Tag Archives: publishing

Coffee & Conversation: What are some of the hidden difficulties of being a writer?

22 Monday Mar 2021

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What are some of the hidden difficulties of being a writer?

Last week I chatted about a couple of the more obvious, oft-talked about difficulties that writers have in the industry. This week I want to talk about some of the more hidden, possibly insidious difficulties that writers face.

1) Reader Retention

Reader here can reference anyone from general audience to editors and publishers to even agents.

Most people write on the side rather than as a full-time gig because of spotty payment, lack of health insurance, and inability to pay bills on that level of income. This means that writing can often take a secondary or even backseat to other priorities, which can lead to a less consistent output than in other industries. Couple this with the difficulty in actually selling stories, first to agents or editors, and then to readers, there can be some lengths of time between publications. (Both of which I talked about last week.)

One of indirect results is that readers will forget you. They’ll forget your name, forget the stories, the way those stories made them feel, etc. Editors/publishing houses will then take that into consideration when deciding to buy the next book, because why buy a book that might not make as much as someone else’s?

Example: one author I know of had started a well-selling series, but then had some life difficulties. 11 years later, he tried to sell the next book in the series to the same publisher, who turned him down because of that giant gap in time would lead to less readers.

Now, most authors don’t wait 11 years to write the next book, thus that is a more extreme example. However, in publishing, despite how slow they seem, there’s a high expectation of constant and quick publications. If you’re not publishing at least 1 book a year in traditional publishing, you’re too slow. If you’re not publishing every 3-4 months as an indie author, you’re too slow. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What are some of the obvious difficulties of being a writer?

15 Monday Mar 2021

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What are some of the obvious difficulties of being a writer?

I wanted to contrast the obvious to the hidden difficulties so I decided to write them up as two questions.

For the obvious difficulties, these are the ones that you probably suspect even if you don’t have any personal experience on your own. These are the staples of the industry, the things people talk about openly and easily and constantly.

1) Difficulty Getting Published

The industry is hard. You spend all your time upfront on a project and then throw that project into the void and cross your fingers. There’s no guarantee that when you sit down to craft a story that those words will ever sell. No guarantee of a paycheck at the end of the day. You simply invest, invest, invest more and more hours and keep crossing your fingers and hoping.

Some people get to the point where they have a contract in place, a contract that pays them an advance. You would think that the money handed over in an advance resembles a paycheck, but you’d be wrong. Firstly, publishers can and do go after authors if the author never earns out their advance, meaning that if you’ve spent that money, you could very well find yourself in a serious problem. Secondly, unless you command some serious selling power, the advance you get will be minuscule (five thousand is high for a first-time novelist with a reputable larger press/publishing house; small press is much less.)

Those advances only cover that contract and however many books were promised. Each subsequent book(s) must be negotiated and most authors have a horrible time getting their second or third or fourth books published. Many more have trouble continuing on even if they have books in their back pocket and good sales numbers to show.

This is basically a job where you’re interviewing over and over again for the same job, negotiating your salary for every single project, many of which overlap in your schedule, all while writing some new project with no real sense whether you’ll be told that it’s no good and won’t sell, thanks but no thanks.

2) Dealing With Rejection

Everyone deals with rejection since rejection is a part of life. A huge part of life. How we deal with rejection is what defines our ability to survive or thrive in our environments. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Is there anything you absolutely refuse to write?

01 Monday Mar 2021

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Is there anything you absolutely refuse to write?

One of the tropes well-known within the romance industry is called May/December relationships. This is merely a cutesy way of referring to a pairing or couple where one-half is older/more experienced (in the December of their life) and the other is still in the springtime of their youth.

In general these relationships can be depicted in adorable or serious ways that show  respect for real-life people in similar relationships.

However! There are extreme cases where this May/December type of relationship is exaggerated into more of a January/December situation, where it feels abusive or disturbing in how they depict the manipulation or grooming of young people (particularly girls, though boys are not spared.)

These are cases when you have a teen (barely adult or almost adult) with a person (usually male) who is extremely older. Think of age ranges such as: 16/100 or 16/500 or 16/timeless. [A few examples of these types of relationship can be found in books such as Twilight, An Enchantment of Ravens, or Spin the Dawn.]

These depictions are a byproduct of the misogynistic tendencies of older men to want young women (or literal girls) in place of someone their own age. Because gay romance started within the romance industry, which was heavily dominated by women writers at the time (still is, but there are certain trends that look encouraging to see more diversity), this same concerning extremist age gap has strayed into gay romance slightly. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Who have you lost touch with?

09 Monday Nov 2020

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When I first chose this question, I had the idea that the answer would revolve around all the people I’d known in high school or college. All those friends who ended up being circle-friends, ie, the friends you only have because you run in the same circles, chase the same goals, see each other daily. Those people who feel separated from your life as a whole despite being so much a part of your life.

And then, when that section of your life is over, when you graduate, move on, move away, change jobs and the circles change and change again, you find that you never really had those friends in the way you thought you had. They’d never really been there. They’d just be…there, in that physical location.

But then I got to thinking…

It’s been a few years since I last published anything. In that time, my presence on social media has become spotty. My writing has gotten out of sync with my life. I have attempted to put more and more on my plate as if more will somehow be better, when in actuality, more is just making life harder and me less efficient.

I know that the people who focus on one thing at a time are the people who succeed the most, the fastest, the easiest. And yet, despite knowing this, I struggle with it. Maybe it’s in the stars, that I’m to be forever jumping between projects, constantly getting interrupted. Maybe I’m just making poor decision after poor decision, getting further and further behind, feeling lost when I sign back into technology, to sites, to processes that I thought I’d known by heart.

So, in answer to the question, I guess the real answer, the answer that actually reflects the true crux of something meaningful, is me. I’ve lost touch with what I like, why I write, why I work so hard. I’ve lost touch with why I did this in the first place. Continue reading →