Righteous Writing
by John Wolf
With each budding author there is an innocence of purpose, what do I do with this thing called my book? Let me provide a focus to what is otherwise murky to the would-be writer. The Russian roulette of having one's literary work be assessed by professionals usually gets a hole in the head. As writers, all of our work is brilliant, but those same words placed in someone else’s head can easily cause symptoms of nausea and rejection like a bad case of salmonella.
The arduous process of finding an agent is actually the only path to enlightenment. Ask any guru. But it doesn’t mean that you have to live in a cave until recognized as a valid writer. You still can proceed in your own little world via self-publishing. To me, there are only two good uses of self-publishing: one is for the person that presents conferences and the like, where selling in the back-of-the-room a how-to book or advice book can reap a huge following and solid sales. And second, publishing a real book for people to dive into so that writer can assess for themselves if they are hitting the mark through reader feedback. What I am trying to express here is using this publishing mode not to take on John Grisham but to build your skill levels by reaching out to people with an actual book verse trying to get someone to read a bulky manuscript, which they will not do.
Those reading this who teach writing and those that have received their inoculation of arrogance by actually having something published in the mainstream media, whether it be on cocktail napkins or the Nobel Prize, will no doubt pooh-pooh this concept. Why? Because they contend self-publishing only waters-down real literature and issues garbage books into the marketplace, displacing the really valuable writers. I would say bull feathers.
It's no different that any other art form. If no one was allowed to perform off-Broadway, how would they learn the ropes? If songwriters were excluded from playing clubs to get their act together, tighten their sound, music would still just be only Bach. Even Bach worked his way up. He wrote a cycle of songs for church that repeated every five years that consisted of five different one year sets of music. The music was assessed and rewritten after an archbishop reviewed the results of the congregation’s response. If my idea is wrong then nothing on YouTube would be clever, inventive, and fun to see. I rest my case. People are good at wading through garbage to find that golden nugget. We are the masses, vie viola France!
What you do is expose your work to the public in an immediate fashion. You are the marketing executive that takes it on the chin if the work fails to sell or people hit you with the book when you see them next, but at least you get a valued assessment that an agent or publisher will not give you, because they don’t have the time to waste guiding and nurturing you. You can send the book out for review, advanced review readers, author shepherds, etc. You are in the game and that is awe inspiring. If you always sit on the bench, you will never learn how to play the game, no matter how many conferences you attend. That same money could be put into having an actual book to put on a shelf even if it doesn’t make the New York best seller list. It a tool.
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You also have the freedom of revising and trying again. This you can’t do with the big boys. The main reason it is so hard to penetrate mainstream publishing is the book has to generate guaranteed sales to cover the massive invested cost of get it to the public in a big way, nation-wide, and flooding the media. They make one run with a new author that they are banking on. If it fails, you’re done, fina, end of the game for you, and you lose your copyright to boot. They won’t take a second chance on you.
Here’s what you need to learn from this imaginary case study described above. You don’t want to take that chance until you know you have the chutzpa to make those guys in New York rich. You don’t make money until you make them money. They own all the rights to your books. So this is more like selling an invention to an investment banker than merely printing something to read. At that point, it isn’t really your work; it’s a product on the open market like a shoe or a watch. If the public likes the book, then the philosophical blather will take place.
Self-publishing is an opportunity to play with the dog without getting bit. What has been happening in the last year are the actual talented writers, that would otherwise be in the slush pile trash bin, are showing up in this media outlet and taking sales away from the major houses. This has caused all of them to climb down from their ivory towers and get in the muck with the rest of us. That is so cool. They all have self-publishing subsidiaries vying for your business now.
But in the end, you can’t make much of a dent in world sales this way, but you can get noticed when your sales get past a certain amount. What writers fail to accept like a stubborn mother-in-law, is their precious, pain taking efforts, the blood sweat and tears are not felt by anyone else but the poor schmuck that did all that writing. What they see is a final product, a quick read, a pleasant experience that’s over in a few days, maybe hours if your book sizzles. They don’t feel your pain, man.
Here’s the bottom line. When you know in your bones you have something that will push John Grisham off the table, it's time to hit the agents with it. Keep pushing until one of them sees it and they will, if your work is of that caliber. Then when it hits the big-box bookstore shelves, will you see real results. Only the large publishers own the distribution and ability for your work to get to celebrity levels. The next question is do you really want to be in the light, feel the burn?
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John is an eRagSheet journalist, author, and musician.
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