The Business Of Writing

As some of you have commented, writing is a business. Your book is your product. It takes every bit as much effort to get your book out to the public as it takes to get any other product out to market. For a long time – before the digitals – I had given up doing anything except writing for pleasure because, since I’m quite introverted, meeting agents and publishers was a non-starter for me. The publishing industry absolutely does not support up and coming authors who aren't socially connected. So it was secretary by day, author by night. And then came the digitals. Suddenly none of us needs the publishers – Oh the industry won’t die, we’ll just make money for a change and we don't have to come out of our rooms. We still do a ton of work to get known, but we don’t give 95% of our profits away for the pleasure of seeing our names in print. Even if your writing is an adjunct to your real business it still must be marketed. And the publishers still will let you do 100% of the marketing unless you are already famous in which case you’re probably out there marketing anyway. The big difference in the famous person’s case is that when you call up a radio show to see if they’ll interview you they say “yes.”