Marketing

I've been a professional writer for almost fifty years. In that time, the greatest change I've seen in "the writing life" is a change in the writer's expected responsibility to market the work.

It used to be that traditional publishers took care of that. Publicists put together book store tours, which are marketing campaigns, and the writer jumped through the hoops. Now, even with traditional publishers, even with established writers, the writer is expected to carry more of the marketing burden. And if you use the new "self-publishing" tools like print-on-demand or ebooks, you are left to do ALL of the marketing because no one, except word of mouth, is out there to help you.

If you are starting a career this way, I see two unfortunate things happening: one, too much energy too soon must be devoted to marketing and not to writing, which is the only activity that will improve your skills; and two, by self-publishing early you run the risk, and embrace the temptation, of thinking you are better than you are because you've not been tested in a competitive environment. I urge my students to go the traditional route to publishing for this reason -- to get a collection of rejection slips. I think this a useful step in the writer's journey, even though today you can skip it and start publishing yourself. I think this is justified if you have validation of some kind that you're not being driven by ego and that your work actually is ready for the marketplace. But there is a lot of poor writing getting out there today, more than at any time in the history of literature.

The new tools are godsends for old farts like myself and to mid-list writers who have been stuck in their careers. In each case, validation is no longer the issue and the new tools get work out there that otherwise would be hidden in a drawer. This is good. Also the new tools permit a new marriage between work of special interest and the limited audience for it -- and I think most "serious" literary writers fit into this category.
I am constantly reminded of the course I took at UCLA, 19th C Popular Literature, in which we read the best-selling authors of that era, none of whom are remembered or read today. Learning this blew me away and gave me a new perspective on the relationship between literature and culture and a new understanding of my own place in the literary universe.

And later I was blessed with an iconic moment, a reader discovering an old essay of mine in a dusty library basement and being so inspired by it that he wrote an entire book on the subject (English Composition As A Happening, scroll down). This is exactly the relationship I want with a reader: to be discovered and inspirational. And if it happened once, it can happen again. So Sirc liberated me in a sense, gave me confidence that I was fine doing what I was doing.

There are two kinds of writers. Most writers who write about writing note this. I cal them writing inside-out and writing outside-in. Stephen King called them writing for yourself and writing for others. Marketing is always about writing for others. Serious literary writing is always about writing for yourself. And the tension between the two is as old as literature itself.

The new digital tools are amazing. It is great that more writers can reach more readers than ever. But writers whose work will never find a large audience, writers not destined to be popular, should not get too distracted or, heaven forbid, depressed by the dazzling sales figures being thrown around about Kindle books and other new modes. Be true to yourself. And use the new tools accordingly.

P.S. The times are ripe for someone to write a popular book about addiction to data. I haven't looked but it's likely already been done. As Pascal said, all the world's problems follow from an individual's inability to sit quietly in one room.