You’re A “Writer, Not A Marketer”? Great! Please Keep Complaining

There’s a phrase I hear a lot: “I’m a writer, not a marketer!” I’ve heard it dozens of times over the last few years, both in person and in passing. I will hear it again, dozens of times, probably, before the next few years are out. I’d like to never hear it again.

Here’s a secret about this blog: When I do the craft posts or the inspiration posts, I’m talking to me as much as to anyone else. I struggle to understand this stuff — the trick about writing is that the concepts remain the same, but the context is always shifting; it’s like if your house were in a different location every day — and I struggle with momentum as much as anyone. But there’s one thing for which I have no sympathy, and that’s the idea that a writer deserves recognition and readership for his or her work yet should not be obligated to promote or help promote said work.

This may, in fact, be why people hate writers.

“WHAAAT?!” you gasp, clutching your lace handkerchief to your chest. “Surely no one truly hates writers?”

Yes. Yes, they do. They think writing isn’t work. They think writers just get paid to sit around and think all day. (Which is fractionally true, minus the getting-paid part.) They think writers don’t like getting their hands dirty. Which may not be true at all in a literal sense. But figuratively? Indisputable.

The only creative type you’ll ever hear say, “I’m a ____ not a marketer” is the writer. Don’t believe me? Go talk to a comedian. Or an actor. Or someone in a band. Or a visual artist. Or a filmmaker. Talk to any single person from any one of these categories and tell them why you think you shouldn’t be asked to help promote your work. Then come back to me and tell me what they said while they were punching you in the face.

I’m not sure how this all happened. Surely Mr. Dickens would have something to say about it. But somewhere along the line, there came into being the idea that a writer writes something, and then other people go about the dirty business of trying to get people to read that thing. And so it has gone for a long, long time.

But now we’re in an age where author advances are constantly being lowered and writers are expected to either help promote their books or do all the promotion. Where once a writer might have been sent across the country on a book tour, this is no longer true for 99% of authors — unless they want to pay their own way.

(Note: For a terrific and wide-ranging discussion of the various publishing arrangements out there in 2013, check out Chuck Wendig’s post on the matter and be sure to read the comments.)

This has caused a lot of consternation in the world of authors, resulting in The Dreaded Phrase and all its attendant sourpusses and frowny faces.

Hi, sad authors. Welcome to the world. First of all, take a good look again at 3 paragraphs back. For a very long time, authors expected to:

• Get paid a chunk of money
• Be sent around the country to do readings
• Have their work advertised and marketed
• Have PR work done on their behalf

Now. I’m not suggesting authors were ever overpaid. Most of them were completely underpaid. But there was a time when major publishers were doing some super-stupid things like paying six-figure advances for first-time story collections based on a single New Yorker story. (And you know what? That was a great collection. I’d be delighted to hear that it ever made back its money.) Major publishers are a weirdly delusional lot who love books and also do not know anything about money. Which sounds like most writers I know. Would you let a writer run your business? Hm.

But all those things in the bullet points up there, those cost money beyond the advance. A LOT of money. Against which royalties are measured. So a book not only has to make back the amount spent on the author’s advance, it also has to earn the amount(s) spent on those activities. Only then will an author see additional income from a book*. If you were given $50K, in other words, for your debut literary novel, that would likely be the only money you’d see from it. Meanwhile, the publisher was squirting out all this additional money to send you around the country and call newspapers in the top 20 markets and take out ads in Poets & Writers. All this, while there was no evidence that more people were reading literary fiction. I’m a big dummy in a lot of ways, but that does not sound like a foolproof business model.

(*Someone let me know if I’m wrong about marketing/promotion being counted against royalties.)

So, yeah. Advances are down and you’re being asked to set up your own book tour and sleep on friends’ couches across the country, or hire your own publicist or figure out your own ways to promote your book. And this seems unfair. You didn’t get into this to make phone calls or ask for people to be interested in things!

Again, I would like you to talk to any gigging musician or comic or independent filmmaker. Or painter! I know a painter. He’s really, really good. He sets up his gallery shows, and he loads up his car with paintings to bring to the gallery, where he then sets them up and hopes that people visiting the gallery will want to buy his paintings. Because THAT’S HOW IT’S DONE.

Bands start out playing in bars or small clubs or schools or wherever people will come watch them play. They don’t expect that, once they’ve created an album’s worth of songs, a record company will just show up, give them a bunch of money, and put them on Saturday Night Live. This can, and does, happen. Most of the time it doesn’t. That’s why it’s a notable occurrence.

More often than not, that band plays the bars and clubs and people’s parties. They pool their money and make a demo. They start handing out (or emailing) the demo. If enough people (consumers) demand the demo, maybe they start selling it. If enough of those sell, maybe they can go to a small, independent label and say, “Look what we did on our own.” Then the label might say, “We’d take a chance on that” and either redistribute the demo or record a new album for a small advance. If the album the indie label puts out sells enough, it might make the band attractive to a major. Who will give them a large advance they will likely never earn back.

That last part sounds familiar, right? Except for bands it’s kind of the pinnacle scenario. For writers, it somehow became what everyone expected would happen for them every time. And now that it’s one of the least likely scenarios, a lot of authors are suddenly too delicate to do what you have to do to reach readers. That terrible dirty work. It’s like a nuclear apocalypse has happened, and they’re still standing in their kitchens trying to make the microwave go.

Meanwhile, your pal in the band is diligently setting up Facebook invitations and sending her self-produced songs to music blogs, because to her there was no apocalypse, and there is no dirty work. There’s just the work.

(Follow a household-name comedian on Twitter. They’re still telling people where they will be doing standup, at what time, and if there are still tickets available. Because that’s the job. They know that in order for their work to function, someone else has to come complete the connection. That’s why it’s art. It requires communion.)

Let’s make a distinction, then. Maybe, for a writer, the job is only to write. But maybe, also, once that writer becomes an author the job becomes this: to write, and to be read. You want to complain that no one will read your work because no one reads anymore? You can’t, because they are, more than ever, and in more ways than ever. So what’s your excuse now?

Things have changed. Even the big publishers are expecting authors to do the lifting. They’ll put out your book, they’ll get it distributed to stores, but getting people to pick it up and read it? That’s on you, brother. And even distribution doesn’t mean what it used to. Your book can get to Barnes & Nobles around the country, but after it sits on the shelf for 4 or 5 weeks, what do you think is going to happen to it? Shelf space is limited. They have all those games and toys to stock!

It comes down, as always, to this: Do you want to be published, or do you want to be read? There are fantastic independent and college presses out there just dying for good writing to publish. They don’t give huge advances, they may not have big marketing dollars, but — oh, wait, neither do the majors anymore, unless you’re David Baldacci or Jennifer Weiner. (And that makes sense: those authors sell. They will give publishers a return on their investment. That’s not coldhearted, that’s just common sense.) Meanwhile, small publishers have been developing great relationships with independent booksellers, a lot of whom are doing great these days, even without selling action figures.

Or self-publish. It’s not what it used to be, where you’d see your weird uncle at a wedding and he’d say, “I wrote a book!” and you’d say, “That’s great!” and then he’d run out to his car and get you a copy from the trunk. There’s a lot of good writing being self-published these days. (Ahem.) And again, this is the world of authors being way behind every other creative pursuit. You know that thing called “independent film,” or that other thing called “indie rock”? I remember when the band Superchunk decided to release their fourth album, Foolish, on their own label in 1994. No one in the world said, “No! How illegitimate!” Have you enjoyed the last six Aimee Mann albums? Do you enjoy them any less knowing she put them out herself and paid for all the promotion, etc.?

But you know who Aimee Mann is because she gets out there and does the work to let you know who she is and why her thing is worth buying. As does every comedian you see on television, as does every director who makes a film. And so on.

I get it. Writers are the quiet kids, the weirdos, the introverts. But you wouldn’t be trying to get published if you weren’t trying to get read. You want to reach someone. And I’m sorry, but mom and dad can’t make all your phone calls for you anymore, because mom and dad went broke funding the books Ana Marie Cox and Herman Rosenblat never finished.

Make the calls. Set up the readings. Work with other writers. Implore your friends to help carry the message. Think of interesting ways to get people to look at your book. Or take your advance, if you’ve got one, and pay an honest-to-god publicist to do it for you. They love doing it, they’re good at it, and they are marketers. Just don’t bitch when you show up and there are three people waiting to see you read. Those might be the three most important people in your life.

Photo Credit: Djordje Petrovic via Compfight cc