In one episode of Downton Abbey, when it became clear that the old ways of life were on the way out, never to return, Carson the butler mused, “The nature of life is not permanence, but flux.”
Right on, Carson. That was true for you, and it’s true for us. Especially when it comes to the world of writing.
Because even as I type these words, even as I turn this manuscript in to my wonderful editor at Writer’s Digest Books, there is no question that the publishing landscape will be different once this book is available to readers.
Because change is the new normal.
It was never like this in the “old days” (like, before 2007).
The book industry went about things in pretty much the same way for three hundred years. Large companies were in control of the production of paper books. The only way to get a book into wide circulation was to have it published by one of these companies. Writers who hoped to make a living at their craft had only one place to go, and usually that was an outfit in New York.
Along the way, an insatiable reading habit formed among the evermore-educated populace. To serve that habit, magazines printed on cheap pulp paper became a huge business. Cheap but substantial stories and novellas were made possible by such pulps as Dime Detective, Black Mask, Weird Tales, and Fight Stories.
And still the writer was beholden to those who controlled the printing presses and distribution channels.
Oh, sure, along the way, a few enterprising authors decided they might like to try doing all this themselves. It may have started with a New England poet by the name of Walt Whitman. He paid for the initial printing of his volume of poems, Leaves of Grass. To help spur sales, Whitman even wrote some glowing reviews of the book under an assumed name (thus inventing the sock puppet).
Mark Twain was another enterprising self-publisher. He even started his own company and took on other authors’ books. The company went bust in 1894.
For the most part, those who paid for the publication of their own books were destined to have a garage full of ... their own books.
Bookstores, you see, dealt primarily with the big publishers. The owners of the bookstores wanted to sell a lot of books. So they ordered most of their stock from those publishers who had signed popular authors.
In the 1980s and 1990s, New York publishers opened the bank vaults in a big way for authors they thought would provide hit books. Some––like John Grisham, James Patterson, David Baldacci, and Danielle Steele––delivered home runs time after time.
But there were even more writers who received those huge advances and saw their books tank, which in turn ruined their careers. No other publisher would sign them because they were marked “damaged goods.” A few managed to find homes with smaller publishers. Others faded from the scene altogether.
Harsh.
It was also monstrously difficult for a new author to break into traditional publishing, a land I have sometimes called the “Forbidden City.” First, they needed an agent to get them access. Then they were subject to a publisher’s committee meeting, where one sour note from the marketing department could scotch a book’s publication.
At the turn of our century, the publishing landscape was littered with the scattered manuscripts and bodies of writers who never made it past the gatekeepers.
And it seemed that things would ever be thus.
Until the year 2007.
What happened in 2007?
Helen Mirren took home an Academy Award for her performance in The Queen.
The San Antonio Spurs swept the Cleveland Cavaliers to win the NBA championship.
Drew Carey replaced Bob Barker on The Price Is Right.
And a company by the name of Amazon introduced a little product they called the Kindle.
The publishing industry’s initial reaction to the Kindle was a yawn. Several years before, the market for electronic books had floundered even though Sony was behind it. Surely, thought the New York publishing industry, no one outside of a handful of techno-nerds was going to go for electronic. Real books were printed! They had covers and dust jackets! Print books would remain the preferred reading experience until the Apocalypse!
But the following year a few enterprising writers began to notice something. Amazon was allowing writers to publish digital books directly. These books were sold through the Amazon online store. A writer did not have to wait, worry, or pay for printing.
And some of these books took off. Writers no one had ever heard of were selling tens of thousands of books.
Still, there was resistance from both publishers and many authors. Publishers sniffed at these offerings as another form of the self-published book, the kind that had always carried a stigma under the old model.
Old school authors who had “paid their dues” were a little miffed that just anyone could “publish” a book! In their opinion, the only way to be a legitimate writer, a real writer, was to go through New York.
Old ways die hard.
Money started to talk. More and more self-publishing writers enjoyed payments sent directly to their bank accounts. Not twice a year, but each month!
Suddenly writers who had been struggling to find a publishing home, and even writers who were traditionally published but had been dropped for lack of sales, were making solid incomes.
A snowball started rolling down a hill.
And out in the ski lodge virtually every writer saw that snowball and wondered, Could it really be true? Is it really possible to make money, nay, even a living, via self-publishing?
The answer, we know now, is a resounding Yes.
Never before in the history of book publishing—heck, never before in the history of storytelling (and that’s a long time)—has there been so much opportunity for writers to find readers and realize actual moolah from their craft.
During this entire sea change, the traditional publishing industry did not go the way of the Dodo. It was still selling books, and bookstores were still buying.
The so-called Big Six publishing companies became the Big Five, as Random House and Penguin merged.
Then the “Bigs” began to adjust to the changing landscape by trying new ways to sell online and by making alliances with Internet start-ups.
The only thing that was clear was what old Carson observed: flux.
Which is both a challenge and a blessing for fiction writers.
The challenge is to keep going, to keep writing and producing, even when you’re not sure where all that writing is going to end up.
The flux isn’t going away, so you’ve got to embrace it.
“The writer who is a real writer is a rebel who never stops.”—William Saroyan
But with that challenge is a gift: the assurance that there will never be only one road again. There will never be only one way to get your writing out there to the people to whom it matters most—the readers.
And what do those readers want?
They want a story to carry them away. They want to be transported into a dream.
That never changes. That’s what you can hang onto as a writer.
In 1926, after five intense years of learning his craft and pounding out stories, a practicing lawyer who wanted to write fiction wrote this in his journal:
My own approach ... is different from that of the critics. I am a writer. I serve the reading public. The reading public is my master.
His name was Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of the iconic series character Perry Mason, and he would go on to become one of the best-selling writers of all time.
After his success was established, he wrote a letter to one of his editors, Arthur E. Scott, and said this:
In my stories I try to figure myself as a prospective buyer of a magazine standing in front of a hotel newsstand. Would my story title make me pick up the magazine to look at it? Would the first hasty glance through the story make me buy the magazine, and would a reading of the yarn make me a regular subscriber?
So one might be tempted here to type the old cliché: The more things change, the more they stay the same. But since I avoid clichés like the plague, I shan’t be the one to do it.
Instead I say, embrace the flux, which is here to stay. And write stories that transport readers, who always desire the dream.
And when you have doubts (as all writers do), remember one thing above all, the summum bonum, your permanent marching orders in this marvelous craft of telling stories:
Just write.
As long as you do that, you’re never out of the game.
In Part I: Unforgettable Fiction, I give you some guerilla writing tips. There are two kinds of writing advice writers need to absorb:
You’ll find both in this section. Start absorbing.
In Part II: A Rewarding Writing Life, we’ll cover the living of the writer’s life. Which means you will write as long as you live. Why wouldn't you? There is no forced retirement for writers, no getting fired. My rules for the writing life are as follows:
Upon those four rules this section is built.
Start construction.