Alarms are starting to sound about the demands on writers
If you’re a serious writer and you’re not following Laura Miller’s writing at Salon.com The New Yorker, and at the New York Times, you’re missing some great writing on the contemporary publishing world, ie, “a wobbly publishing industry and a fractured marketplace.”
Passages from two of Miller’s recent essays jump out at me in context of this blog and my consulting business. Essentially, alarms are starting to sound throughout the publishing industry about the demands on writers in terms of promotion and their infringed-upon writing time. What impact will this have for the industry and readers?
In her Salon.com essay “Author, Sell Thyself,” Miller contrasts the demands on today’s authors with those on To Kill a Mockingbird’s reclusive Harper Lee. Today “an author’s inability to promote [a book] effectively may prevent it from reaching the millions of readers who would otherwise embrace it.”
Here are a few other quotes from that essay:
“Many authors have resigned themselves to the task of relentless networking ("social" and the old-fashioned kind) but still hate it and therefore aren't much good at it.”
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“It has become a mantra that today's author — whether self- or conventionally published — must learn to promote his or her books. Some, like Barry Eisler and Amanda Hocking, happen to be good at it, but many aren't. People often become writers because they're introverted or awkward in personal encounters and have poured everything they want to say to the world into their work. What usually gets lost in the perpetual refrain about authors becoming their own marketers is that there's no particular connection between writing talent and a gift for self-promotion.”
And this quote from ebook phenom Amanda Hocking:
“I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me." To the New York Times, she said, "I want to be a writer. I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling e-mails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc. Right now, being me is a full-time corporation."
The second pertinent recent Miller article is the April 11 piece in The New Yorker “Just Write It!”, about popular fantasy author George R.R. Martin (whose first book A Song of Ice and Fire is currently appearing on HBO as their intense medieval “Game of Thrones” series).
The article has to do with Miller’s struggles to write his long-delayed next book while dealing with a mass of impatient and quite rude fans.
Here are some of the quotes that jump out at me:
“In many respects, he’s a model for contemporary authors confronted with a wobbly publishing industry and a fractured marketplace. Anne Groell, Martin’s editor at Random House, tells her authors, “Outreach and building community with readers is the single most important thing you can do for your book these days. You need to make them feel invested in your career.”
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“The online attacks on Martin suggest that some readers have a new idea about what an author owes them. They see themselves as customers, not devotees, and they expect prompt, consistent service. Martin, who is sixty-two, told me that Franck calls the disaffected readers the Entitlement Generation: “He thinks they’re all younger people, teens and twenties. And that their generation just wants what they want, and they want it now. If you don’t give it to them, they’re pissed off.”
* * *
“[Martin] writes a lively blog, and though he has an assistant, Ty Franck, who screens the multitude of comments that are posted on it, he tries to read many of them himself. A fan in Sweden, Elio M. García, Jr., maintains an official presence for Martin on Facebook and Twitter, and also runs the main “Ice and Fire” Web forum, Westeros.org. (Garcia estimates he spends 35 hours a month supervising Westeros.org)”
In her articles, Miller is building quite a case that authors may be under too much pressure in this 24/7 world of social media, community, and demanding fans. Not to mention, the misguided expectation that authors will be any good at let alone willing to sell their own books. Unfortunately, it looks like it’s going to be up to the individual author (not his publisher or agent) to cobble together solutions for these problems himself, which George R.R. Martin seems to be doing his best to do.
How are you thinking of handling it?
