So, I have been thinking on the issues I touched on in my last blog. Specifically, where I'm headed in terms of writing/podcasting. I have read a few learned blog posts by Mark Coker and others in the know, as much as is possible, in the new-publishing era we find ourselves in. It is easy to panic, it is easy to join the local Luddite Society and eschew new-pub, e-pub and its variants, it is easy to scrum ahead into new-pub blindly, with more force than thought. So what is one , one in this case one craigie-poo, to decide? Well, fortunately it returned to mind why I'm here in the first place and what my motivations, not so much my goals are. In fact, it struck me lightly in the back of my head: why have goals at all? Who, in this challenging and hyper-complex, amped on steroids universe needs goals for their hobby? Right; am I right am, am I right?
Certain facts are easy to place in the field of reasoning. First, it has been said over and over that if you want to make so coin, get a second job flipping burgers. You'll make way more, way more easily, than writing fiction today. Second, the way the world is now, big-pub ain't interested in you, unless they are already making bank on you, so don't even ask. Third, the only segment of the new-pub authors who are really making any significant sales are those writing about [any guesses first? Come on, what genre is actually moving some product? Okay, I'll tell you] you got it: self-publishing/web-publishing. Niche market authors can succeed if they market their niche properly: Christian romance, knitting vegetables for pets, that sort of thing. But niche-markets are not big-sexy-glitzy-pop-the-Dom-Perignon kind of lucrative venues in which dreams are forged. Third, [remember my point? Seems I might not have ; ) ] 'experts' agree that if your book is all-time wonderful Pulitzer Prize-slam-dunk great, it need not get noticed let alone make any real dough; it's to hard to stand out and get noticed. They say if you stuff is not great, your completely SOL, but the tripe big-pub does peddle argues to the contrary.
So, my point, and I do have one, is don't worry be happy! I started writing Anon Time 15 years ago because it was in my head and I needed to get it out. Creating it was it's own end. At the time, pre-internet, there was no avenue to pursue getting anyone to know it existed. In the end, this does matter. I've discussed in previous blogs, I cannot be like Emily Dickenson or George McFly and write my entire life without letting the world see it. Why? If you create it and it's pathetic crap, then your investment of time is suspect. If it is not crap, your efforts, in retrospect, had merit. That's it, a touch of practicality in one's vanity, if you please.
Sooooooooo, I will try and convince myself I do not need my name to be on the intelligentsia's lips, my books need not sell like hot-Potters, that I do not need to see a beautiful blond in a thong bikini reading one of my books on an isolated beach- wait, where did that thought come from? Wasn't mine, no way! No, Officer, I have never seen that thought before- but I digress.
Went long on this post, sorry. In the end, as a good friend of mine John Milton said, "Fame is not a plant which on mortal soil grows." I will content myself with what fame and fortune publishing has in store for me and be really really thankful to have been a player, and most of all to have met you.............
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