Many a true word is said (or illustrated) in jest. Source: The New Yorker.
When I sat down to write Moonstone Obsession about 12 months ago, I was inspired by a friend of mine in the film and television production business who said: “Fee for service is dead, monetising content is where it’s at.”
He has created hours and hours of television programming that keeps him and his team busy, the digital free-to-air networks – and the clients who appear on the shows – very happy indeed.
He was very right in his observation and what is an author, after all – someone who uses their creativity to develop ‘content’ that people buy, thereby ‘monetising’ it.
It might seems like a pragmatic and unromantic approach to writing (LOL – and I’m a romance writer!) but the hard commercial reality is that one only has the freedom to write lots and lots of books if there are people there to buy them.
I found myself using sales language with one of my critique partners just this week when I described that part of her job as an unpublished author is to also be a sales person when pitching to publishers.
The first rule of sales is the ability to overcome objections. In case of authors those objections are:
- Poor or inconsistent grammar
- Head-hopping and frequent POV switches (yes, I’m learning how to conquer that objection in my own writing!)
- Poor or inconsistent story telling technique
- Pitching the story to the wrong market place
- Being unable to identify your story’s unique selling point – it doesn’t have to be originality in the sense of a work which hasn’t been done before (be honest, how many people have actually read James Joyce?) but a unique selling point for your story may be that there is an audience hungry for these types of tales.
Taking a sales-oriented approach to novel writing also makes it easy to deal with the issue of not getting an advance on sales. I know this is a bit of an issue with many authors but I have no objection of foregoing an upfront advance for a higher percentage of the profits.
What’s more, awarding huge contracts for books that may not even be written yet creates tremendous risk. The industry is plagued by what indie-publishing entrepreneur Richard Nash has called the “pathology of unearned advances.” An author who gets a book deal is paid an advance against royalties, and if the royalties end up exceeding the advance, the author starts getting more checks. But that doesn’t usually happen.
Even the multi-million dollar best selling author JK Rowling has flopped with her first adult fiction title and you don’t have to imagine the $7 million advance she received for the work.
Many product sales are consignment driven and if you have confidence in the commerciality of your work, then waiting for the royalty cheques to roll in once your story hits the marketplace shouldn’t be an issue and with many independent and ebook first imprints offering such opportunities to new and unagented writers, then it is a boon for not readers as well.
Ah, I felt the collective shudder of autuers at the mention of the word commercial, as though it might taint the purity of their art.
Well if that’s you’re attitude, then bollocks to you.
By all means write like you don’t care if anyone will read it, but you know the truth in your heart of hearts. Part of the thrill for authors is the approbation and acclaim from a readership (which is large enough to also pay the bills) and in the case of romance, crime and sci-fi/paranormal stories, the markets are established, loyal and voracious.
I love the writers I’ve met through Romance Writers of Australia. They funny, talented, marketing savvy and are willing to go the extra mile with their publishers to provide maximum opportunities for their books to be seen and extra sales to be made.
They don’t wait for opportunities to come their way, they go out and grab them with the support of many of their fellow authors romance writing community.
Bring it on.