I found this conversation between authors Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath to be extremely interesting about the state of the publishing industry. Some highlights include:
- One of them turning down a half million dollar contract from a publisher to instead self publish
- Monkey/frog rape
- 27 of the top 100 books on Amazon are self published
- New York Times list ignores self published books despite some of them being the highest sellers
- Inability for publishers to release digital copies of older books
Note: this is a long long conversation but well worth the read
4 comments:
Good read, and a topic that's been on mind as of late.
Food for the writers mind...
Indeed I did some writing years back but knew it would never be a full time gig and abandoned it as it would be too much work to publish.
Unfortunately I know my paper notes are long gone, digital copies were on floppy discs I probably threw out or are corrupt. My writing style has devolved horribly due to writing nothing but brief blog comments and code for years. An author is something
I will no longer be.
Now its easy to self publish pet projects (although profit is far from guaranteed). While there will likely be a deluge of self published crap I'm sure there will be a lot of good stuff that the regular publishers would have ignored as too risky to print and market.
I would offer as a riposte that you can still be an author if you want to be. All it takes is commitment, time and practice. And talent - talent helps.
I'm the same age as you and I didn't start my paid writing career until three years ago. In that time I've honed my skills and learned a lot of the craft that I was lacking (and continue to learn every day). Now I write a good chunk of the SaskTel stuff you see out there (sorry), have a comic book about to come out, have a few TV shows in development (development hell to be honest), a movie script underway and more. All I had to do was commit to doing it.
You can do it to. Want someone to write with? Gimme a call, I like working with others.
I guess what I'm trying to say, in my own annoyingly motivational way, is that there are a lot of people out there who are happy to tell you that you will fail, you don't have to do it to yourself. Go for it!
It most comes down to motivation. Years ago writing was something I was interested in but that has faded. These days I have other hobbies and projects on the go. At some point I had to decide what to cut and writing was one of them.
I'm not saying I won't pick it up again at some point but at this point I would rather pick up a book to read than write one. (My reading backlog is well over a hundred books)
Post a Comment