Graphic by Peg Ihinger
If you want to make a living in the arts, there are always two things you have to worry about: how to create the best art you can (whether it’s a physical product like a book or painting, or something more ephemeral like a live performance), and how to get that best art in front of the people who will love it (and pay for it).
The art and craft of writing and the business of writing are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other if you’re going to make a living by writing. (If you don’t care about making a living by writing, you can have the art-and-craft part without the business, and if you’re only interested in the business part, you can become an agent, editor, publisher, publicist, or sales rep, and skip the writing part entirely.)
A person can be a really excellent writer, but if they can’t handle the business side of things (or find someone trustworthy who will do that bit for them), they can end up struggling to make ends meet, or have their work completely overlooked. Another person can be brilliant at marketing and persuading people to buy and read their stuff, but if they aren’t any good at the writing-and-producing part, their “career” can end up crashing after one or two titles, or never get off the ground at all, because they promised more than they could actually provide.
So far, so good. But there’s one more bit that people miss: While you have to develop skills in both aspects, only one is foundational. Writers write. Selling and marketing and publicity is support; it’s not the main event.
This seems really, really obvious, but I keep running into people who want desperately to be writers, but who keep putting the cart before the horse. I spent an hour and a half at a coffee shop recently with a young woman who’d been referred by a friend, who “wants to talk about being a writer.” She was very energetic and personable. So I started by asking what she wanted to know.
She wanted to know about selling foreign rights in the digital age. She wanted to know about generating buzz on social media. She wanted to know about planning “writing-themed events.” She wanted to know about getting a movie deal. She wanted to know about control of digital rights, and what sorts of scams she might run into online (and off). She wanted to know how to meet agents and editors.
After about half an hour of questions, I got a chance to ask what she wrote, because the answers to a fair number of her questions were going to change, in small ways or large ones, depending on what topic or genre she was writing in.
She spent the next ten minutes saying, in essence, “I haven’t decided yet; it’ll depend on what’s easiest to sell.”
She didn’t have a completed manuscript. She didn’t have enough written for a portion-and-outline. She didn’t even have an idea she could put in a query letter. But she wanted advice on selling foreign rights and getting an agent.
I spent the next forty-five minutes listening to her enthusiastic description of how wonderful her nonexistent, as-yet-unplanned novel was going to be. Every ten minutes or so, she’d pause, and I’d say some version of, “A first-time novelist can’t sell a manuscript that doesn’t exist yet. You need to go home and actually write this novel. It’s good that you know the business side is important, but there’s no point in talking about the specifics of contracts, subrights, and publicity until you actually have a manuscript.”
And she’d smile and nod and go back to talking about the brilliance of the book she was going to write, and how she had to be prepared, and whether she should hire a publicist. Eventually, we went our separate ways.
I’ve seen this pattern too many times—people with big dreams, a ton of enthusiasm, a glib tongue, and no staying power. These are people who don’t want to write; they want the Writing Fairy to deposit a brilliant manuscript (they don’t really care what it’s about; any genre will do) on their computer overnight. They don’t actually want advice on writing, or even on getting published. They want the thrill of having coffee with a “real published writer,” and the ability to tell their friends about the long discussion they had about selling the foreign rights to their brilliant unwritten novel. They want to go places in a fancy carriage when they don’t have a horse to pull it yet.
There seem to be more of them lately, though I don’t know whether that’s because social media promotes image over substance, because the internet makes these folks more visible, or because I have become even more of a grumpy old lady than I used to be.
Still, every once in a while, one of these people surprises me. They figure out that being brilliant at talking up their work is no use if they have nothing to sell. So they go write something, and then they figure out that being brilliant at talking up their work is still no good if their work doesn’t live up to the hype. It has to be as good as they’re making it sound. And they figure out their balance point between working at their writing and working at promoting their writing. I really like seeing these folks get established as writers.
I feel your pain when it comes to the Writing Fairy believers. That said, can I propose a topic about when *is* the right time to start thinking about the business side please?
I finished a first draft and I’m halfway through editing. Once I’ve done that, I’ll mug as many beta readers as possible and ask for feedback. The question I’m debating is whether I should get cracking on business stuff – things like setting up a website, or thinking about a cover design – while I’m waiting for beta readers to get back to me, or should I wait until I have feedback that it actually is publishable (I think it is, but I’m biased)?
Once your book is out to beta readers, you will probably have a window of time when the only writing-related stuff you can do for this book is the business stuff. If you are planning on self-publishing, then you can publish it no matter what anyone says, so it is a very good time to educate yourself about things like cover design, formatting, and so on. There will probably be more to do than you expect, and more to know. If you are planning on submitting to agents/editors, it’s a good time to make lists of addresses and submission requirements (in order of your desirability), so that you don’t have to think about where to send it next when/if it comes back (which is highly probably no matter how publishable it is). If you prefer to procrastinate on the business stuff for as long as possible, it’s a good time to think about what you are going to write next.
Thank you, I’ll aim to use my window of time as sensibly as I can.
“Social media promotes image over substance.”
I’ve never seen it said more succinctly or accurately.
Speaking of the business side, this wasn’t the most encouraging thing I’ve ever seen, but I think it’s of interest to most of us:
httpswww.usatoday.comstorymoney20260419book-deals-authors-income89604598007
The software that manages the comments tends to flag those that contain actual hyperlinks. However, if you copy the above non-link and paste it into the Goggle search, the USAToday article pops up as the first hit.
It’s not earthshakingly surprising–I think I’ve mentioned the financial realities a time or two, though not for a while. I may do a post on that after next week’s Open Mike.
I’ll remember that – thank you!!
What I can’t fathom is why anyone, having found out about marketing and agents and publishers and all the other business aspects of writing, would want to be a writer if they weren’t in love with and/or compelled by writing itself. This isn’t a good business choice if your primary interest is success/profit, and not the actual process of making the thing.
I recall reading somewhere that the average annual income for fiction writers in the United States was around $430. Of course, all one ever hears from the media are the profits of the G. R. R. Martins and Stephen Kings.
The really scary thing is that, for that to be the average, there are a whole lot of people making less than that, to balance out the GRRMs and SKs.
Well, it’s possible to want to be a Writer and not be in love with actually writing: just as it’s possible to want to be a Chessmaster and not actually all that interested in playing chess. In both cases I think the chance of success is very low, but people want what they want.
I am in the “write to find out what happens next” camp and really excited about book 3 right now–stuff is happening! But I need to send book 1 out to agents, and man, that’s another story.
I admit, I grew to love writing quickly but I got into it initially as a little kid in a desire for new reading material that matched my tastes.
When I was very young, I learned that if I was fantasizing about the book’s publication, I was losing interest in the book’s contents. Much training of habit was required.
Why does anyone try to publish their writing, then? You could just write and not go through any headache at all by not publishing.
Publishing offers something to dream about. In my day job, no one is going to say “I see your soul and it’s beautiful; here’s a million dollars so I can share it with other people too.” But that does happen in publishing, even if it’s very rare!
IMO, because stories want to be read. Having made the thing, I don’t really feel like it’s complete until it reaches its audience.
Agents & publishers & marketing and all that are necessary tools to make that happen. (Or self-publishing, which has its own set of Necessary Tools that have nothing to do with the making of the thing.) I’m not saying the dream is a bad one; I share it too. But I wouldn’t be putting myself through the process if I didn’t have this weird compulsion to make stories in the first place.