I’ve been sitting on these thoughts for some months hoping I could stop disagreeing but it turns out I can’t. This article tells us we should segregate Indie published books from traditionally published books. The article is click bait, I totally understand that and I clicked just like so many others. The comments are interesting and people spend a bit of time arguing with the author of the article who is just rude in return. The bit I really found myself disagreeing with is this quote:
A few days ago, I wrote a piece about self-publishers not being considered real authors. You are only considered a real author if you can make your living solely from the book sales. If you can’t, you are merely a writer, which is still fine. The reason I wrote that post is the industry needs to define the good writers from the bad. The primary way we can do this is by sales figures; if authors make their living from publishing, they are often considered good writers. Once we can define a good writer from a bad, we can start to segregate them.
I know of so many ‘authors’ being published by traditional publishers who should never have been published who are making more than a full-time wage from their scribblings and then there are the indie authors who are publishing themselves with the help of Amazon or indie publishers who are fabulous writers but are making very little.
It all comes down to publicity and how good you are at promoting yourself. If you’re an indie author and lousy at promoting yourself you won’t get anywhere but if you’re good at promotion then you’ll go far. I’ve seen terrible indie writers (you’ll notice I’m using the word writer and author interchangeably as I disagree with Michael Kozlowski, the author of the article) sell reasonably well as they know how to use social media and show their confidence whereas other indie authors who are absolutely brilliant but have little idea of how to promote themselves sell very little.
It all comes down to needing to have more skills than just writing. If you don’t have a publisher to do most of the publicity for you then you have to do it yourself. If you’re not good at getting on the rooftops and shouting to the world then being the best author and having the best message won’t help you sell.
Skills you need (this is just the ones I have in the top of my head)
- Writing
- Editing
- Proofreading
- Social Media
- Chutzpah and the ability to approach book shops, schools, libraries and whoever you can think of to get your name out there
- Public speaking
- Organising
- Ability to speak to everyone in a group and singly
- Patience
- Patient family and friends
If I were being nice I’d use the above list as headers and expand on most points but I’m still rather annoyed at Kozlowski for making the assumption of sales=author.
Very true and I think blogging is the same. I sometimes look at those bloggers who have HUGE stats and wonder what it is they do that I don’t. Their writing isn’t necessarily better or content more interesting.
I also often find myself comparing my site / blog to someone else’s who predominantly shares photographs or recipes, home hints etc. Indeed I know someone who recently started a ‘blog’ and already has a book deal for a cookbook. I have to remind myself that her site’s essentially about recipe-sharing and not about her writing etc but I’m always prone to compare myself to others. (A habit I need to stop!)
Sorry – rambled there a little.
Deb
Those people are constantly networking both online and off. When they go somewhere they hand out their card to draw attention to their blogs. It takes time but it gets results. I don’t think they’re reading as many blogs as you, nor commenting as much as you. Also, I suspect some of their stats are made up a little.
And…comparison gets you nowhere except feeling down. When you compare yourself to someone else you’re always going to feel as if you’re not as good as the other person. I think you’re fabulous.
It is possible to have impressive stats for traffic to your site without getting any real engagement from your readers. It also takes a huge amount of work – constantly networking and working the search engine angles to ensure that your site continues to show good visitor numbers to justify sponsorships etc.
I’m probably naive, but I’m more interested in producing something that is genuine and sincere and building a smaller audience that really engages with what I have to say and the services I can offer. There isn’t really any difference in having 1000 visit my site and only 1 leave a comment/share and having 1 visitor who visits regularly and comments/shares.
Lots of nodding here. I often lose words and can’t get the concepts out so you’ve just stated the concept I had in mind.
I actually agree with you. It’s why I’m not involved with certain blogging groups as they seem to be focused on numbers rather than engagement.
So many things to think about in this article.
The whole writer/author/blogger debate is one that continually goes around in circles. There is overlap with all three. In my own mind, an ‘author’ is someone who has produced a book (ebook, hardcopy, indie, traditional – whatever) while a writer publishes their work elsewhere. There are bloggers who are writers, and authors for that matter, but also bloggers who are simply bloggers, sharing information/images/recipes and doing very little actual writing.
I guess what it comes down to is does it really matter?
The traditional/indie/self-published discussion is another debate that comes across my screen on a fairly regular basis. I don’t think it matter where you are published, you need to be able to get yourself out there and promote your book and yourself as a writer if you want your book to succeed. Having a publisher with their own promotional networks helps and this also helps to avoid some of the stigma plaguing self-published authors, but all authors need to be active online and in the community if they want their books to succeed.
What I’m seeing is that the whole author/writer debate is just that, a debate. It seems to have no logical conclusion and appears to hinge on people’s perceptions. So long as we can agree to disagree then it’s fine but when some people seem to insist on being right.
And no, I don’t think it matters. I did say I should stop disagreeing with people.