The Writer’s Predicament

I attended the Blue Ridge Bookfest this weekend in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Thanks to James Loy and Jean Tuech for making it such a nice time. The organizers paid for a very nice room at the Claddagh Inn (a quaint bed and breakfast on Main Street in Hendersonville) and they paid me a tidy sum to speak for forty-five minutes. I spoke. I hope the people who heard me speak enjoyed it.

There’s a bit of a rift among writers about whether doing things like going to Bookfests is worth the time and effort. Some say, yeah, sure it is. Whatever exposure you can get, the better. Others say book fairs and book signings are a big waste of time. They don’t really help you sell books and they’re inconvenient and almost humiliating. The way it works is that some bookseller piles your books, along with the books of all the other authors, up on a table in a hallway. Just off that hallway is an entrance into a large room filled with tables, and the authors sit at the tables with little exhibits, waiting for people to come up to talk to them. Some authors are much more aggressive than others, they try to engage people, and they try to convince them to buy their books. I happened to share a table at this event with a man who’s name I don’t recall, but he was passionate about selling his self-published books that, he said, rewrites American history for children. He brought his mother with him, and she helped him. I heard the phrase, “This is my crusade,” from him several times during the day. I looked at his books, skimmed them. Didn’t really understand his crusade. His mother may have understood it, but she was busy crocheting.

My wife came with me. I made her come because I’ve been to a couple of these things and I knew I might spend the day bored out of my mind. I’m so glad she came, because we were able to play games on her Kindle Fire and joke with each other during the five hours I sat there. I signed one book and talked to maybe five people. Three of the five people I talked to were people that talked to every author and were still there when the thing ended. Retired people, you know? Just looking for someone to talk to. I enjoyed the conversations, though.

The “presentations” were held in classrooms at Blue Ridge Community College. The presentations began at eight in the morning. Three or four authors gave presentations each hour. I didn’t give mine until 2:15. I was in the last group. The event ended at 3:00. There were six people in the room for my presentation including my wife and my host. There was a man named Kermit and a man who spoke with a British accent named Colin and a woman named Renee and another woman named Katherine, I think.

I gave them a helluva show, though. I talked about the process of writing a novel, the acquiring of an agent, the business of publishing and the business of Hollywood. I talked about how publishing has changed. I told them about how if I grossed a million dollars for Penguin Publishing, they would generously give me eighty thousand dollars. I talked about how my agent would take fifteen percent of that eighty thousand, reducing the money I received to sixty-eight thousand out of that million. Then I explained that the government would take a third of the sixty eight thousand, leaving me with around forty-four thousand. Then I broke it down to the dollar, which revealed that for every dollar of revenue I generate for Penguin Publishing I net about 4.5 cents under my contract. I told them I wasn’t all that enamored with that kind of slave labor structure, so when the Kindle and Amazon came along and started offering me 70 percent instead of 8 percent on the sales of my novels, I thought it might be best for me and for my family to go ahead and move into the independent publishing arena.

Two members of my audience seemed stunned. Three seemed supportive. And one just seemed bored.

I’m sure I made a major impact in the publishing industry by speaking to six people in Hendersonville, North Carolina. More likely, it was an microscopic impact, or even more likely, what I said had zero impact. So it goes.

Ah, well, it was fun. Thanks to the folks at the Blue Ridge Book Fest for having me. I’m guessing they won’t invite me back.