Authors: Taking Charge of Our Future in a Time of Uncertainty

Authors have certainly endured our fair share of upheaval. We witnessed a business model that had barely changed in over a century collapse in less than a decade.

Many of us felt the initial seismic activity back in the 90s when the big-box stores obliterated the bookstores we’d known all our lives. Witnessed the places we learned to love reading shutter one by one.

Those aisles where we daydreamed that maybe…just maybe one day WE would be on those shelves? Vanished.

We retooled the dream. Imagined our books in large hardback displays in the front of a Barnes & Noble. Or, perhaps on a kiosk next to the coffee bar at a Borders.

Then that went away as well.

Now, thrust into a digital age where anyone can be published and it seems there are too many hats for one head? It’s hard not to get discouraged.

But, writers are a tough breed.

Straight Talk

I started blogging for a number of reasons. First, I had zero self-discipline. I was a flake who started projects I never finished and was addicted to excuses.

After taking a hard look at my character, I knew my dream of becoming a mega-author would always be just that—a dream—unless I changed. Blogging trained me out of perfectionism, thickened my skin, and forced me to get out of my comfort zone.

It trained me to show up day after day, week after week, year after year no matter how I felt or what was going on in my life. Authors have deadlines. Funny thing? Life doesn’t stop simply because we have a deadline.

Family members still get sick, need care and sometimes pass away. Crises happen. The professional author still writes the words day after day no matter what.

I hit a turning point where I faced the truth. If I wanted to be like the authors I admired, I needed to do what they did even if it meant starting small.

The second reason I began blogging seriously was because, after attending my first conference, I noticed something that disturbed me deeply. Writers had absolutely NO clue about the business of their business.

And, because of this ignorance, authors failed to recognize their value. This made them objects of derision and vulnerable to predation.

Authors & Power

My early conferences—pre-digital age—were a real eye-opener. Writers, in my POV, have always suffered with crippling self-doubt. Fiction is very subjective and we bare our heart and soul in our work, so to put our ‘art’ out there is especially terrifying.

Back when I started out, there was no such thing as self-publishing as we know it. If you didn’t land an agent, GAME OVER.

Authors flocked to conferences and practically wet their pants trying to talk to an agent (myself included). I remember the anticipation of my very first conference, how I honestly believed the agents would be thrilled to meet us, excited to hear about our books.

Boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

***As a caveat, obviously not ALL agents/editors acted this way. But far too many did. Good news is most of them are now GONE.

Looking back, it seemed every conference had at least one agent who took great delight in making the authors cry. I still have memories of me standing in a hotel corridor consoling some woman I didn’t even know, telling her it was okay.

I was dumbfounded how horrible many agents and editors treated authors. They talked to us as if we were beneath them. Sort of like the agent who laughed in my face in February of 2008 when I pitched a book on social media for authors.

Actual Quote: Facebook is a fad just like audio books.

Back then? To listen to many of the agents/editors, watch their body language? It was easy to conclude that meeting new authors was a necessary, albeit unseemly, chore in the tedium of being a…New York agent.

Many openly mocked and castigated authors for mistakes and ‘stupid’ questions about the publishing business. A business we had NO WAY of knowing anything about before being published.

The Trap

At the time, agents demanded authors submit/query only one agent at a time, but with no guarantee they’d get back within six months or even a year…or even EVER. And there was a not-so-veiled-threat that they (agents) would know if we submitted elsewhere.

And that there would be consequences. But we weren’t to send a follow-up query asking our status or call because, again, there would be consequences.

With every conference, I found myself growing angrier and angrier.

Agents chastised authors to be professional, to treat their writing like a business yet shared almost nothing about how the publishing business actually worked. The ‘business stuff’ was their job.

Publishing was as mystifying to the aspiring author as it was to the regular reader. Sacred knowledge was not shared, because if it was, then the hoi polloi might forget their place.

I hit my boiling point when I overheard an agent mocking an author pitch to a colleague. Everything after this is a bit vague…

I remember rounding the corner and (not very quietly) telling the agent how she still reeked of eau de college bookstore, and how DARE she talk to an elder, let alone someone who’d PAID to be at a conference like that?

Sweetheart, we still have a job without you. You, however, don’t have a job without us.

…and I’ve not been back to that hotel, but meh. Whatever.

Knowledge is Power

Of all the early conferences I attended, most of the sessions were on craft (which, of course, is critical). Yet, there were NO business classes, unless one counts ways to pitch an agent or editor.

To be fair, before e-pub, Smashwords, and Amazon, there wasn’t a lot about the publishing process authors could control.

Thus, it made sense there would only be classes on what we could control (e.g. the query, the quality of the book).

There was a reason authors focused on the writing. Agents and editors handled almost everything else from selling the book to a publisher, negotiating the terms, negotiating the print run, distribution, placement, tending to the proofing and cover art, etc.

We didn’t mess with all that…until we did.

I’d already started a blog to a) train out the flake and b) to demystify publishing. Had already posited that social media would be the single largest shift in human communication…ever.

I even predicted that authors (novelists, not just non-fiction authors) would have the ability to create an audience before the first book was even finished.

I saw the potential in social media, how it could be used for good or not-so-good. Authors, however, needed training. They had to understand the business of their business.

Author Knowledge & Storycraft: Product

One of the reasons people like me recommend pre-published writers to read A LOT is that it helps train ‘the ear’ for story.

Story is a lot like music. A five-year-old can tell when someone hits a sour note in a song. That same five-year-old can also sense the sour note in a story.

If you don’t believe me, try to cheat when reading a bedtime story to a little kid. Try stopping in the middle, pretending the story is finished and see how quickly they call you out