In Today’s Journal
* My Quote of the Day
* On Writing, Marketing, & Best-Seller Status
* Of Interest
My Quote of the Day
“I can teach best-practices in writing fiction all day and into the night, but I couldn’t successfully market and sell space heaters to people in Point Barrow, Alaska.”
On Writing, Marketing, & Best-Seller Status
The catalyst for this post…
Recently, a writer who has taught me a ton about writing fiction said in a video that aspiring and beginning writers should study the works of Stage 4 writers they admire. I couldn’t agree more.
But then he qualified the statement by saying we should study “real” Stage 4 writers, “not indies.” He said (I’m paraphrasing), that those writers we should study are either traditionally published or were tradpubbed and then jumped over to Indie.
The obvious implication is that only those Stage 4 writers who are or have been traditionally published are worth studying.
I can only hope he didn’t mean that. It doesn’t match the world we’re living in and the current publishing environment. Maybe more on this tomorrow.
On the other hand, I know other writers like that. They’re all best-sellers, and they all recommend either indie publishing or a hybrid mixture of indie publishing and publishing with smaller traditional presses (not the “Big Five”).
Of course like the rest of us, some of them know and apply marketing techniques, and some don’t. Yet every one of them have said privately of their own success, “Hey,” [shrug] “lightning struck.”
In other words, best-seller status is something that’s not within our control. It’s at least partly sheer luck. Of course, you have to put yourself into position to take advantage of lightning strikes when they happen.
But those writers also remain reserved and “cool” toward indie authors who aspire to a seat at the grownups’ table. (I personally salve my wounded pride with the knowledge that I can write circles around some of them.)
Of course, I do NOT enjoy best-seller status, primarily because I suck personally at marketing. I just don’t have a business brain.
In fact, even hearing the word “business” almost puts me into a coma. And I can’t beg, borrow, or afford to pay the big bucks for professional marketing assistance.
So here’s the harsh truth for the rest of us about writing fiction vs. marketing vs. attaining anything near best-seller status:
Of those two skills (writing and marketing) and the lightning-strike of best-seller status, only writing—your skill set and your level as a fiction writer—is completely within your control.
Whether and how much you write and improve your skill set as a fiction writer depends solely on your own work ethic, your priorities, your physical limitations, and any responsibilities you took upon yourself.
You have to believe in yourself, carve out the time to write, and keep putting new words on the page. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Marketing, on the other hand, is a whole other skill set.
Marketing is strictly a business skill, and it has nothing to do with writing fiction or, for that matter, even how well you write fiction.
That’s why there are entire companies dedicated to selling marketing services. Their job isn’t to gauge your writing skill. Their job is to sell your books.
As Robert Heinlein himself wrote following his list of “Business Habits” in his essay in Of Worlds Beyond (Fantasy Press, 1949),
“[I]f you follow them, it matters not how you write, you will find some editor somewhere, sometime, so unwary or so desperate for copy as to buy the worst old dog you, or I, or anybody else, can throw at him.”
So we who don’t know marketing can either learn it or take our chances. But even if we learn it, at best we can keep trudging through try-fail sequences and hope for a lightning strike.
There is hope, and that hope hinges on writing to the best of our ability every time we sit down to write a story. In other words, we can put ourselves in a position to receive the lightning strike when it happens.
Believing in yourself is key to improving as a writer. IF you also happen to be a masterful marketer, you can influence your book sales directly and even give yourself a step-up toward fame.
I strongly recommend doing that if your brain is bent in that particular direction. I even wish that for you.
But at the end of the day, actually achieving discoverability, sales, and the vaunted best-seller status—i.e., how many people actually buy your books—is largely outside your control, especially as a writer but even as a marketer.
Full disclosure, I have had both long and short works (in nonfiction and poetry) published traditionally, and frankly I wouldn’t go back to traditional publishing even with a small publisher except under one circumstance:
The publisher would have to buy my work outright, and they would have to pay me a life-changing amount of money according to my own definition of “life-changing.”
If you’re wondering, the number in that definition would contain at least two commas and a first numeral that’s larger than 5.
As always, do whatever works for you. But don’t confuse skill as a writer with skill as a marketer.
Of Interest
The Blueprint that Sells Books Not vetted.