Is This Book Really Necessary?

Why does the world need (yet another) book on the publishing industry?  On how to succeed within it?  Why does the world need more books on how to write?  Isn’t this all kind of redundant?

I get these questions, periodically.  My frontline answer is usually something to do with research, and how vital it is.  Mastery of the subject, and all that.  I, after all, am biased; I’m coming to this party from an academic background.  When I was in school, each semesters’ worth of books cost more than my rent.  But it occurs to me that a lecture on the importance of research doesn’t really answer the question, because it doesn’t speak to the underlying issues that spawned it in the first place.  Yes, research, yes, mastery–but why?

It’s the age-old question, and the central question to all marketing: what’s in it for me?

There’s a line in Self Publishing Is For Losers that reads, “It’s absolutely fine to treat writing like a hobby…but you can’t treat something like a hobby and at the same time expect it to succeed for you like a business.  Success, in any field, will only come as the result of your total commitment.”  And therein lies the crux of the matter: too many would-be writers half-ass it, and wait for a miracle to occur.

Half-assing it can come in a lot of different forms: from reacting inappropriately to criticism, to giving yourself permission to act like a total tool on Twitter because “you were upset.”  There are as many ways to take your ball and go home as there are human failings.  Although they’d undoubtedly argue with me, because they feel like they take themselves extremely seriously, these writers are half-assing it.  I have a secret for you: taking yourself seriously and committing yourself 110% aren’t the same thing.  Plenty of people take themselves very seriously, and yet fail to translate that peculiar species of malignant self love into anything worthwhile.  Into any actual production.

Expecting everyone to love your books and going off on them when they don’t, or expecting to succeed in an industry without learning how it works is the worst form of foolishness.  You can’t conquer a discipline until you’ve mastered that discipline and mastery isn’t something that comes from telling everyone you’re a writer.  Or telling yourself that you’re a writer.  Any more than putting on a suit and visiting the courthouse makes you a lawyer.

If you’re “too busy” making art to learn how to appropriately market your art then you might love art, but you’re not a professional artist–in any discipline.

Success is not random; success is not the result of miracles.  Yes, a spot of good luck can grease the wheels but getting hit by good luck is a little like getting hit by lightning: fortune favors he who stands outside, in the storm, holding a lightning rod over his head.  Mastering your subject is how you hedge your bets; it’s how you put yourself in control and, in so doing, direct the course of your own career.

Refusing to understand how the business of writing works doesn’t make you “artistic,” it makes you someone who’s passed the reins of their destiny to someone else.

There is no such thing as too much knowledge.