Yesterday’s post was kind of dour. By the end of it I had predicted that in the future nobody would pay for anything, everybody would steal everything, and publishing companies, due to a failing market, would implode upon themselves.
(Writers have a flair for the dramatic, what can I say.)
The question left hanging in the air is, if I never made another penny off of writing, would I continue to write? The answer is, of course, yes.
Back in seventh grade, troubled students were occasionally assigned In School Suspension (ISS). ISS involved sticking kids in a six-foot-tall, three-sided box and pushing it up against a wall, trapping them there for an entire school day. (I guess the administration figured out that the best way to deal with kids skipping school wasn’t to send them home for a few more days!) I was so curious about what spending a day in ISS would be like that I volunteered for it. Our principal, probably equally befuddled and amused, granted my wish.
Armed with a sack lunch, a stack of books and the heart of an investigative reporter, I spent an entire school day in one of those little boxes. (Come to think of it, it was probably good training; I’ve spent the past fifteen years in a cubicle which, other than a shelf full of toys and a white board, isn’t much different.) The following day I wrote about my experience and submitted it to the school’s newspaper, where it was printed. Although I had written many things before that, that’s the first time I specifically remember feeling that urge to share an experience with others through the written word.
I’ve done it a million time since then. Whenever people ask me how I find so many things to write about on my blog, I cock my head to the side a little like a dog might and wonder, how do people not find so many things to write about? I find dozens of things to write about every day! I find so many things to write about every day that I have a hard time keeping up — my mind races faster than my fingers, which have to work overtime to keep up with it.
Over the past ten or so years I’ve done a lot of writing for a lot of publications and websites, the vast majority of it being gratis. In fact, more often than not, the paying gigs turned out to be a lot less fun. When I first set out to get published, all I cared about was seeing my name in lights — er, ink. I did that. My next goal was to get paid for writing articles. I did that, too. (Getting paid for an article was more important to my ego than my pocketbook.) Both of those things were personal milestones and tremendous thrills, but after I had achieved them they didn’t seem that important. My own goals and needs have changed; now, I just want to write things that people want to read. I want to create great tales and tell great stories. Getting an e-mail from a complete stranger and having them say “I loved your book!” is worth more than any magazine could ever afford to pay me or anybody else.
Edgar Allen Poe sold “The Raven” (one of the most famous poems ever written) to The American Review for $9. Stolen from Wikipedia: “In part due to its dual printing, “The Raven” made Edgar Allan Poe a household name almost immediately and turned Poe into a national celebrity […] Though it made Poe popular in his day, it did not bring him significant financial success. As he later lamented, “I have made no money. I am as poor now as ever I was in my life — except in hope, which is by no means bankable.”
The internet has changed things, of course. It is much easier to get a global audience these days. I have sold books to people all over the world, literally. The downside is the exponentially increasing signal-to-noise ratio. Anyone can self-publish anything, either in print or on the web. While it’s certainly no guarantee of quality, the fact that a book has passed through a major publishing company inherently gives it a certain amount of credibility.
As a person interested in writing books, it’s hard not to shoot for the stars. Would I like to be the next Stephen King? Would I like to have a book on the New York Times Best-Seller List? Would I like to be able to make a living simply by writing? Of course! The reality is, those things aren’t very likely to happen. They’re not impossible, but the odds are against me and that’s where reality comes in. The reality is, I may never write a best seller. The reality is, my next book probably won’t sell a million copies (or perhaps even a thousand). The reality is, long after he was famous, Mark Twain filed for bankruptcy.
So, will I continue to write books? Yes. No matter what, I will write. Some of my books, I will try to sell. Some of them I will give away for free. Some of them I’m going to post on my website and ask people to pay what they think they’re worth. Some of them I have completely bizarre plans for. Some of them … I don’t know what I’m going to do with yet.
What I do know is this: I write for you, but mostly, I write for me — and I’ll be writing for the both of us for a long time to come, paychecks or not.
As I’ve repeatedly told people, the most money I’ve ever made from my freeelance or “me-lance” (i.e. just for my own kicks) writing was from suing somebody for stealing my writing and using it to market their commercial product. Since that money is long gone, with few tangible benefits to speak of other than the big ol’ war story associated with it (and even then, due to the terms of the settlement, I can’t name names), I can’t put my hand on my heart and swear to God that it was worth the huge amount of stress that it caused.
After that experience, I figure that I’m either writing for myself, or I’m flat-out nuts. I suppose a case could be made for both options there, really.
Great post, and very heartfelt. A few things:
a) people will always want to support those they support. Give them something to do that with, and they’ll do it. It doesn’t matter how free you make your book or articles or art – they’ll find a way to support you. Just make it easy for them to do it.
b) that said, no piece of meaningful art has ever been created for the sole purpose of being sold, ever. In order to be worth buying, something has to have value, and “I’m making this so you’ll buy it” is not any sort of value. Sure, there’s Nickelbacks making “music” and Paris Hiltons writing books, but there’s nothing in those products that means anything. It’s just product, sold to the lowest common denominator (yes I went there. Nickelback is lowest common denominator, and if you like them… Well, I’m sorry you had to hear it from me, but you like shit music).
c) keep writing, man.
Flack,
I will keep reading, and buying, any books you write! You are a great story teller
Keep writing man. I still check in when I find the time.
Best regards,
JTEK3
Spoken like a true writer. I can certainly relate!
One thing that’s been kind of eating at me a bit is: suppose the information market collapses and everything non-physical is now free. On first blush that seems great – who’s left to write books but the people who really want to do it? We’ve just wiped out everyone who was in it “for the money”, so now we’ve just got people who are in it “for the right reasons”, whatever those are.
Only… who’s to say money for art is a bad thing? Video games, for instance, rack up huge budgets and that lets companies produce incredibly fine-tuned detailed Products which pass themselves off as Art. Is there a difference? If so, who would know and who would care? If I’m offered the choice between a slick MMO and a hobbyist freeware buggy MMO, I would likely pick WoW even though Blizzard is trying to make a profit and hobbyist-in-the-bedroom is not.
Or think of the doors money could open for someone writing a research book. “I had a $50,000 advance to write an in-depth expose on (famous celebrity)” vs “Here’s a Wiki article culled from various rumor-mill sources loosely cobbled together because our editor is donating their time to the project”. As Capitalism has taught us, money has great power to Get Things Done. Just because someone is not invested commercially does not automatically discount what they do. We would not have so many medicines to cure disease if companies didn’t realize they could turn a nice profit through R&D efforts.
In short, maybe with the destruction of art-as-product we’ll see a revitalization of art-as-art. But in 97% of cases, what I’m really after is art-as-product.
Valid comment, Greg. I don’t know why, but there are a lot of people online who think that writers looking to get paid are jerks. I’m not sure why writers or artists get singled out for their desire to make a living through art. I don’t think most doctors or teachers pursue those vocations because of the money, but very few of them do it for free. I think a lot of people equate “selling art” with “selling out”. Someday I hope to find a middle ground.
You know I actually think it’s jealousy in many cases. Many hobbyists think the steps to household name recognition are:
Step 1: Make great art
Step 3: Profit!
The missing Step 2 is, of course, advertise and commercialize. It’s amazing how many are blind to this aspect. Those who fail at Step 2 grumble about those who are successful, either through unfair critique on the artistic quality (‘I could take a picture like that!’), or by creating a false relationship between increased art sales and decreased artistic value so as to preserve their own status of True Artist.
For some of us, unfortunately, the problem has become that we honestly aren’t near a bookstore, at least one that keeps books that are remotely interesting. The best I rely on is a secondhand bookstore in town, which in a town of about 5000 doesn’t see too much circulation. I really do like what you’ve written in several posts in your blog and it is difficult to get past the amount of chaff on the internet to find something worth reading, which is unfortunate but the same happens to alot of printed works.
With myself, physical copies of books something I’ve been avoiding, save for actual novels or something I could sit down and read on a nice day. Most if not all of the textbooks I’ve acquired over the past few years have been in pdf form and I’ve not paid a dime for them, not because I’d like to cheat the companies or feel a vandetta, but because the actual cost isn’t something I can stomach and the storage space for those books isn’t something I can spare.
It seems that too many people nowadays worry about making money and not about things that may be actually important, whats the fun in doing something if you aren’t enjoying the time you spend doing it?