Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
This is your reality, current creative writers. The old ways are dying. If you write strictly for money, (and there's no sin in that) you need to retread into some other career that pays better. If writing is your passion, go ahead and write, but don't expect you'll make a living off of it in the long haul.
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As it was, so shall it be. The majority of published writers don't make a living now. What is it, 5% of everyone published makes a living, 1% get rich, and the rest need a day job.
I think writers have bought into a fantasy that has been perpetuated by the industry the last thirty or so years (maybe a little less). The fantasy is one where you get to write for a living, where your singular passion and view of the world provides enough sales for you to earn your daily bread. This fantasy is perpetuated in countless 'how-to' books and advice sites who tell you to do A to get to B and that will lead eventually to C. Then there are the agents and the editors and all the folderol between your writing and the reader. You never hear that only 12 publishing companies insist on an agent (the BIG guys). That there are, what is it, something in the region of 10,000 actual book publishers available for the new author to approach with their writing.
The fantasy promises you money, fame, notoriety, importance and all kinds of other intangibles, but it never truly talks about art or what's important in writing. And it never truly gives you the cost of that partnership, which is measured in frustration and ill treatment.
Now the writer is free, and trades in money/fame for something far more valuable. Freedom. Without a publisher I can say whatever the hell I want. I don't have to hold my tongue on any topic, I don't have to have an agent or PR idiot telling me how to behave and what morning show talk host to talk to or which insipid magazine wants to do an interview. Without having to pander to a market, your book can be about anything you desire, there's nobody to tell you what 'sells' or doesn't. In fact it doesn't matter if it doesn't sell any longer, or if nobody gives you a cent. You still get to write it and have the possibility of it being read, communicating an idea with another human being, or beings. Isn't that what writing is supposed to be about? Aren't writers supposed to be passionate individualists with opinions and viewpoints they want to share with other people? Or are we, as so many of the terrible how-to books instruct, supposed to fade behind our words and become invisible?