Progress Report!

In the five months since my last entry, things have moved on apace. I'll be publishing a set of linked vampire-themed stories in time for Christmas, hopefully by the end of October. The text of my first novel, which I hope to publish around Easter 2022, was very well received by an editor. She asked questions and made suggestions that have made me think, but in a positive way. In the meantime, I have some professionally-taken author photos in stock now, and a set of professional design options for the cover of the short stories to select and finalise.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about my Amazon keywords and search terms, and have determined that, for these stories, the most likely market is American e-book readers looking for Scottish horror or vampire stories, and I've built a lot around that. I'll report back on this in due course. I went into this knowing that substantial revenue isn't the most likely outcome, but I see no reason not to aim for some.

In the background, though, other things have been on my mind, and they are all linked, one way or another, to Samuel R. Delany, whose On Writing I have on order. The context is me thinking (or overthinking) about the point at which a retirement hobby becomes a much more serious endeavour for me. The consequent question is: at what point do I become comfortable with being described, or describing myself, as a writer?

There are a lot of aspects of the modern cult of the writer that make me uncomfortable, just as I'm uncomfortable with the - predominantly American - trend towards academisation of writing via the MFA (and the parallel rise of the MBA and similar masters degrees). I see this a lot on social media - something close to fetishisation of writing and the writer, and I certainly see it in the hotshots who publish several novels a year as eBooks then go back at a leisurely pace to sort out spelling and plot issues - but hey! they're 'published authors', right? 

Charles Stross once ranted about misconceptions of the life of a writer - I've just reread it and his payoff about it being a job rather than a lifestyle is something that bears constant repetition. Even at my amateur level I've felt something at the fringes of the same: I've spent the bulk of this year revising rather than writing anything new, and there have been days when it has certainly been a job rather than a retirement activity.

In this context I came across something from Delany that said 'If you're going to do it, be serious about it, man.' He also reported poet Marie Ponsot saying of James Baldwin that 'If [he] thought he was anywhere near as good a writer as I think he is, he would be a much better writer.' In large part, both of these relate to craft and application, but they also relate to attitude.

I've said consistently over the past two and a half years that I have no problem with working, I just didn't want a job. That is still my core attitude, but I need to work out how to apply it to where I am now.

If I let my ego accept the praise I've been receiving (and it's nice to have the ego stroked from time to time), then I have to start taking it even more seriously than I already do. As Stross suggests, there are misconceptions abounding about a life spent in smoking jackets, casting enchanted words of wisdom onto the page while a servant mixes the perfect martini, but it is an honourable trade to which to aspire and work through an apprenticeship. Perhaps the milestone that marks the transition is the first sale of a book to someone whom I don't already know, even if (or perhaps especially if) they leave a 1-star review.

Ownership and Control

I've spent a lot of time since January revising things I've written (about 300,000 words). The process was more intense than I anticipated, but I'm confident that what I've come out with is stronger. There is a little way to go with it, but my mind is turning both to creating new stuff and figuring out what to do with the things I've written.

This post is to summarise my thinking so far, and also, because I'm going to email the link to a couple of friends, to form the basis for feedback to move my thinking on. My thinking has been conditioned a lot by the thoughts of musicians in analogous situations, especially 'legacy' artists with substantial followings, but adrift from commercial music companies.

I've been here before when thinking about creativity.

My model for this, oddly enough, is something that Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh said a lot about how the Grateful Dead went about creating music. Garcia talked about finding the form beyond chaos; Lesh talked about the search for improvised epiphanies. It's why I often say my first drafts need "less narrative and more weirdness." To the extent that I'm finding a voice, if I can say that without pretence, it is in stripping away my expectations of a narrative to let the story come through. Elsewhere I've described this as looking for something in the story to reveal itself to me, the ghost in the story, the presence behind the narrative, and then finding a way to make it manifest to a putative reader.

But this isn't about creativity now, it's about distribution and marketing of the end product.

 ***

I'm now certain in my own mind that I will self-publish. Why? Various reasons.

A fundamental one is ownership and control. I watched Rick Beato's interview with Steve Vai where he mentions a piece of advice Frank Zappa gave him: own your publishing. Steve then discusses the importance to him of all revenue coming into his companies, and his insistence that his suppliers or service providers invoice those companies for payment such that all payments are authorised by him, with no intermediaries having anything to do with the money. This contrasts with what was, and remains, the usual model for musical artists signing to a label, whereby managers deal with the money and rights without reference to the artist, often with disastrous results.

This seems to me to be at least somewhat analogous to publishing.

I also had thoughts arising from another Rick Beato interview, this time with guitarist Joe Satriani, in which Satriani gave his thoughts on streaming and digital distribution channels and how he has made them work for him.

I like classic, physical things: I listen to records, cassettes and CDs in preference to streaming most of the time; I like fountain pens and paper journals and analogue film cameras; and I like books. This is a visceral, subjective thing, but, I've realised, it can also function as a preconception or prejudice. There is a romance to the physicality of a book, to its smell, to its weight when reading, to the book as a thing. Typically, of course, books come from publishers and, in the general case, it's therefore necessary to have a relationship with a publisher, either directly or through the agent as intermediary.

This makes sense when the primary technology is the paper book and things are built around distributing that product. It makes less sense when the physical book ceases to be the only option, and other means of distribution direct to the reader are available. Much as I dislike how they operate as a company, this is where Amazon score.

I don't agree with those who reject the value of publishers or agents, but I do think the relationship has to change, and I also think it looks to be better for me to do this as a cottage industry from my shed rather than chase my tail trying to break into an industry.

If the primary objective is to get my words to readers and I can achieve that in real time by formatting and uploading the writing to a server, with full control of any income and associated expenditure, then that must be prima facie attractive unless the industry can provide some counterbalancing advantage, including an appropriate commercial structure. As it is, publishing looks like an archaeological site of old technologies and business models. (I'm exaggerating to make a point, of course). 

My own preference for the analogue has for some time blocked my thinking on this--I've been hooked on the sentimental value of the physical. Do I want hardback copies of my stuff on my shelf? Yes, of course; is that the be all and end all? No.

***

There are lots of reasons why writers don't get picked up by 'traditional' publishing. Many of these are entirely sound commercial decisions; many are aesthetic; sometimes (mostly, I guess) it’s because the writing is somewhere between mediocre and dreadful. I'm OK with that, but I also think it's irrelevant. What counts is getting the story to readers who (a) love it, (b) think it's OK or (c) hate it, in the hope that a subset will stick with it and let others know about it.

When I did a project recently listening only to music released in 1970, something interesting happened: I became conscious that my tastes were changing, and the things that made my ears perk up were things I'd previously ignored or dismissed, and often this was to do with where jazz met the avant garde. The culminating surprise was when I listened to both John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and Yoko Ono's album of the same name, and preferred Yoko's by a long distance.

Yoko's album was resolutely uncommercial, as was most of the jazz and a lot of the rock music out on the fringes, but that doesn't really matter to me because I connected with it. Nor does it matter, in the abstract, that the audience for it was small while almost everyone else hated it: what matters is that there was an audience.

I make no particular claims for my writing, but I do believe that if I like it, and people whose opinions I trust like it, then other people will too. What I need to do is find them and tempt them to buy my stuff and read it. That is to say, it revolves around marketing and distribution.

I am not blasé about looking for best quality or editing or creating something I'm happy with, it boils down to the worker owning the means of production. And, in the long run, it isn't about money either. That isn't to say I don't want to be paid, it's to accept that the market I'm writing for might be as niche as me.

***

Distribution and marketing naturally brings me to the dread subject of social media. I have two problems with social media: the first is my dislike of the platforms themselves, especially FaceBook; the second is that I mute and avoid writers and creators who use social media solely for marketing and 'engagement'. It follows that, if social media is unavoidable as a means of discovering an audience, and vice versa, then I need to find a way of using it that is effective without cheesing people off. This includes YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, as well as a dedicated website.

***

So this is where my thoughts are turning now. Once I'm satisfied that the product is right, which involves outlay on editing, cover design, etc., how do I get it out there in a crowded market in an effective way, building up a readership who will be happy to look at other stuff I've yet to write? 

Plan Update

I mentioned a few posts back that I'd concluded that self-publishing was the way to go. I'm not rushing, but that's still where I'm going. I'm working up what my options are, bearing in mind that there'll be upfront costs.

I've revisited my original vamp stories, which a year ago I would have said were done, and revised them quite extensively with a second pass about to come. I've also got clean prints of my two existing novels to work on. The writing work-in-progress is on the shelf while the revising/editing gets done, but inevitably the work-in-progress will be improved as a consequence, so that's OK.

Costs will be editing and cover design, primarily. Having the text as good as I can currently make it ought to mitigate editing costs if and when I engage a third party who doesn't know me.

I've scratched the surface of marketing ideas but have more to work out there. I have a horrible feeling I may have to create an author page on Facebook, a site I'd rather have nothing to do with. Probably GoodReads as well :-/ These are sites I actively avoid as a private individual and as a reader, but they appear to be where at least some of the action is. The driving factor is those start-up costs: the only way I'll make any dent in them is through sales, which means going where the audience is.

I also think, by the way, that my post of 22 October last year was misconceived.

Anyway: watch this space.