Nov 26 2008
Thinking About the Industry
Over the last month, this country and the entire planet has seen some really amazing times on the financial side, and I’m with everyone else when I believe we’re not anywhere near done with cleaning up this mess.
But for the moment, since writing is my business, it’s interesting to wonder about how this mess will impact the publishing world. “Interesting” meaning something I had better be thinking about just like anyone with a job needs to think how this will impact their job and their business. “Interesting” like wondering where the money will come to pay the bills that never seem to stop.
You know, REALLY interesting.
The common knowledge is that publishing is recession proof, and in a general way, I tend to believe that. When it costs a couple with kids over $100 bucks to go to a movie and a cheap meal, the price of a book looks really cheap for the same amount of entertainment. So I tend to buy into this common knowledge for the most part.
But this industry, because we are corporate, will have cutbacks and layoffs and list cuts and such. But not that much in comparison to most areas of the corporate world. And since the business moves at the speed of a glacier, most authors won’t even notice unless it hits them directly in some fashion or another.
For me and Kris, we have a ton of projects bubbling right now, some of which I will talk about when they happen, others I will be unable to talk about because of contract issues. But I will shout out when I sell my 100th book, and that time is close, with luck sometime this winter. So things are looking up here, mostly because while the rest of the planet was going along just fine over the last two years, we were in a down time for us.
Did anyone notice? Nope. Every writer goes through down times in careers, when they have to start over, reinvent parts of their writing, continue on. Most writers, who sell a half dozen or more books and then have a down time, never rebuild. But those of us who have been around for more than a few decades know that down times are normal and rebuilding is normal. We tried to teach that a little in the master class, to let the new professionals at least know that dips come with the business and the key was to just keep working through them. But alas, most never will, which is why there are so few really long term professional writers around compared to the number of books being published.
So here, I’m watching with “interest” the world problems and writing like crazy at the same time, rebuilding my career, just like the world will have to rebuild over the next few years. It’s just a cycle. The key is to understand it and just keep going.
It’s the night before Thanksgiving and tomorrow I cook for a few of the writers in the area. I’ve been cooking my own Thanksgiving dinner now since 1973, when my step mother, visiting with my father, insulted me by saying I couldn’t cook. I was a golf professional at the time and I guess she figured I had never been in a kitchen, even though I lived alone. She then proceeded to force us to go out to the worst Thanksgiving Dinner I have ever had to try to choke down.
I was so angry, I stopped at a store on the way home, bought a small fresh turkey and some dressing and some gravy mix and some potatoes, asked the lady at the check-out stand how to cook the turkey, and went home and cooked it and had a great meal late that night all by myself. I swore that night I would cook my own Thanksgiving turkey from that day forward.
And I kept that pledge to myself. Every year I cook exactly the same thing and invite whoever is close by to join me and I haven’t missed in 35 years. One year there were 26 writers I cooked for, other years just me. This year it’s just the coast writers coming by. A fun time with close friends.
I hope everyone else has a great holiday feast, no matter what the fear and worry of the world around you.
And don’t forget to take a little time to write as well.
Cheers, Dean
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