It’s such a frustrating sector! I think the public usually thinks that published authors make a ton of money because, you know, they’re published, so they must have made it, right? When in reality, there’s a few really big names who indeed manage to live off of their successful published works, and they manage this because they got lucky, or had the right connections, or hit that very sweet spot of right time/right place, or have been in the business for so many years and came to fame when this sector was still working in a very different way…
One of my RL friends has self-published a few books, because she just loves to write and get her stuff out there, but she’s also been very frustrated about it because it’s all about self-promoting on social media, hitting just the right tone to be interesting, as you’ve said. Publishers don’t want to do this anymore, they want an author with a pre-build social media following or something, who is super engaging and fun and quirky, but not too quirky – or mysterious and dark, but not too dark, or… etc. etc.
And there are so so many writers, literature and plays and scripts and whatnot, who are really great but are getting by on scraps somehow, because they must, because even though being a published author is lauded as such a great thing, it’s not paid accordingly except for some really select cases.
I’ve bought books of fic authors when they promoted them and I thought they sounded good. But I wouldn’t just buy them because, you know? If I like their fic and then they publish something that is completely different, a genre I really don’t like, or a factual text about a subject that doesn’t interest me, it would feel like a pity buy, as you’ve said, and that doesn’t really help all that much, in the grand scheme of things. Because I won’t post about it, leave a good review on Good Reads or whatever and so the author won’t benefit besides the pitiful money they get from that one buy.
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carisma_sensei
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Date: 2022-12-01 06:06 pm (UTC)One of my RL friends has self-published a few books, because she just loves to write and get her stuff out there, but she’s also been very frustrated about it because it’s all about self-promoting on social media, hitting just the right tone to be interesting, as you’ve said. Publishers don’t want to do this anymore, they want an author with a pre-build social media following or something, who is super engaging and fun and quirky, but not too quirky – or mysterious and dark, but not too dark, or… etc. etc.
And there are so so many writers, literature and plays and scripts and whatnot, who are really great but are getting by on scraps somehow, because they must, because even though being a published author is lauded as such a great thing, it’s not paid accordingly except for some really select cases.
I’ve bought books of fic authors when they promoted them and I thought they sounded good. But I wouldn’t just buy them because, you know? If I like their fic and then they publish something that is completely different, a genre I really don’t like, or a factual text about a subject that doesn’t interest me, it would feel like a pity buy, as you’ve said, and that doesn’t really help all that much, in the grand scheme of things. Because I won’t post about it, leave a good review on Good Reads or whatever and so the author won’t benefit besides the pitiful money they get from that one buy.