"The End" Is Only the Beginning
Earlier this week, I asked CityLit Project's Executive Director Gregg Wilhelm to provide some advice for navigating the publishing world once they'd finished their masterpiece. Here's what he had to say:
A few years ago, I created a presentation titled " 'The End' Is only the Beginning." I was constantly amazed how writers -- after spending weeks, months, years creating their literary art -- would so blindly cast their manuscript into the publishing winds without knowing the first thing about the business of which they so desperately wanted to become a part.
I was equally amazed at their level of expectations, which were almost always unreasonably high: author tours to all 700 Barnes & Nobles, best-seller lists, guest stints on Oprah.
The trick to a successful writing career, and perhaps any successful career in the arts, is an ability to flip the switch in your head from introverted artist to extraverted salesperson. I'm not talking some plaid-clad car-lot huckster, but someone with a modicum of public-speaking and public-reading skill. The days are gone when a writer like J.D. Salinger could mail in his manuscripts and remain a hermit in New Hampshire (Thomas Pynchon is the only writer who seems to get away with it today). Bottomline, we artists need to engage and entertain our audiences.
Therefore, to prepare writers for the world of publishing, I created a "publishing matrix" as part of the presentation. It explores the four basic ways writers can get published -- subsidy press, self-publishing, independent publisher, or large publishing house -- and compares them across four categories: business model, target audience, the writer's role when it comes to having editorial and design say, the likelihood of chain-store distribution, the money picture, and the level of involvement on the author's part regarding publicity and promotion. A case can be made for any of these four ways to get published, as long as a writer has a set expectation for what she want to get out of the experience.
Feel free to e-mail me (gregg@citylitproject.org) and I'll gladly send you a PDF copy of the matrix.
Flipping the switch is not an easy thing to do, and flipping it back and forth during the creative process is rarely wise. So, my advice to writers is to get the writing done first. Writing is hard enough and, after all, if your art is sub-par the marketplace won't be interested in it. Network, take workshops, go to conferences, READ WELL (a secret to good writing is smart reading), but don't worry about query letters, how many sample chapters are enough to submit and scouring the Association of Authors Representatives Web site until you are truly ready to make the leap.
Today, nearly 300,000 new books are published each year (that’s NEW books, not to mention the perennial classics that still command marketplace dollars and bookshelf real estate). Remember that for fiction -- after years of writing, perhaps months finding the right agent or press, at least 12 months in the production process -- a typical novel has just six weeks to sink or swim. I read in Poets & Writers magazine that only about 20 authors really make their living from writing books (King, Grisham, Brown, Roberts, etc.). Most writers are teachers, freelancers, lawyers or doctors, pumpers of gas or slingers of hash. So keep the day job, carry a pad and pen on you at all times, and steal moments from life's busy pace to write everyday.
