ysabetwordsmith | Developing Novelists

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Crossposts: http://ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com/3313380.html

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Developing Novelists

Used to be, publishers understood that writing is a skill which takes time to develop. Now they expect instant bestsellers. You know who does that? One-hit wonders. Also the publishers don't want to keep expert editors around long enough to help new authors hone their skills. And then the publishers cry and whine because they don't have a good set of talented writers.

Ah, fuck 'em. I'll be over here coaching my favorite crowdfunding writers. I just watched

magistrate sit down and create more new, original, utterly awesome settings in one prompt session than I could find on a whole bookshelf in a store these days. I've watched

kajones_writing build up another huge bundle of settings, several of which have become favorites of mine such as Donor House, Pagans, Afterlife, and World Walkers: Quiar.

dialecticdreamer is a recent addition and already on my fave list.

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It's easier for the industry if every book is either a standalone one-shot, OR a staff-serialized-moneymaker like the Magic Treehouse or DK Eyewitness books. They don't deal with individual authors that way, they deal with the agent or the series publisher/editor.

And really, if a recent poll says 28% of Americans haven't read a single book, fiction or nonfiction, in the last year, I want to know where I can move to improve the quality of my neighbors. C'mon, guys, I'm in a /SLUMP/ of epic proportions, and still read three real, phyiscal books this week along with my writing, other people's electronic publications, and more!

And then people notice that the books are crap and don't want to read crap books so they don't buy any, which is a problem.

Well, sure, but where's the /real/ money coming from American pockets? Not for /books/-- though manga seems to be still gaining groud-- but for things like season box sets on DVD.

It's all about MONEY, not the product.

Video games seem to be the most enthusiastically funded category on the crowdfunding hubs, and a major chase market in entertainment.

Highly competitive and in a state of flux, too. This is a good time for indie gaming, quite a bit of which is crowdfunded, though some long-time developers (e.g. Tim Schafer and Masuno Yatsumi) are making headway there, as well.

Ooo, I can weigh in here. :-)

Twenty to thirty percent of the U.S. manga market evaporated when Borders died and took Tokyopop down with it. In addition, manga is so heavily pirated that I have no idea how it turns a profit, or even if it turns a profit at this point. I am one of the only people I know who actually pays for the stuff, and there are only a couple of series that I loyally follow (e.g. Fairy Tail and World War Blue).

I pay for manga, quite often. I don't read much of it, just pay for my kids' habits, LOL.

That's really sad.

It also highlights the dangers of these megacorps -- because if one of them goes down, you don't lose just their core functionality, you also lose the hundreds of other companies they have absorbed. Borders went down, and instead of just losing the freestanding book barns in large towns, we also lost almost every mall bookstore in the nation -- which is the only bookstore that many smaller towns HAD.

Because the piracy rate doesn't always correspond to a set decline in sales*. Manga is one of those things where, while people will read lower-quality fan-translated scans online, a lot of them also want to buy the pretty high-quality tankoban and have it on their shelf, assuming they have the disposable income to do so.

*That is, there are mediums where such a high level of piracy/availability would have a greater impact on sales.

Yep. Sing that. Both points.

I also observe that people who have honed their skills on free-to-read fiction and built up a fairly substantial audience still have trouble breaking into the market for pay-to-read fiction. Most of my audience for fanfiction is apparently uninterested in my original fiction, judging by the comparative subscriber counts at

alexseanchai and

alexconall. And while my audience is not substantial, I have a friend whose is (...that doesn't seem to grammar, gah), and she self-published a couple novels and asked her readers if they'd be willing to pay a couple dollars for more of her work, and she got several flat nos. Like, they're happy to read her writing as long as it's free at point of customer, but heaven forbid she want to make money off it. And while I can sympathize with that view to a certain extent (hi, broke), these people didn't say "I'd love to but I'm broke", and they didn't stay silent: they made a point of saying something with strong implications of 'you don't deserve to make money off your art'. Which is not exactly an uncommon attitude, you know? People are supposed to do art for love, not money, apparently. (And, okay, I do believe that. Or rather, I believe everyone should do art. But.) Which means the money has to come from somewhere, and the likeliest source is some occupation that takes up 5/14 of the artist's waking hours. (I'm taking a class called Leisure and Culture right now, and one of this week's readings was a prediction from the 1950s or 1960s that by now we'd be working twenty-hour work weeks tops. I laugh bitterly.) And, you know, artists have to cook meals and clean house like everyone else. Which also reduces available time to hone their artistic skills. And let's not forget the advice that half one's available creative time, if one is not employing a marketing agency (or one's publisher's marketing division or whatnot), should be spent marketing one's art! So if people are unwilling to pay money for art, even good art, then where is the art, especially the good art, going to come from? I repeat that everyone should do art, but I fully expect that 90% of artists will do so only occasionally and 90% of art (which includes the products of the practiced artists as well as those of the unpracticed) will be crap, you know?

Fuck what's easier for the industry. I want good art and I want people who produce good art to be able to make, if not necessarily a living, at least a decent sideline in art.

(I'm procrastinating my Camp NaNo. Can you tell?)

>> Fuck what's easier for the industry. I want good art and I want people who produce good art to be able to make, if not necessarily a living, at least a decent sideline in art. <<

Well, you get what you support.

If you don't support a creator, they are very likely to lower or stop creating, because they'll get busy with other stuff. They won't have as much time to hone their skills so the output won't be as good as it could be.

If you do support them -- and various folks run on links, comments, cash, trades, other stuff, or some combination -- then you're likely to get more stuff and have more influence over what gets made/published. The creator is more likely to devote time, and have the time to devote, to a profitable project.

Me, I sort my projects largely by how successful they are. Look at my output over years and you'll see I do massively less Pagan writing than I used to. Why? I only have one paying market left for it. The Llewellyn annuals used to be my biggest market but the Poetry Fishbowl eventually surpassed that. The fishbowl started small but has grown enormously. Fan support determines which series grow the largest and fastest, a combination of prompts and sponsorships. Granted I came into this project with decades of poetry experience, but I've still learned a lot about serial poetry which wasn't something I'd done much with before.

Well, you get what you support.

Trufax. I just wish I had more ability to support what I want to see more of.

Remember there are more ways than one to support your favorites.

* Cash -- always welcome.

* Feedback -- helps improve skills and generate energy.

* Signal boosting -- may hook new supporters who have more money than you do.

* Prompts -- inspires stuff that wouldn't otherwise exist, that somebody else may want to buy.

I really appreciate what you do for my projects.

*nodnodnod*

Some days, when I can tolerate turning on my wish-o-meter, I like to imagine what a world would be like if /WORK/ and /ART/ were treated as equally important and valuable. If /ART/ were as important to a society as /WAR/, where would we be?

Super Bowl would be word sprints? March Madness would be painting competitions?

Archimedes wouldn't have been cut down in his own home by some random-idiot-soldier. He would've been a /rock star/ of the age.

LIBRARY OF ALEXANDRIA.

I'm still pissed about that.

We lost so much Sappho. And other people's works, but I want to see the Sappho.

you may forget but
let me tell you this:

someone in some future time will think of us

yesssss

There actually have been societies where poets and bards sat beside kings. Aboriginal Australian culture holds that art and music bind the world together. Just because this society largely ignores the arts doesn't mean they're all that stupid.

Yes, this is true.

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