Don’t Publish That Book
If there’s a common flaw in self-publishing, it’s that too many books are published too soon. Experienced voices across the publishing world continually advise self-publishers to get help with editing, and not just copyediting but story editing too. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to properly edit your own work. But the siren call of the Kindle store is often too seductive. The urge to finish your first draft, chuck it through a spellchecker and release it in to the wild is often far too strong for eager writers to resist.
But resist you must. Not resisting results in your name being married, permanently, to sub-standard work which doesn’t show off your talents to their best. Do you really want, in five or ten years time, to look back on your early work and cringe? More to the point, do you really want your first act of publishing to result in the irreversible blotting of your copybook with your potential fans?
Read the rest Forbes
I’m a little confused about the “look back and cringe” part. Isn’t the glory of digital that you can go back in endlessly and tweak fix and change? I uploaded a revised novella last night. Found some changes I needed to make. I woke at 3, saw Amazon had already cleared it, uploaded the fixes and by 9 this morning, all was right. Now it has a new title and a new cover and a Table of Contents.
Okay. One man’s cringe may be another woman’s opportunity.
Hat tip Meryl Yourish
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
There’s fixing spelling errors or a mangled sentence, or adding a TOC… or then there’s adding chapters to a novel, or revising or somesuch, which I don’t like. If the same title is a different book next month than this, it’s confusing.
Amazon will send a revised copy to anyone who purchased an original if the changes are extensive enough. But as Joe Konrath says–is it Joe?–there are always new customers coming onboard. They didn’t see the original. These aren’t like paper books and few people will go to the trouble of comparing the 2 versions.
As for confusing the versions, Amazon suggests writer note that history somewhere the customer will notice prior to the sale.
There is a new free book put out by amazon that explains everything quite well.
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Book-Kindle-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341415279&sr=8-1&keywords=building+your+kindle
I don’t think she’s talking about books that may need a tweak here or there though. As I read it, she means books that are, by any reasonable measure, not ready for prime time. In the comments of the post on the stigma attached to self-publishing, people talked about the need to strive for quality and professionalism. Same with the post about whether we need to work with editors (duh). No one likes it when it sounds as though someone is wagging a finger when they talk to us, but I didn’t find much wrong (or new) in what she said.
Most authors who’ve been around long enough tend to talk about looking back and cringing at their early published work, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have published in the first place. They were paid for it, so it must have had something. Self-publishing is no different. But I think she over-estimates the “permanent damage”. Where self-publishing has the advantage, if in ten or twenty years your first published works are scaring away customers, you can always unpublish them, make them free, or put them into a collection titled, The Early Stinky Work (Read at Your Own Risk). If your early work belongs to a traditional publisher and you hit it big after so many years, those old books will be repackaged and resold without giving any indication that they’re old work, not the author’s best, and the author had no say in the matter. (Personally, I’d rather give something away for free or warn readers about what how bad the work is rather than risk alienating one potential reader. Of course, this is easy for me to say, since I haven’t published yet.)
Also, she seems to be doing what Dean Wesley Smith calls Treating Each Book Like an Event. If your goal is to have one book make your career, then go ahead and polish to your heart’s content. Odds are, that one book isn’t going to do anything but whither and fade into obscurity. But if your goal is to have a long, storied career, a professional novelist who produces on a regular basis, then you have to learn to finish a work, call it the best you can do at the time, and move on. (I’m currently working on a novel, and when I finish writing, I’m giving it to a beta reader, not an editor, and then I’m going to start writing on the next book. If the beta reader gives me any other response than, “Who shat out this turd?” I’m going to publish it. I have extensive notes for about 20 novels (10 or 12 stand alones and three different series). Heck, even if the first five or ten novels are bad, I can withdraw them, and still have enough books to build a career. And if the first five or ten books can find an audience, then my career will start all that much earlier. It’s a win-win.)
Well said in reference to “permanent damage.” That stood out to me as well. New York gives the author far less leeway in terms of time and results, and I know of many traditionally pubbed authors who were required to change to a pseudonym because of it. Say an Indie does somehow miraculously “damage” their name. What’s to stop them from using the same trick the big boys always have. Pick a new name. Start over.
But I suspect most Indies could come up with a far more creative plan than that.
“But if your goal is to have a long, storied career, a professional novelist who produces on a regular basis, then you have to learn to finish a work, call it the best you can do at the time, and move on.”
Very well said. I’ve seen too many people who wouldn’t publish their work because it continually needed tweaks. I’ll bet I can tweak in perpetuity and never get it out. The enemy of good is perfect.
I agree. Sort of one of my pet peeves. First, I agree, a writer should do their best with the resources at their disposal to put out the most readable, engaging, clean of typos and grammar mistakes book as possible. But the falicies I see on this type of things are the following:
1. A truly bad book won’t be seen by very many people. We live in a world of billions. A small handful of readers that unknowingly downloaded your horrible book isn’t going to ruin your writing career short of it going viral as an example of what not to do.
2. An engaging story trumps everything, as we’ve seen again and again on the best seller lists. Books regular sell well that break all the rules for writing. If the story is compelling, many people will put up with a lot to read it. Naturally we want to put as few obstacles for readers to trip over, but they aren’t going to ruin a career if the author knows how to write a good story.
3. In the rare event that such a self-published story did sully an author’s name, like a viral example of what not to do, by-lines are a dime a dozen. You practically can’t run out of names to write by.
What will ruin a career is not writing and getting better.
I do disagree on one point. I think it is almost always helpful to get copy editing for typos and grammar mistakes. And I even appreciate pointing out any plot holes or other issues. After all, I can decide whether they are worth addressing or not. But an external editor for a story, unless they are very good, can’t preserve my voice. That side trip that has nothing to do with the story from an outside perspective, might be what defines me as a writer and voice. Maybe logically it should be cut, but only I can really decide that from my gut, not from purely rationalistic assumptions based on the rules of good story telling.
Frey still uses his name…
kah-ZING!
That pretty much says it all – doesn’t it?
Frey has made himself infamous instead of famous – but I bet he cries all the way to the bank.
Warren, I really like your reply. I also admire that you’ve got so many books planned out! I once read a post at Dean Wesley Smith’s site about being a writer versus an author. I think you’re talking about being a writer.
I also plan to use a beta-reader, if I can find one, and get feedback on the story that way. However, I will get copy editing done to help tighten up my prose and make sure it’s all correct.
It’s best to keep writing rather than get stuck forever on perfecting a single book.
I have to agree.
If you come to self publishing, bright shiny and new, as I did, you do not know what you do not know. In particular, you do not know that the author is blind to the text, he sees only the story and skates over the text, errors and all. I uploaded, and started to notice the odd error, corrected and re-uploaded. It got tedious. It was after my 22nd upload that I noticed an error – a glaring error – in the first three words. It was only then that I realised I had a profound problem with editing my own work.If I was unable to sell a work of the standard I expected to sell my the reader wasn’t buying a work of the standard he reasonably expected to buy. That’s a chastening and embarrassing thought.
I’m undeterred, but I’m working out a way to self-edit and minimise the pitfalls. Changing font, printing off, reading out loud all help. Asking a friend to read it – forget about it. I can’t afford a professional edit so, from now on, once my work is of a standard fit to submit for editing it’ll go in the drawer for a year while I get on with the next story, then I’ll pull it out and read it with fresh eyes.
It’s also true that the more you practise, the fewer errors you make, and the better you become at editing.
Look for amateur editors — there will be a market for people who can copyedit, and who may work for cheap and credit in the book so they can put it in their resume/portfolio.
This is tedious and people screech when I suggest it, but–read the piece backwards. The narrative flow is broken, so you see the typos, the repeated words, the broken verbs, and the cliches. Honest, it will save you twenty two uploads.
I do this with property descriptions in deeds. It has caught many an error.
I see her point, but it’s kind of an unhealthy anxiety disorder kind of attitude.
We no longer live in a world where you can control your image. You can’t hide until you can present a perfect image to the world.
And if you try to do that, you shoot yourself in the foot in terms of your ability to reach that point of excellence.
The act of publication is no longer — oh, how do I describe it? — no longer this tiny, shining star on the top of the Christmas tree. Rare and permanent and perfect. It’s now pedestrian. It encompasses a much larger aspect of the writing life/field/world.
Publication is now performance. If you want to be a great musician, you don’t wait to perform until you are a master. Performance is a part of your learning process from the very beginning — the third grade recital concert.
“Publication is now performance. If you want to be a great musician, you don’t wait to perform until you are a master. Performance is a part of your learning process from the very beginning…”
Great way of framing the issue! I’ve often equated writing and music, frequently when talking to someone caught in that trap of never ending rewrites and revision. I love the way you put this.
I tend to agree that I’ve read plenty of e-books that didn’t seem ready to release.
But.
The #1 best-selling e-book on Amazon right now has almost as many one-star reviews for bad writing and editing as five-star reviews for story. If the writer had sat on it trying to make it perfect, they wouldn’t be a millionaire today.
Kris Rusch had a good post on perfection in writing recently, I think it was linked here a few days ago.
A writer will never be able to create the “perfect” work.
But there are plenty of works out there that could’ve used another pass for polish or just to smooth out some rough edges. A line or two here or there can make a big difference.
Take pride in your work–do the best you can with the resources available. If you can’t hire a copyeditor, ask a trusted buddy. Take a week off and then go back and reread it JUST to catch goofy punctuation. I think revising again and again or rewriting the same story over and over isn’t helpful; catching spelling errors or typos or even simple clunky sentences can do a world of good. And then move on to the next project.
Checking for simple errors makes you the professional you aim to be, not an amateur the hoity-toity assumes you are.
In fact, there are a very few perfect books kicking around, but they’re rare. I bet there’ve been a few perfect musical performances too, but the fact that they’re rare shouldn’t keep us from trying.
But a musician who spent his life perfecting a single song wouldn’t likely be called a professional.
Honestly, everything I write is the best I can do at the time. If I look back later and cringe that is a GOOD thing. It means I learned how to write a better story.
Yup.
You can modify the book after the fact all you want, but you can’t modify the memory of those who read the pre-modified version. If they’ve decided you’re a hack, you’ll never change that and that means you’ve lost a potential fan. A professional (as in someone who is mindful of behaving like a professional) will not rely on the revision process to save themselves.
Honestly folks, if they read your work and decide you’re a hack… they will forget you.
We’re not delicate little flowers who need to be kept in a greenhouse. We can be as tough as actors. Pick any great actor out there and look through the films they made before they became stars. The better the actor, the more likely you will find real stinkers in their first works.
Of course, if you write a boring book, and spend years at it, and then spend more and more years at writing only one or two books, that first book will have more sway in how readers judge you. If you write a few stinkers, but grow up to write lots of great books, people will actually collect the stinkers and grin wryly at how even the great YOU could write them. (And they will ask for your autograph on them, too. I’ve seen it happen.)
First books are just the baby pictures of life.
Write a whole bunch of hack work, people sigh and shrug, they may read it if you can tell a story, or they may never look at your work again.
But
Then you write one truly great novel, it gets out there, people start talking about it,
and all is forgiven. You are a literary star and everything else you wrote, all the hack work, becomes grist for the literati’s mill.
I don’t like the social media world much, I don’t like timeline, or the fact that everything I have ever posted anywhere on the web is still out there, somewhere, waiting to trip me up.
But I ain’t alone. We all live in the same space. So the culture, the social mores will change and youthful, or naive, indiscretions will be forgiven.
Because everybody connected to the internet will need the same slack cut to them at some point.
We’re all living in the same glasshouse. Ain’t nobody gonna be throwing stones when it’s their pane that might get cracked (or put on the onion.)
ETA: the double negative is deliberate, because there’s always one, but the world-wide-webians will soon learn to ignore them.
You’re on fire today, love your comments. It makes beautiful sense and yet, the fragile old ego still kicks against it for fear of being ridiculed or exposed as a pretender. But that’s my problem.
Well, reading the comments, I think I have a minority opinion here.
I think she’s got a really good point. Not everyone is getting the story editing they need, much less the copy editing they need. It is very, very hard to evaluate your own work, and it is really important to get a good editor!
As for putting out an early work that’s not ready to see the light of day, why would you want to? You can permanently alienate a reader who might have come back and bought your whole body of work.
That happened to me, I bought a book by an author who is charming and great at self-promotion, and a bunch of her writer friends wrote 5 star reviews. Her book was really disappointing, and even though I know she’ll improve, I’ve pretty much lost interest. I sort of felt tricked, although I know that wasn’t deliberate on her part, but still. Not really interested; I’ll remember her name, and she’s off my list.
It is also very risky to put out works that are not high quality in terms of public image. People are risking alienating customers from self-published books as a whole. I have a friend who won’t buy self-published anymore because of the poor quality books he read. He’d rather pay a higher price. My telling him that there are wonderful self-published books out there is not convincing him, he’s been scared away.
It’s important to remember that it is very early in this whole revolution. What people think works now, may not work later. Putting a bunch of low-priced books on the market may be a good tactic now, but if consumers decide they are not interested, it will stop being a good tactic.
We need to be careful.
I think most of us here would agree with you and the article that self-published authors are doing themselves a disservice by not ensuring a level of quality. Some readers are put off by typos and the like, or poorly crafted stories. I’ve even written an article on the seven most common mistakes self-published authors make, and one of them was just this point, that too many don’t take the time to have it properly edited. Some are just looking for the quick buck, and will throw anything out, that could be their first draft. Those people, however, are not looking to learn and grow in general. They treat writing as a get rich quick scheme.
I would agree, there is no reason to not put out your best, give due diligence, etc. I’m not in the business to cause readers to turn away from my books because of typos.
That said, such a book isn’t likely to do that much damage to a writing career. There are billions of potential readers out there, and over time you will lose some, no matter your quality. But that won’t stop you from being successful.
So I agree, put out your best stuff. I agree, many self-pubbers do put their work out too early. I agree you don’t want to lose anymore customers than need be because of it. I just don’t agree that the damage is going to be that big in the long run. Most of those bad books will rarely be seen by anyone, until they become popular, and then it doesn’t really matter.
“I would agree, there is no reason to not put out your best, give due diligence, etc.”
But the poster didn’t say that you should put in your due diligence and publish now, she said you shouldn’t publish even your best work now, because you’ll be better later.
You’ll always be better later.
I agree with this statement:
“It’s important to remember that it is very early in this whole revolution.”
Yep, exactly. And as with all revolutions, you only succeed if you stop worrying about breaking the rules of the old guard.
However, it isn’t like this has never happened before, or even that this exact same change hasn’t happened in other areas in the past few decades. (Publishing always tends to be behind the times.) The models all say, across the board, once the cat is out of the bag, you have to stop worrying about the bag, or you will be left behind.
Think about this:
When you say you’ve crossed an indie writer off you list forever and ever and ever….. And how long has that been? Are you sure you will remember that author’s name ten years from now? And that if, ten years from now, you’re hearing about how wonderful that author’s work is, and how it fits so exactly with what you like to read, you still won’t try it because you didn’t like that book you read a decade earlier?
We all see a bad film, or read a bad book, or have a bad meal or experience with a retailer, and we SWEAR up and down and sideways that we’ll remember this forever and never deal with that person/writer/business again! And sometimes we don’t, but even that’s usually because we don’t like their later stuff either.
If they’re any good, and they produce something we really want, we get over it.
And most people don’t even make that distinction. If you aren’t a book blogger or a writer or someone who interacts within the industry, you don’t notice who publishes stuff, and you don’t remember the names of books or authors you don’t like. You don’t read past the first page if it’s illiterate trash.
And even if you did…
It’s still something an author should ignore, because an author cannot develop if he or she is writing defensively. Writers have to go through apprentice and journeyman stages to get to master stage. And they’ll never get there if they don’t do work for real all along the way.
If a writer wants to be a master, he or she has to ignore the readers who insist on reading only masters. Even if you have to give up on those readers forever. You’ll never make master if you don’t get in harness and be a working writer first – before you’re what they approve of.
This:
A great deal more cogent than my effort further up. That’s what I get for commenting without reading to the end of the comments.
Actually, guys, I sort of both agree and disagree with you.
I guess what’ll I say is this: I agree a writer shouldn’t wait until they are a “master”. I agree that if your editor (that you trust), your critique group (if you have a good one), strangers you market tested your book on, and/or your gut tell you it’s ready, don’t let self-doubt stop you. When it’s time, it’s time.
But, I am saying, wait until then. There’s no rush here. There’s no fire. When you publish a book, you really need to be sure it’s good. It may not be the best you will ever write, hopefully it won’t be, but it should be good. Don’t hurt your reputation.
Because, Camille, I think you’re under-estimating the reading public. They do remember authors. Even more so now with e-books. They store authors in their Kindle (or whatever). They can look it up. It’s not like they’ve given away the book and will never remember.
Will they forgive you if you write a bad book, and then write a great book? Of course. But why risk it?
Why put a book out there you are not sure of? Making sure your book is really good is not doing something just because it’s always been done that way. It’s called having integrity as an artist.
And if you’re going to charge money for something, it’s called having integrity in that you know what you are offering is of value. You want consumers to trust that when you take their money, they will get something good in return.
(You don’t know me, Camille, but it really made me smile to to think someone thought I am was touting the way publishers have done them. I am vehemently anti-N.Y. Publishing tradition).
I just think self-publishers need to be smart. Don’t rush it.
One last point. Even if your nerves are made of steel, be careful of other people who may be more vulnerable. Putting out a book that gets very poor reviews or very low sales can damage people’s confidence as a writer. It can stop people from writing anything else. That’s a terrible loss, because it’s possible if they had waited, they might have had a better experience and continued to write.
So, I agree you shouldn’t wait forever, I’m just saying, wait until you feel really good about the book.
One last point about underestimating the public’s memory.
Don’t underestimate word of mouth. It can go both ways. When readers read something they don’t like, they spread the word.
I completely support indie publishing. It is the future, and a future I wholeheartedly welcome. And I support every writer on this thread! Go for it! You’re brave and forging a path.
Just be careful. Slow down. Don’t rush. That’s all I’m saying.
It’s always good to not be in a rush. I agree with you there.
But honestly, I actually am arguing with you here because I think you’re underestimating the public. The public does not waste their time on this stuff. Only writers, and publishing groupies actually obsess about this stuff.
(You’re also underestimating writers: if you write one bad book and then write a good book? Seriously, that’s not a career. I’m talking twenty or thirty books here.)
But I’m not speaking as a writer here, or even a publishing person. I’m speaking as someone who has been watching this phenomenon not just in publishing but in film, music and restaurants for years – particularly on the web.
People will bitch about what’s bothering them now, but they don’t really care about things they don’t like. There are way way way too many things they don’t like out there. It’s not worth their time. Ordinary people are smart — they spend their braincells on things they like.
This has been proven in online studies too. Think about this: They did studies on several social networking sites where people vote and rate pages. (Things like Squidoo or Hubpages, and a few others.) What they found was that when it comes to a page’s long term success, negative attention did a page just as much good as positive attention.
Short term, sure, it would cause the page problems, but long term, all attention was good.
Why? Because there are two aspects of word-of-mouth. One is immediate. You recommend a book to me and I buy it. You tell me not to bother with something and I don’t bother with it. But the effect of that only lasts a very short time.
The other aspect of word of mouth is familiarity. Familiarity works very differently from recommendation. People don’t use it as a judgment tool as much, because they don’t remember exactly what was good or bad about it. Because people are not dumb, they know that their memories are faulty, and also that their interests change. And they know one other thing (and this is where real readers are way smarter than people in publishing): they know that if something has been around for long enough for them to become familiar with it, it has to have been interesting to somebody.
That’s just instinct, but it’s an incredibly good one — because they are absolutely right. Bad writing may get a little negative buzz, but seriously, people aren’t going to talk about it for months or years. Good stuff, on the other hand, will be talked about. Writers who write something worth reading will be encouraged, and will write more.
So familiarity is actually an excellent way to sort anything in an “abundance” universe (like the web or YouTube or modern publishing) — if it ain’t familiar, ignore it until it becomes so. Once it is familiar, look closer to see if you’re interested.
Now, given what you’ve said, I am guessing that you don’t have experience training successful writers, artists, and entrepreneurs. You seem to be taking the reader’s point of view, but you don’t see what happens to the writers who do as you suggest (and those who don’t).
Your instinct that says it’s bad to be in a rush is half the story — you are absolutely right about half the picture. That half is the crazy non-writing stuff that writers do to promote their book. They should not be in a hurry to be a success, because all they do is ramp up the displeasure of their audience when they make a mistake.
However, the part you are missing is that if you want to make a living at this, if you want to be a great writer, you HAVE to shake off the whole fear of mistakes and consequences thing altogether. You have to learn to take the leap from the lion’s mouth, or you’ll never make it at all.
I did want to address one of your points separately, because it was sort of a side point, and thus was a little buried (and on reading it, it makes me reassess the angle you’re coming from — you ARE addressing some of the idea of a writer’s development):
“Even if your nerves are made of steel, be careful of other people who may be more vulnerable. Putting out a book that gets very poor reviews or very low sales can damage people’s confidence as a writer. It can stop people from writing anything else. That’s a terrible loss, because it’s possible if they had waited, they might have had a better experience and continued to write.”
This is really a separate issue, because it isn’t about writing quality at all. It’s about emotional readiness — and that’s a WHOLE different ball of wax.
For one thing, not publishing won’t help you there at all. Going into a tough critique group has destroyed more writers than any number of book failures or readers giving bad reviews. Just having a mentor who tells it like it is about the publishing world (doesn’t even read or comment on the student’s work) can devastate some people.
If the original post (or anybody in the comments) had said, “Don’t let anybody else rush you,” I would agree 100 percent.
Ironically, actual publishing can be the best way to build a fragile writer’s confidence. Real readers are not nearly as harsh as teachers and critique partners and other writers. (It has been said that one instructor at Clarion used to comment on student manuscripts by setting fire to them in critique.)
But if you get a bad review, your crit buds will back right off and tell you “Hey, you should see the review I got!” Or someone will say “Famous Unnamed Writer set fire to my story.” Then someone who has been around for a while will pull out his file of several hundred rejections and read off a few of the most stinging.
When you realize that even Famous Unnamed Writer had horrible rejections and super nasty reviews, that is what builds confidence. But you only really hear those stories when you are yourself stinging from a rejection or bad review of your own.
Camille, I agree with alot of your comments on this blog that I’ve seen.
But I’m afraid I don’t agree with either point that you’re making here. I think readers are quite loyal to writers, both in a positive and a negative sense. If they don’t like a writer, they remember.
I also think the idea that writers need to build thick skins comes out of the old publishing model, and I don’t agree with it. I think some writers are sensitive and need a more nurturing approach to write their best work.
However, I think at this point, I see enough difference in our basic assumptions that I don’t feel it will be useful to continue the debate. Let’s just agree to disagree on this particular issue.
Yeah, I think we’re actually much closer in agreement than you think, but the devil is in the details.
I won’t argue further with your points, but I will clarify only because I think you misunderstood (although I understand why you did — what you thought I meant is certainly a common belief).
I did not say that sensitive writers don’t have to be nurtured and should be forced to get tough.
I said that there are really mean people out there; people who should not be mean, and who don’t benefit the writer at all.
And that this soul crushing element is much much worse within the writing community than it is with the general public. (And when I say writing community, I also mean Indies.) So not self-publishing your book won’t protect you at all from that. Going to critique groups and getting feedback from writers is like jumping straight into the fire. Self-publishing and learning on your own is actually a gentler and more nurturing situation, and it has worked for many very shy writers.
Self-publishing too early can actually be a great way to gain confidence before you face the meanies in life. It’s like training wheels.
@Mira (replying where I can, so no idea where it will pop up)
I think it’s the ‘size’ of the audience that is the main thing here. I’m going to pull some numbers out of the air (and choose ones that make the calculation easier) but I don’t think I will be that far out and it won’t really matter when all is said and done. I could be two significant places out and it won’t matter.
Lets say that half the world’s population have some sort of internet access about 3 000 000 000 people. (3 billion)
Lets say a third of them can read English, either as a first language or because most countries put English speaking countries to shame when it comes to foreign languages.
that’s 1 000 000 000 people (1 billion)
lets say half of them will read an e-book, either they are already, or they will.
that’s 500 000 000 people (five hundred million)
Lets say that one fifth of them read a particular genre
that’s 100 000 000 people (one million)
lets say one tenth of them will like a particular writer style
that’s 10 000 000 people (ten million)
Lets say that half of them see those dodgy books, find out via word of mouth, or in other ways learn to associate that writers name with dross that they will never buy.
that’s 5 000 000 people (five million)
and that still leaves a five million person prospective audience for that writer’s work.
I’ve heard people say that a writer needs about 10 000 fans to have a career. Ten thousand people who will buy anything they read is a big enough audience to quit the day job (if the writer can keep producing new stuff at a reasonable rate — say two-three new novels/novellas a year)
that is 0.005% of the possible market for their book.
it could half a percent or even 5 percent and there is still a HUGE audience out there.
Territories will fall, sales tax etc will be corrected, because the audience will want it all sorted.
Brave new (and interconnected) world.
In that market, a few dodgy novels (that are edited and all the rest — nobody should skimp on that because it disrespects your readers) won’t make a ha’penth of difference. You can’t gain audience with books you are afraid to show them.
IMHO
Lol @ Forbes. Give me a break! This trash is just a play on people’s egos. What a joke! It must have really been a slow news day. I’ll be looking forward to their piece on abortion, gay marriage or some type of sexual transgression next week. :p
“An engaging story trumps everything…”
Since 50 came out, I’ve seen this opinion a lot and it’s about time tbh. Write a perfect sentence without something behind it and you’ve failed the reader. Good story is the most important thing.
I would love to map out the opinions vs. number of books published. I’m betting those with 10+ novels worth of books are rolling their eyes; those with less… well… they’re taking it seriously, me thinks.
@Steve
You said: “(books) that are edited and all the rest — nobody should skimp on that because it disrespects your readers”
Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. And in that, if you edit, for both content and copy, your book won’t be dodgy.
I’m not saying anyone should be afraid to show their books! I’m suggesting that you be confident of your book before you show it. That’s a very different thing.
Then we have reached a point of concurrence
Awesome!
I think that’s two for two in our debates!
Yup. Long may such wondrously digressive excursions into mutual agreement continue
Hear, hear!