Just came upon this
http://tribalwriter.com/2010/04/30/the-online-art-of-developing-your-author-brand-molecule-or-global-microbrand/

and thought it kind of fit this topic of yours. Uh, since this is from last year, do you still even update comments? I wasn’t sure.

Start stepping into their job and all you ask for is problems.

Cheers
Dean

Thanks (sincerely) for taking the time to respond to my comments.

I think this boils down to my own romantic notion of writing. In my freelance career (programming), I conduction myself differently, and make a good living. I don’t actually care much what I program as long as the pay, the people and the environment are good. I love to program, so it doesn’t matter much to me what it is that I do program (as long as it is not morally objectionable).

I am having trouble viewing writing that way. In many ways I don’t want it to be that way, I want it to be purer.

(Probably more sacred cows to slaughter here, and much more for me to chew on).

Thanks,
Robert

Well, not sure how to respond, to be honest, since you are flipping back at me myth after myth after myth. For example, saying that the bestsellers are not the best books being written. Of course they are. As a taste issue, you may not like them, but if one million people buy a book, then trust me, it is a ton better book than a book that sold a thousand copies. Remember, we are a part of the entertainment industry. The bestselling movies are the best movies, no matter what an award vote says, or what you as a person might “like or dislike” taste-wise. The bestselling books are the best books. They are doing the most things correctly when it comes to getting readers to read.

So when I say write a better book, if your goal is to sell books, write a better book that will sell more copies. I don’t mean have prettier sentences or better grammar or that crap. I’m talking about writing a page-turning story that will carry the reader from page one to the end and then make the reader show it to a friend. That’s a good book!

A second myth you toss out freely is that the advance is all a writer is going to get for a book. God, if that were the case, I would have never made a living at this business for twenty years, and neither would most writers. Advances are just the start of the cash streams. Just the start. (Unless you are really stupid and sell all rights, then it is the start and the end of the cash stream.) Most original books that start with a $6,000 advance can earn upwards of ten times that over the next ten years. And sometimes a bunch more. For example, on a book that Kris sold 14 years ago here in the states, she just resold in London, making more than her original advance, and taking the total for that book to almost twenty times the original advance, and it never earned a penny of royalties, because the US publisher killed the book. If you are doing this business correctly, the advance is often your smallest check.

And a third myth you toss out is that by shoving your book into a reader’s hands at a signing, you will make a fan. Oh, crap, no. You will make a fan if you write a page-turning, can’t put down novel. Nothing more. You shove into someone’s hands at a signing a crappy book that they don’t finish, and what you have is that person selling your signed book to a used bookstore and never buying another copy of your book, and ACTIVELY telling others to not buy your book. It never comes down to signings, it ALWAYS comes down to writing better books, meaning books that make a reader finish it, enjoy it, and pass it on to friends, long after you are writing the sixth book down the road.

I hope you can clear out some of the myths. They will do nothing but hold you back.
Cheers, Dean

You say, “the better the book, the better it will sell,” linking quality to salability. This certainly not true – the best movies are not the ones that make the most money, and neither are the best books. (Best here being arbitrary, but in any artistic field I think most folks would be hard pressed to say the best seller is the “best” in its category.)

Aren’t there other factors here in the decision to actually write ($6,000 advance for 3 months of work – and boy you gotta be fast to do that – is not very good money), and in how you promote? If going out on a book tour and talking to readers fills your heart with joy then the simple calculus you presented doesn’t seem like enough. And aren’t there down-stream effects from meeting people in person? If you create a fan on that book tour you may be creating someone who will buy not just this book, but tell friends to buy the book, and buy your future books too.

While the math should be a major consideration, it is certainly not the only one.

This actually falls in line with what I’ve learned about self promotion from deviantart.com. There are a number of people who spend time every day favoriting other people’s work and commenting on their pages as a way of promotion. I tried that, but I was getting very poor returns. I discovered I got a lot more attention from simply posting my art there. And it’s a cumulative effect since people can put you on their watch list.
But there’s another side to it: Dumping large amounts of art at a time gets you less attention than spacing it out because the people who have you on their watch list and will see every single piece spend less time looking at each and thus are less likely to favorite it. Without their support, it is almost impossible to get your art on the front pages of deviantart where they list the most popular art and therefore you lose a chance at a bigger audience.
Which reminds me of Prince and how he released large amounts of music at a time against the recording companies wishes and not only lost their support but, well, who remembers any particular song from among those he mass dumped?
I wonder if writers have a saturation limit like this.