I’m watching a very interesting discussion on social media right now. I won’t reveal identities or titles, but suffice it to say it begins with an author outlining a New York publishing deal she rejected and while the community by and large has been very supportive of her decision not to take the deal, there is some lamenting that they don’t feel like they’ve “made it” without a traditional publisher and bookstore distribution. Many if not most of them, incidentally, make a living from their indie publishing.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those indie authors who is anti-trad. Most of my close friends are traditionally published and making a living this way. I have seen the system work and work very well. I’ve had indie friends and acquaintances switch over to traditional publishing and benefit from having money up front and better distribution upon release.
What intrigues me about this conversation is that anyone who makes their living from writing would consider themselves somehow lesser than people who sign truly awful traditional publishing deals that do not enable them to make ends meet. One could say this is evidence of an indelible stigma against self-publishing, but I actually think something else is at work.
Writing, whether you self publish or go with a publisher, requires you to work for yourself. You create your projects, set your deadlines, and you might hire subcontractors to negotiate deals or edit your work, but at the end of the day, you are your boss. This means that there is no one else to promote you, to declare you a “real writer.” There is only you. Now, there are a lot of reasons that people use to justify denying themselves this promotion, so let’s go through some:
1. You don’t make a living. This was the bar I set for myself, and yes, incidentally, I have cleared it. It made sense to me because this is how most people define themselves with respect to jobs. Our society is very job and income oriented. “What do you do?” literally means, “How do you pay your bills? What generates your household income?” Some writers need only sell a short story at a professional rate to decide they have “made it,” or sell a short story at all, and some feel they only need to have completed a story or novel. I certainly won’t quibble there. It is easy to run afoul of the societal expectation that the profession you name is the one you make your living from. There are ways to differentiate between what you mean and the societal norm, though. For example, I am a lawyer by training, or an inactive member of the bar. I personally call myself a former attorney, but it the previous two are no less correct, in my opinion.
2. You aren’t in bookstores. The publishing landscape has been in constant flux during my lifetime. When I was a kid, there were no gigantic, nationwide bookstores. There were regional chains, and also regional distributors. Books were also sold in drug stores and grocery stores and gift shops and gas stations. It was quite possible to be a bestseller in one region and unheard of only a few hundred miles away. The emergence of Borders and Barnes & Noble, coupled with the merging of all the regional distributors into one major distributor killed off a lot of the regional markets. Now that Barnes & Noble is the only national bookstore chain left, print distribution is a sweepstakes. You’re either in or you’re out, and a lot of people struggle with feeling like “real” authors if their books aren’t in B&N. Having said that, a lot of these people have their books in regional and independent bookstores, just like it was done in the good old days. Furthermore, the reason there is only one brick and mortar national bookstore chain is because a lot of people don’t go out to bookstores to buy books anymore. They go online, and the books they buy may not even be physical copies. Because Amazon has always enabled just about anyone to sell their book through their platform, many feel that just having a book available through them doesn’t “count.” It’s still better distribution and exposure than authors could have dreamed of a few decades ago.
While I do understand the desire to be seen in bookstores, like many of us remember seeing our favorite authors when we were growing up, I do think it’s important to realize that the dominance of one physical bookstore chain is a pretty recent phenomenon. Many, many authors whom people my age remember with fondness, never set foot in a B&N in their lives. For that reason, I find this distinction a little arbitrary, but again, to each his own.
3. You haven’t won any awards. I hear this one now and then, but it seems pretty silly to me. So many authors of game changing books never won any major awards that I do wonder why people despair over this. Though to look at this from another angle, I do agree that someone who makes practically nothing from their writing, but has won a major award (and I’m not going to quibble over which ones are “major” – insert the one that impresses you most) is still going to be recognized as a writer by society at large. Just because it is a sufficient condition does not make it a necessary one, though. I doubt I would have won any awards for the contracts and leases I drafted as a lawyer, but I was still a lawyer.
4. You haven’t been on any bestseller lists. What people don’t always realize is that bestseller lists measure sales velocity, not volume. You get on the list for selling X number of books in Y amount of time, and it is entirely possible to be New York Times Bestselling and make less than someone who’s never been on that list, but who gets enough sales over time to make a nice, steady income. I’ve never felt strongly one way or the other on this one, myself. People have different lists that they consider valid for this measurement. I’ve been on the Amazon Top 100 many times, which is the easiest one, so a lot of people say it doesn’t qualify. The New York Times has the most prestige, and the USA Today is the most accurate measurement of total books sold (the NYT measures sales only through certain, qualifying venues). Some people make it their life’s goal to make one of these lists, and more power to them, but I’ve seen plenty of New York Times Bestselling authors still working their day jobs and people who’d never make the list in a million years who’ve made enough to never need to work again. So, like with all of these, it’s up to you, but I wouldn’t let it be a deal breaker.
5. You aren’t famous. Yeah well… you’re a writer, and even a very famous writer is often not a terribly famous person. Part of it is the advantage of not everyone knowing what you look like, and part of it is that society doesn’t read as many books as it watches movies and television shows, and part of it is that it is a great, big, diverse world and the public perception has a limited number of “fame” slots to assign to people. Those will go to actors, musicians, politicians, and media anchors first and there just aren’t a whole lot left over for writers. There are some writers who go against this trend, i.e. J.K. Rowling, but I can say from personal experience that George RR Martin can hold public events and have only a handful of people show up.
If you make this a requirement before you promote yourself, understand how high a bar you are setting. Of all the authors I read regularly, only one or two would be famous in the traditional sense, and that’s not because the rest are bad writers or don’t sell a lot of books.
Don’t let other people define you. People in the comments will list more possible requirements, I hope. This is not an exhaustive list, but it nevertheless is enough for me to make my point: Decide for yourself what it means to “make it.” Don’t rely overmuch on what other people think. There are plenty of professional actors whose names are never written in lights. There are surgeons who save lives against the odds who are never known outside the small towns they practice in. No one is a stranger to that awkward conversation at parties that goes something like:
“What do you do?”
“I’m a <insert title>.”
“Oh, have you ever <insert well known achievement>?”
“No.”
“Oh…” *polite smile*
It happens to everyone. Most people have bosses that decide what title goes on their business cards, and it’s important to remember that you do, too. You work for yourself. You are your boss. Be as hard on yourself as you feel is necessary, but don’t seek promotions from anyone else. Only you have that power.