAr-s]

Oddly enough however, I don’t own either of the two advertised novels. The ads worked well for me aesthetically, but considering my current stack of 53 too-read books I’m just not in the market for more quite yet. So consider this post simple word-of-screen advertising.

* Jenkins Group, inc; they have the word “group” in their name. Nothing more is needed to connote reputability.

** Why is an investment banker devoting time to these sort of statistics? I don’t care; they are associates! See above asterisk for the power of organizational tags.

Here’s the for real page from which these statistics were pulled