Confessions of a semi-successful author

Subject: Re: Confessions of a semi-successful author Sat May 31, 2008 7:40 am

About twenty years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet a retired chiropractor who worked as much as he could--not for the money, but because he truly wanted to 'help people.' He worked for pennies on the dollar, actually making house calls to give adjustments and massages to people who didn't feel well enough to make a trip to his office.

He came from a hard-working blue collar family in PA, but he loved lazy people. He always said that if he had a complicated job to do, he'd get a lazy person to do it because they'd figure out the easiest and fastest way to get it done.
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Subject: Re: Confessions of a semi-successful author Sat May 31, 2008 1:42 pm

I've learned a lot over the years about what works and what doesn't in the publishing business. A few thoughts:
1. Despite what many writers believe, professional agents are eagerly searching for new talent. It's their bread and butter. However, they see loads of good writing and plotting but what they have to have to take to a publisher is exceptional writing and plotting.
2. Once you have a book that sells well, you have it made. The fact is life just gets harder. You must keep producing excellent material and do it on a regular basis. The struggle never ends.
3. A few years ago the Mystery Writers of America conducted a survey that showed only 21 or 22 of its hundreds of members were able to live on what they earned writing full time. Even many of the top names have a spouse with a regular job.
4. If I were a young guy interested in writing for a living, here is what I would do in this day and age:
Get an education and then find a job that enabled me to write full-time. Sell a few things to major magazines that made me eligible for membership in a frontline writer's organization, then attend every meeting, convention and seminar. Contacts made this way would result in assistance from established writers and make it easy to find a top-of-the-line agent who specializes in my field. Work like hell producing saleable material. Writing westerns if no one is publishing them doesn't make sense.
5. If I were an older person hoping to do well in writing I would do the same about selling to major magazines and attending every meeting, seminar and convention possible. I also would attend every major writers workshop and arrange for one of the five-minute sessions with any agent in attendance. I would come prepared with an excellent portfolio and do an excellent job of selling myself, aware that letters and e-mails won't get the job done.
If I still needed to do more I would spend a month in New York City talking face-to-face with every editor and agent who would let me in the door. When my month was up I would start over again even if it meant living under a bridge and eating at a mission.
In other words it is one helluva competitive business. Only the persistent make the grade. It can be done, but it means making use of an expression that once was heard in any New York detective's office: GOYAKOD = Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors.
And above all else, expect rejection and disappointment because it never ends for even the biggest names in the business. As one fellow I know who has had more than a hundred books published said in a recent e-mail: "Some bubbles have burst, a few are still afloat."
I'm just glad that at my age none of that is important.
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Mystery Writers of America, Private Eye Writers of America
www.dickstodghill.com

Admin Joined : 11 Jan 2008 Posts : 1780 Location : UK

You bring a lot to this board Dick. You and my husband think alike. He has always maintained that those who succeed are the ones who want it the most. Not the most talented. Not the best in their age group. Not the ones who come top of the class. Although they can be successful too, but they have to have that same burning desire to win that those determined to succeed have in spades.

Brenda said that lazy people cut corners. I'm sure they do, but I wouldn't want to employ them.
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Subject: Re: Confessions of a semi-successful author Sat May 31, 2008 4:15 pm

Rainbow's post made me think of the chiropractor, Shelagh, a man I truly admire because of his work ethics and altrusism. He was a free thinker, but certainly not lazy, as he was in his eighties when I knew him and he still worked a full day at his office, did house calls in the evenings, and volunteered his weekends to help clear the grounds at his private Rocky Mountain nudist club.

And I wouldn't say writers are lazy when most work full-time, fulfill their responsibilities with family and still manage to write and pursue their writing goals.
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Four Star Member Joined : 17 Jan 2008 Posts : 203

Work your fingers to the bone, what'dya get

Hmm ummm boney fingers. Boney fingers.

Once again, I think that hard work doesn't hurt, but it sure doesn't assure one of success either. I hate to keep saying this but there is an undefined something that sometimes visits a person, then pries open their mouth and shoves success down their throat. Many authors (sic) with equal talent and an equal hard work ethic may work side by side for years and then one of them becomes the next best seller while the other fades into obscurity. You can call it luck, you can call it fate, you can call it divine intervention, but whatever it is picks and chooses who it will visit and the rest of us can do nothing except what we think we have to do and hope that the fickle finger of fate (Laugh In reference) will one day point at us. Working harder may put you in exactly the right place at the right time, but there is just no guarantee that you will be the chosen one.

That's not negative thinking, it's realism at its cruelest.

Four Star Member Joined : 17 Jan 2008 Posts : 203

"Brenda said that lazy people cut corners. I'm sure they do, but I wouldn't want to employ them"

The fact is that many lazy people are the best employees one can have. They will in fact find easier ways to do things, and the result will be more items produced quicker.

The hard workers usually just toil along, not thinking to do anything other than what they have been told, and while they produce at a steady rate, they will not find a new way to get the work done, because they just don't think along those lines.

Most of us here, or at least the ones I have seen the most, are not lazy. We have studied hard, worked hard, written hard, polished our work until it shines, and we are still here, trying to understand how some hack can have a best seller when we know it isn't as good as ours. Some of us have learned that that is the way of things, and some haven't.

Subject: Re: Confessions of a semi-successful author Tue Jun 03, 2008 1:04 am

I write because the thought of not writing would send me insane! Surprised

)
When I started writing I thought it would be nice if i became published.
Once I did become published, I thought it would be nice to receive letters from readers saying how much they enjoyed my books, and when those letters/emails started arriving it spurred me on to write even better.
Holding my first book in my hand was a dream come true, just last month I held my ninth book and the thrill is still as strong as the first time.
Yes, I would like to be a best seller and earn better money so I can give my kids more and not worry about bills, but the fame I can live without. Surprised

)
However, I have achieved more than I imagined and I plan to write for a good many years yet!
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Regards,
Anne Whitfield
http://www.annewhitfield.com
historical & contemporary author

Joined : 24 Jun 2008 Posts : 4

I've really enjoyed reading this thread. It covers almost every angle. We know that even after The Town and the City was published in 1950 Jack Kerouac still carried all of his unpublished manuscripts around in a rucksack. Being rejected made him so bitter that he returned to live with his mother and took up a career drinking himself to death. He then went on to acclaim with On the Road and it's remarked that he could never bring himself to interact happily with literary pundits. By the time he'd become a sucessful author he hated publishers and their associates. Looking at the indescribable misery that Edgar Allan Poe experienced trying to get his work published tells us a similar story. George Orwell's Animal Farm was turned down countless times. One editor even told him that people don't buy stories about animals!

We're looking at the publishing industry as if turning down great books was a new thing! Of course it isn't. Various writers, even magnificent writers, have always struggled, been rejected, and been turned down in every age. In fact we've forgotten the concept of a writer in a garret. Today everybody wants to be a millionaire!

We've also forgotten that if you want to be a writer, then write! You have to eat, sure. But you don't have to eat caviar and own a yacht to be a writer. These days, with the Internet, unpublished writers can contact both each other and the reading public, in ways that they never could before. In times past you needed a publisher to distribute your work. It simply wasn't possible before. Now it is. The act of acceptance by a publisher has both a social and financial significance. But it doesn't necessarily say anything about the quality of your writing. And today, when ghostwritten novels
compete with author's own ones, it says less even than nothing, sometimes.

I make a habit of reading POD published books. And in the last year and a half I've found five fabulous ones. Christine Blake's Woman Redeemed and Lloyd Lofthouse's My Splendid Concubine are excellent examples. Both are superbly written, presented and researched historical novels. The first is about Mary Magdalene and the second is about the dangerous and romantic adventures of Sir Robert Hart, a real historical figure, who became the most distinguished, foreign servant in the 19thC Chinese empire.

In my opinion writers should write. They should remember the struggles of Kerouac, Poe and other fabulous writers and they should band together and support each other. In that way they will at least get some of the support that they didn't get if they'd been fighting for years with editors and agents!

Regards,

Pat
You can read about Christine and Lloyd's books here: http://www.litarena.com/books/

Admin Joined : 11 Jan 2008 Posts : 1780 Location : UK

Thanks for summing up this thread so expertly!
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Shelagh Watkins
http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk/

Subject: Re: Confessions of a semi-successful author Fri Jul 11, 2008 1:51 pm

It is interesting to read a variety ofviews on one subject. What works for one person does not mean it will work for another. Marketing of products happened to be one of my areas ofexpertise. Although similar, eachproduct required a special marketing strategy.
One had to determine what market was to be targeted and that is crucial
to success. As a marketing consultant, I remember talking to a German manufacturer who wanted to enter the American market. I asked him what segment of the market he was interested in, and he said, “all of it.” He had no clue how vast the American market is or how diversified it is.
To get a foothold, a specific market and region of the market must be targeted. To blitz and say I want all of it is just wishful thinking and a waste of time and money.
Books are different product. Unless one has a high profile and can get
lucky, there is much hard work as expressed in this thread. What market to target depends on the nature of the book – the story. There are people who are interested in that type of story and they can be targeted. Once a track record has been made, then that success can be built upon to expand the market for the book.
So what have I done? Very little. I wrote a true story of my entrepreneurial pursuits and was encouraged to submit it for publication. And the first publisher I sent it to accepted it – PA. I was thrilled. I did not start out to write a book for notoriety or for the money involved. I had a story to tell and it was felt that it needed to be told. I have had excellent exposure to the market pertaining to the book. I have had a huge setback with PA and
stopped further promotion. Since then, I am busy writing for the pure joy of writing. I now seek publication. Should that happen, I will work to promote the book.

We all write for different reasons. For those who wish to make a career of
writing, listen to those who have been writing for years. Don’t try to copy them but approach the work with your eyes wide open. You may get lucky. The harder you work the luckier you get. If whatever you do becomes a
chore, give it up. It’s not worth the aggravation unless you’re making the big bucks.
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Subject: Re: Confessions of a semi-successful author Fri Jul 11, 2008 2:22 pm

Laziness is the mother of invention
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Admin Joined : 11 Jan 2008 Posts : 1780 Location : UK

is that a necessity?
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Shelagh Watkins
http://shelaghwatkins.co.uk/

Three Star Member Joined : 07 Jun 2008 Posts : 171

It has been an interesting recognition, and acceptance, that I will not make the money I thought I would at writing books. I did make a reasonably comfortable living for a number of years as a freelance magazine writer. And more often than not my work was in assignments from editors who knew me and my area of familiarity. The money was there, a few hundered to several hundred dollars per article, and sometimes into four figures. And there were percs--junkets, consulting fees, even product gifts from appreciative manufacturers. Then I was responsible for all that going away.

A friend who was engineer in charge of a large aerospace technical library sought my help in updating all the in-house engineering procedures in preparation for an upcoming government inspection. He knew of my background in technical writing and editing that was ten or twelve yers in my past, and he prevailed upon me to bail him out, and I agreed. It was to be a two-year assignment, just until the documents inspection.

Ten years later I still was there, in charge of the documents section myself. I finally forced myself to leave, this after my friend, who talked me into the job, himself had departed the company.

I contacted the magazines that used to carry my work. In the long interim all the editors I knew had moved on and their replacements, while recognizing my past work, had their own stable of contributors. I wasn't ready to start over in developing my freelancer's lifestyle, and decided that my books that had on been on the back burner for too long were ready for the market. It has been personally satisfying to see them published, but not financially so.

Within the past few weeks I sent off a speculation piece to a local magazine, which was turned down because all stories in the particular segment that I tailored my story for were staff produced by editorial edict. However, the editor offered me a position on the staff to produce researched stories as directed by the editorial board. The editor must have liked what he read in my submission, but the job just sounded too restrictive. I mulled, but turned down the offer. I'd rather write books that no one, or very few at least, reads.

Jim Woods
www.ultrasw.com/jwoods