<\/p>\n
Pick a famous bestselling author.\u00a0 Someone who was on the Times
\nlist in the last couple of years.\u00a0 How many copies of that
\nbestselling title do you think they sold?<\/p>\n
A million?\u00a0 Are you sure? There are 260 million Americans right now, not to mention the world market.<\/p>\n
How about ten million?\u00a0 Sound better?<\/p>\n
Try 40,000. And that’s an unusually high number.\u00a0 If a fiction
\nnovel sells 25,000 copies within a year, it’s worth opening a bottle of
\ngood champagne because you just made the top five percent of authors.<\/p>\n
Let’s talk about the numbers game and being a literary whore. What is a
\nbestseller? And how can a down on her luck romance writer outsell
\nStephen King by a hundred thousand copies?<\/p>\n
The first question is easy to answer.\u00a0 The official definition of
\na “bestseller” is when you sell an amount equal to one percent of your
\nnation’s population.\u00a0 In the US, that would be over a quarter
\nmillion sales.\u00a0 There’s a problem, though.\u00a0 The definition is
\nabout 150 years old.\u00a0 That’s easy to get around, though.
\nNow, the sales are counted from the initial publication date.
\nWhen you hear people say the Bible is the bestselling book of all time,
\nthey’re including every sale since the mid 1600’s.\u00a0 In truth, the
\nBible has seen decreasing sales in the last decade or so.\u00a0 So an
\ninternational bestseller sold “over 100,000 copies.”\u00a0 Right, since
\nthe publication date in 1972.<\/p>\n
The publishers staged a bit of a coup about 100 years ago.\u00a0 The
\nfirst thing they had to do was throw out the definition of
\nbestseller.\u00a0 There’s no rhyme or reason to the modernized
\ndefinition but, roughly, it breaks down into a printing war.\u00a0 You
\nsee, publishers can’t afford to warehouse a huge number of books.
\nWith any given “bestselling” title, the average sales will be
\n10,000-15,000 copies a year.\u00a0 They won’t get pissed off until you
\ndrop to under 2,000 sales a year, and the smaller presses will be
\necstatic if they move 500 copies a year.\u00a0 What the publishers did
\nwas promise to print a certain amount and let that determine bestseller
\nstatus.\u00a0 Such promises are backed up by the printer.\u00a0 For
\nexample, Publisher X says that they have the ability to print 40,000
\ncopies of the latest Stephen King book.\u00a0 They only need print
\n15,000 in order to saturate the market and they may keep some on hand,
\nbut the remainder of the 40,000 doesn’t exist.\u00a0 It’s virtual
\ninventory.\u00a0 Yet if 40,000 people ran out and bought the title,
\nthey’d be able to produce that amount quickly.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Of
\ncourse, that costs money.\u00a0 A smaller press can’t make such
\nextravagant promises.<\/p>\n
While there is organic growth on the New York Times bestseller list,
\nthe heavy hitters premier on the list based on copies in print,
\nincluding virtual inventory, and not hard sales.\u00a0 Gasp!
\nNacho’s attacking the validity of the bestseller list!\u00a0 Look,
\nkids, you’ve seen a bestseller list based on sales at Amazon.\u00a0 It
\nchanges every hour, and that’s not just something new to the Internet
\nGeneration.<\/p>\n
This is why Stephen King’s latest book appears on the bestseller list
\nfour days after it comes out yet the Writer Who Changed Your Life
\npublished by an Alabama small press isn’t even on the horizon.
\nImmediate virtual inventory.\u00a0 Copies “in print.”<\/p>\n
The publishers tipped their hand with the first Harry Potter. Sales
\nrapidly outstripped a somewhat low virtual inventory and, well, the
\npublisher couldn’t make a second run.\u00a0 They had the printer on
\nstandby for a certain number of copies but, moving beyond that number,
\nthe printer had to tell them to wait.\u00a0 Hey, they have other work
\nto do.\u00a0 Let’s put that in perspective:\u00a0 I work for a medium
\nsized academic publisher.\u00a0 We put out 80 titles a year.
\nThere are\u00a0 a couple dozen similar sized publishers doing the same,
\nabout 150 small presses putting out 10-50 titles a year, and the
\nStarting Lineup, The Names You Know, all putting out 100-300 titles a
\nyear.\u00a0 It’s busy out there.<\/p>\n
A large publisher can supply all the major chains, e-tailers and
\nindependents with only 15,000 physical copies.\u00a0 A small press may
\nonly put out 1-4000 copies.\u00a0 The sad truth is, that’s
\nenough.\u00a0 That’s an okay year.\u00a0 With our Stephen King example,
\nnot a single one of his titles sold more than 70,000 copies within a
\ntwo year period.\u00a0 However, there’s an exception.\u00a0 There
\nalways is.\u00a0 Enter Janet Dailey, schlock romance writer.\u00a0 She
\nhits that one percent mark rather quickly.\u00a0 It took many years,
\nshe’s late in her career now, but one of her books in a three year
\nperiod rapidly outsells Stephen King.<\/p>\n
The business of writing is business.\u00a0 You don’t make money when
\nyou sell a book.\u00a0 Getting that novel on the shelf is not the final
\nstep.\u00a0 Hell, you ain’t even halfway through the gauntlet,
\nsunshine.\u00a0 The money is in promotion, movie options and constant
\noutput.\u00a0 Seriously, you have to write a novel every year to earn a
\ndecent living or you have to sell the shit out of what you do have and
\nhope for about a dozen lucky breaks and windfalls.<\/p>\n
“I need to get published.”\u00a0 I hear that all the time.\u00a0 It’s
\nas if people expect to wake up and get published by the end of the
\nday.\u00a0 Sorry, kids, it’s a war of attrition and, for most of you,
\nit’ll bring you to the edge of destruction.\u00a0 (Am I crazy if I
\nrather enjoy that aspect?)<\/p>\n
“Once I get published, all my worries will be over.”\u00a0 Ho-ho!
\nStop taking the goddamned sedatives, wouldja?\u00a0 Once you get
\npublished, you’d better be ready to kick into high gear.\u00a0 You’re
\ngoing to have to turn yourself into a drug.\u00a0 You’ll only succeed
\nif you whore yourself.\u00a0 Don’t give me your elitist, writing for
\nthe masses bullshit.\u00a0 You’ll complain about the money in the same
\nbreath, so I don’t want to hear it unless you’re an honest rebel with a
\nheart of gold.\u00a0 Get out of the business, because it’s not about
\nopen arms and love and changing the world.\u00a0 When you publish, and
\nif you succeed in round one, then you’re Caesar on the Senate
\nfloor.\u00a0 If the publishers and agents and fellow authors don’t get
\nyou, your own lazy irresponsibility will.<\/p>\n
Most writers I know are poverty-stricken freak puppies because they’re
\nall MFA dropouts who thought a book on the shelf was the end all be
\nall.\u00a0 Don’t think I’m crushing your dreams.\u00a0 Kids, if you
\ndevote yourselves and treat this like a business, like a career,
\nyou’ll be millionaires.\u00a0 But you’re gonna have to draw
\nblood.<\/p>\n
Now, the resume that I spoke of in earlier articles.\u00a0 Is it really
\nall that important?\u00a0 Ha!\u00a0 No, not really.\u00a0 Consider it
\nmore of a stepping stone.\u00a0 It will help you, it will pay off, but
\nits primary purpose these days is as a focusing tool.\u00a0 Self
\nimprovement.\u00a0 You see, your prose sucks.\u00a0 I know it
\ndoes.\u00a0 You’ve been working on your grief project novel for three
\nyears, right?\u00a0 One out of ten of you will be true writing
\ngeniuses.\u00a0 The rest will have to work for it.\u00a0 Don’t focus on
\nthe great American novel – that’s always a mistake.
\nWriting is a craft and, like any craft, you have to work at it.
\nThe masters will fly ahead, those goddamned geeks, but the normal folk
\nlike you and me will have to apprentice, earn money to buy our own
\nstore, buy a mule, and get driven out of town for diddling the mayor’s
\n16 year old daughter.\u00a0 No, wait!\u00a0 Don’t do that!<\/p>\n
You hone your craft by getting out there.\u00a0 Even if nobody ever
\ngives you honest feedback, it’s a question of dealing with your own
\nmind.\u00a0 When you know there’s an audience, you think
\ndifferently.\u00a0 Your work improves.\u00a0 It’s practice.\u00a0 So
\nlook for alternative publications\u00a0 — magazines, journals,
\nwebsites.\u00a0 Box up sections of your work in progress and sell them
\nas short stories.\u00a0 Get out of your head.\u00a0 Quickly!<\/p>\n
Starting up a crappy webpage, of course, is the cheap and easy thing to
\ndo these days.\u00a0 You can even sell your own book online.\u00a0 Hey,
\ndon’t laugh, Roberto Vacca makes a living doing that.\u00a0 Never heard
\nof him?\u00a0 Doesn’t matter, he’s a writer and he makes a living off
\nof self publication.\u00a0 The writer has again reclaimed a
\nvoice.\u00a0 We are no longer tied to agents or publishers or
\ndistributors.\u00a0 Of course, it’ll take you years to see dollar one
\nunless you already have some books out there but, well, it’s
\npossible.<\/p>\n
The best way to beef up your online\/print zine presence is guerilla
\nadvertising.\u00a0 The writer’s secret tool.\u00a0 Stickers and
\nbusiness cards in odd places do wonders.\u00a0 I know a girl who sells
\n50 copies of her self published novel ($10 a shot) each year, plus
\nmerchandising items, mainly thanks to the art of guerilla
\nadvertising.\u00a0 Hey, you’re laughing again.\u00a0 Have you made
\n$500+ a year just because of your writing?<\/p>\n
What’s the method?\u00a0 Stick a business card or a sticker on
\npayphones, bus seats, subway seats, advertisements, the backs of every
\nenvelope or bill you send out, on the forehead of everyone you meet.
\nDon’t forget cheap or free classified ads in independent newspapers.
\nTalk about an easy.\u00a0 All you have to do is vandalize that
\nMcDonalds poster in the subway.<\/p>\n
Let’s look at a Bigger Picture.\u00a0 Janet Dailey, again.\u00a0 How’d
\nshe do it?\u00a0 She spends half a year traveling the US in the back of
\nan RV, constantly touring, constantly promoting, constantly
\nwriting.\u00a0 Her husband and tour manager juggles slick blue
\nhighways, a cell phone and dinner for two at campsites or in parking
\nlots through the US.\u00a0 They know wealth beyond avarice, kids. They
\nmake the politicians look slow.\u00a0 Every writer who uses these
\nmethods will get some gas money.\u00a0 I’m not talking about the Few or
\nthe Lucky Bastards.\u00a0 If you can write well and put something out
\neach year, then you can crack the publication nut and you will make a
\ncomfortable living.\u00a0 No question.\u00a0 But you have to write to
\nsell yourself.<\/p>\n
And always remember rule number one:\u00a0 You will fail.\u00a0 Pick
\nany writer, from 1800 onwards.\u00a0 Not a single one made it in their
\nfirst attempt.\u00a0 Even Charles Dickens had to self publish and sell
\nhimself door to door.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It’s a hard business, and
\nyou’ll have to be a hard businessperson.\u00a0 If you’re not, then
\nyou’re wasting everyone’s time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[352],"tags":[353,127],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsarchive","tag-gs-archive-2004-2008","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2899,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}