The word “talent” has been used for a very long time to destroy writers. I have always believed that the word is the worst myth of them all in publishing, so here goes a chapter I’m sure will be annoying to some people, and should cause some interesting discussions if nothing else.

Okay, first to my trusty and well-worn Oxford American Dictionary for a standard definition.

Talent: Special or very great ability, people who have this.

That’s about it. Pretty straightforward. Notice the word “ability” and notice it says nothing about being “born with.” Just notice.

Okay, when it comes to writing, let me put my definition right out front here.

Talent in Writing: A measure of a person’s craft at storytelling at any given moment that depends on who is judging and the age of the person being judged.

As I have said before in a number of places, when I started writing, I was so untalented, it scared anyone who even tried to read something I wrote. In school I hated writing because I was so bad at it. If I had listened to all the people who told me I had no talent for writing, I would have quit three decades ago. No, make that five decades ago, because all my early report cards said I had no talent for writing.

Now, after millions and millions of words practiced, many books and stories published, I get comments all the time like, “You are a talented writer, of course you can do it.”

Or one I got the other day. “You have the talent to write fast.”

Well, when I started to get serious about fiction writing, it took me hours and hours to do one page. Then that page would be so poorly written and riddled with mistakes that it got tossed away more often than not. Yup, I was a “naturally talented” fast writer. NOT!

Thank heavens for me I came to the realization early on in my life that talent was only a measure of craft at a certain point in time and nothing more.

Yet, frighteningly, parents, teachers, and so many family and friends think that talent is FIXED. If you are talented when you are young in something, you should be for your entire life. Well, sadly, as many have discovered, it doesn’t work that way.

Yet parents and teachers early on are determined to saddle kids with the “talented” label or worse yet, push them away from things they don’t do very well at first because they have no “talent” for that. Just makes me angry every time I hear of it.

If you call a student talented, it’s an excuse for them to not work as hard. “It’s easy for them.” If you say they don’t have talent, you allow them to not try at all, or think something is impossible to do and then quit. In my opinion, talent is a deadly word to attach or even mention in front of any child.

Now, let’s look at writing. James Lee Burke, Stephen King, Nora Roberts and others at the top of the lists are the most talented writers we have working. Many readers don’t have a taste for a certain writer’s work, but doesn’t matter. The bestsellers are talented storytellers who sell millions of copies every time they put out a new book. The evidence is in the sales.

I’ll take myself at this moment as an example. Compared to a beginning writer, I have a vast talent for writing. Compared to King or Nora, not so much.

My talent AT THE MOMENT is a measure of my ability and craft. Right now. And it depends on who I am being compared to. I am not permanently FIXED at this talent level. I can keep learning, practicing, working hard, and get better. Become more “talented.”

And, of course, that measurement of my talent is also completely subjective to who is doing the looking. One new writer might think I’m talented, some other writer might wonder why I even get published at all, let alone make my living at it.

So how did I become so “talented?” And how do I hope to become as talented as King and Nora someday?

Again, practice and focused study. And then more practice, with the constant drive to learn and become a better writer with every story I write. As I improve my craft, sell more books, I will become more talented.

FACTORS OF BEING TALENTED

A proclamation of TALENT on a person depends on a number of factors.

1…Age of the person being judged.

Tiger Woods. As a kid, his father had him hitting golf balls. And his father was training him how to think like a golfer as a kid.

So he goes onto the Mike Douglas Show as a very young kid and manages to hit a golf ball into the air about fifty feet. WOW, he was talented. (For a kid his age.)

But compared to me at that time, if you just look at simple golf skills, no age factor at all, he was awful. At that moment in time when Tiger Woods was that kid on the Mike Douglas Show, I was a full-time professional golfer playing qualifying stops for the tour. I could fly a ball 300 yards and seldom was over par on any course. Compared to me in strict golf standards, Tiger Woods at that time had no talent at all. I could hit a ball backhanded, standing on one leg, blindfolded farther than he could hit one at that same moment in time.

Age of the person observed was the major factor in calling Tiger talented at that time.

So what made Tiger Woods into the most “talented” golfer on the planet from that kid who could barely hit a ball fifty paces? Practice and focused study and years and years of practice. He learned how to hit a ball farther than I could in my prime, he learned how to win, how to control his mind and his ability. He hit millions and millions of golf balls and played millions of holes of golf over a lot of years.

In other words, his craft improved as he got older.

As a kid, people called him talented, as an adult, they still call him talented. He managed to continue to increase his talent, his craft, his ability. He never once let the “talented” label go to his head. He was lucky and well-trained.

2…What scale are you comparing the talented person to?

For example, I hope to run a marathon next fall near my 6oth birthday. If I trudge along two weeks before my birthday, my age class will be 50-59 and I will suck compared to others. I will not be considered talented at all. But if I pick a marathon two weeks after my 60th birthday, my age class is 60-65 or 60-70, and you know, in that age class, my pounding and huffing along might be considered pretty darn good, even talented though I will have the same time either way.

A kid in high school English class might be able to write a paper better than his classmates because he’s spent time at home writing in a journal for five years. He has better craft because he has practiced and the others around him haven’t. So he gets called talented compared to the other people in his class. But now someone like me comes in, sits in that class, with my years of experience writing and I write a paper. I would be called the talented student now and the previous talented student would just fade into the pack.

Talent is relative to who you are comparing the person to.

So why do I consider the talented label as one of the worst myths in all of publishing, and the most destructive? Because I’ve seen it kill writer’s dreams so many times over the years.

Both sides of the coin are destructive. Talented or Untalented. Both judgments kill writers’ careers if the writer lets the judgment go in deep.

In my Clarion six week workshop, I was the least talented of the twenty-three writers who were there. No one was even close to how awful I was. And I got toasted every critique and rightfully so.

All the negative feedback just made me slightly angry because I knew they were right, and it made me want to work even harder. (Remember, I had been very, very good at two national sports before Clarion. And I had been accepted and made it through years of law school when no one thought I could do it. I knew that practice and hard work were the key. And when you want to play at a national level, you have to work harder and longer than everyone else in the country. I knew that. I was willing to do that.)

So what happened to the most talented person at my Clarion? When I was the publisher at Pulphouse ten years later, I bought his only short story sale, a story he had written at Clarion. He got so much acclaim in that workshop and from friends, he clearly thought writing was too easy and went on to other things that challenged him.

I’ve had “talented” friends get angry at me and become bitter. They think because they are talented they don’t have to work. Yet there I am, working my butt off and making sales and getting better, but because they think talent is a “fixed” thing, and since I had no talent, but am now selling, the system has to be broken in some way.

Or worse yet, I would get the comments, “He was lucky.”

As Kevin J. Anderson once said, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Yup. And the harder I work, the more I practice, the more I want to learn, the more talented I become.

Comments like “He was lucky” often come from nothing more than thinking that talent is a fixed measure of a person. My old friends who saw some of those early stories would never think of me as talented. I’m fixed in their minds as hopeless and it’s head-shaking to them how I have gotten so lucky.

Tiger Woods for the first ten years on the tour was known for being the first one on the practice range in the morning and the last one to leave at night. He worked with golf coaches, pumped weights, and did everything he could to improve his game. Wonder why he is the most talented golfer on the planet? He worked harder than anyone else.

Why am I here? Because I worked harder than most people. In fact, I got angry once at a workshop of students who just shrugged off my success as nothing more than luck and me being me. I challenged them all that I could write more books in one year than all of them combined. That’s right, combined. Six young professional writers against me. And I beat them. I did more work, wrote more books, in one year than all of them combined. None of them ever questioned again why I was more successful.

So it might also be safe to say that talent is a measure of how hard a person works at their craft. The harder a writer works, the more talented a writer they become.

As I do with every chapter, I want to talk about solutions, but in this case, there aren’t many I’m afraid. At least not easy ones.

You have been labeled “talented.” And you believe it. Now what?

That’s the worst thing that can happen to you, actually, in writing, if that little voice in your head that drives you actually took that word in and believed it.

The symptoms will be some or all of the following if that has happened.

—Your work ethic has slowed down.

—You will be getting angry at rejections.

—You will believe that no one understands your work.

—Your ego will be so huge, you might think there is no point in going traditional publishing routes because that takes time and is rigged.

—You will start looking for shortcuts to becoming rich as someone with your “talent” should be.

You might even sell a couple of things, but alas, ten years from now we will be looking back asking that awful question: “What ever happened to…?”

How to fix this problem? Not a clue, actually, because I can’t help you with the ego. Chances are that if you have been given this label and believe it, deeply believe it, you are doomed. Tiger Woods got past this by his father pounding home day after day for decades a work ethic like no other. His father led him to believe he was the best, but to stay the best, he had to work harder and harder and harder.

And that is the truth. Once you stop working, stop trying to get better, you stop, fix your talent right there, and then stand and watch the rest of the world go past.

For example, if you think you are a talented writer, chances are my post about writing faster made you angry. You don’t need to work as hard or write as fast because you’re talented.

And my posts about agents and Laura Resnick’s wonderful comments following those posts made you angry because you’re talented and you don’t need to learn all that stuff. Someone will take care of you. That’s your right because you are “talented.”

If your little voice really thinks you are talented, if you think every story you write should be bought first time out, and are angry it isn’t, if you think that famous is only for the lucky and bestsellers are bad writers, you are doomed. You have to kill that voice somehow, some way, as quickly as you can.

The belief that you are talented locks you in and closes doors.

But killing that voice, letting go of that belief that you are talented and dropping back to the belief that you must work harder and harder to attain what you want is difficult at best. Why? Because of fear.

Inside, deep inside, you understand the truth, but fear uses the talented label as a shield.

Remember that talent is a measure of your craft at the moment which depends on who you are being compared to and your age. Best thing I can suggest is figure out where that “talented” label went in. And then kill that moment.

For example, your workshop kept telling you that you are talented, but no one in there was published, and yet you believed them and it went in. Oh, oh… Get away from that workshop, join a workshop (and keep your mouth shut) that has professional selling writers in it. If your “talented belief system” can survive being torn down and you can go back to wanting to learn and get better, you might have a hope.

Find the source and clean it out of your mind as quickly as you can. If you can. Get professional help if you need it, which with this problem, you more than likely will.

Besides all the things I mentioned already, how do you really know if you have this problem? You think that all you need to do is sit down and write that great idea you have and polish it until it’s perfect and your talent will be shown to the world. Problem is, you just can’t seem to find the time to write it. (Which is your deep mind saying, “Don’t try, you might fail. Better to believe you are talented than try to write and prove you are not.)

Truth: Thinking you are talented is an excuse to not work, to not write, to not drive forward. Thinking you are talented is a reason to be lazy.

So what happens when you really believe you have no talent, when that has gone in deep?

Almost as bad as the flip side, actually. Having a label of being bad at something gives us all an excuse to not do it, even though we want to. Back to the fear issues.

You think “If I am so bad at this and it’s impossible for me to learn because I have no ‘talent’ for it, why should I even bother?” Fear wins and you stop and never really try.

On this side of things, I had already lost my belief in the talent myth. So when I started into writing, all the pounding I took because of my poor craft just motivated me to learn and get better. I was told over and over, by everyone from my family to teachers that I had no talent for writing. “It just wasn’t me.”

I was talented at skiing, or golf, or math, or architecture. (Never was talented at the law.) Why didn’t I just stay with those?

But interestingly enough, I had the strength to stand up and say (in my own mind) “Only I know what’s right for me.”

In writing, only sales are the judge of quality writing, no matter what anyone says or how loudly someone proclaims themselves to be the judge. Readers purchasing your books and enjoying the read are all that matter.

And the only way to get more sales and to find more readers is to practice and learn and keep working harder than everyone around you.

So if you have been given the “untalented” label, (and you believe it) you have to somehow climb over the fear, tell everyone to go take a flying leap, and just keep pushing forward. Most won’t. Writing is hard enough just learning for the lucky ones that weren’t saddled with either side of this myth early on.

I have never believed I have talent. I have never believed I am untalented.

I have believed in my own ability to work hard, practice, and learn something I set my mind to learning.

And so far, that’s got me past a lot of proclamations by observers telling me that I have no talent or that I am talented. And these days, I hate to admit, those hit me in about equal measure all the time. And that just makes me laugh.

The real bottom line is that to get past this myth, you have to believe in yourself and ignore everyone else’s belief system about you. Learn from others, but ignore what they say about your “talent.” Because the moment you take that alien belief system into your own mind and believe it, either good or bad, you are doomed.

Talent in Writing: A measure of a person’s craft at storytelling at any given moment that depends on who is judging and the age of the person being judged.

In other words, TALENT CAN BE LEARNED.

It’s up to you to work hard, practice hard, learn everything you can learn, so that you also become a “talented” (meaning skilled) writer.

The myth of talent kills more writers careers than any myth in the business. Don’t let yourself fall to this one.

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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, losing control of your writing, having it made, speed equals making money, more on agents, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.

Thanks, Dean

J. A. Konrath finally spoke in a blog what I have been thinking about internet piracy of books and stories for a long time.

Thank you, J. A. Konrath for making sense in a world of writers running around screaming that the sky is falling.

Folks, go read it right here.

WHAT IS A PUBLISHER?

I thought I would put this question as a post here, on the main page, because of an interesting discussion that went on in the comments of another post. I have always known there is a lot of confusion about what is a publisher, and exactly what a publisher does. So I figured I would try to make some sense of this.

This isn’t really a myth. Just more of an issue of confusion with all the new technologies coming into the mix.

So, in as clear a fashion as I can, let me try to lay this out.

From my trusty Oxford American Dictionary, they define a publisher as “A person or firm that issues copies of a book, magazine, etc. to the public.”

Yup, and that’s pretty much what all legal cases I have read concerning copyright and publication have come down on as a definition for publisher.

So, here I go with a new book, sending it to New York. What am I doing?

Answer: I am looking for a publisher to publish my book. Nothing more.

So say a wonderful editor working for a publisher wants to buy my book and calls me or my agent. What is next?

Answer: We negotiate the terms of the contract between me and the publisher and if we can agree on the terms, I sign the contract.

So, here comes an area that most writers don’t understand because most don’t know copyright. What have I sold that publisher?

Answer: Nothing. (If it is not an all rights or work-for-hire contract.)

That’s right, nothing. The publisher and I have come to an agreement on which rights they will license from me, for how long, and under what conditions. I haven’t sold them a thing. I just sort of rented them the use of my story for certain reasons under certain condition. I get it all back at some point, again determined by what it was agreed upon in the contract.

ARE THERE SUCH A THING AS SUB-PUBLISHERS?

The publisher I sold my work to will often have many, many sub-publishers, for lack of a better way of putting it. In your contract you might have sold them translation rights for a percentage and they then turn around and license that to a publisher in France. All within the limits of the contract you signed with the first publisher. And audio publishers, and ebook publishers and movie rights (which are a form of publication as well) and so on.

Again, you control exactly what they can and cannot do by the contract you sign. No one holds a gun to your head and tells you to sign a bad contract. And no agent is responsible for your stupidity in signing a bad contract that gives a publisher too much and too much control. Only you, as the copyright holder, can say what the publisher will or won’t do. And if you don’t like what they are requiring, don’t sign. It really is that simple.

Okay, to another way of publishing. What is being called “self-publishing.”

(And aside right here: I have always found this term silly in all respects. You see, when I think of sending a manuscript to a New York publisher, I am actually completely in control and therefore by the very act of sending it to New York, I am in essence, self-publishing. But that’s just me being silly with terms. Let me go on.)

Now, along comes secondary publishers focusing on ebooks such as Smashwords.

Just like with New York publishers, I follow some basic guidelines and send my work to Smashwords. They either accept it or not, depending on how well I am at formatting to their guidelines. (Not content questions, just formating questions in a file.)

What is the difference between Smashwords and New York publishers?

Let me see if I can detail out some of the differences between the two types of publishers.

There isn’t much, actually. These days you give your New York publisher an electronic file, you give Smashwords one as well.

In New York publishing, the publisher provides help with the proofing, the art work, the cover design, and they set up the printing and distribution.

In Smashwords, you have to do all the proofing and covers yourself. But their machines dictate the layout for the most part, just as New York publishers do.

There is quality control over content in New York. No quality control on content at all in Smashwords. It’s buyer beware.

New York publisher then sets up distribution or sells it direct themselves.

Smashwords does the same, either sets up the distribution or sells it themselves.

And just like New York, they use subpublishers as well, such as iPad and others. And there are contracts between Smashwords and iPad.

Who is the final publisher for an ebook through Smashwords?

If the copy sells on Smashwords, then they are, if it sells on iPad, then iPad is the final publisher.

Go back and look at the definition of the word “publisher” I wrote above.

If your New York publisher licenses your book to France, who is the final publisher? The French publisher, of course. If New York puts up a Kindle edition, who is the final publisher in the chain for that book sold on Kindle? Kindle, of course.

All these new technologies are just new forms of publishers, taking a cut, just as New York publishers have done for centuries.

As young authors, Kris and I set up a publishing house called Pulphouse. We published a lot of books and got far, far too big before we crashed. Any author now can set up their own publishing house, and many do. Kris and I have corporations, actually, now.

If you set up your own publishing house and contract for a POD version of your book, you will be the publisher on a copy that sells. And just like New York selling to France, if you put one of your books from your publishing house up on Kindle, Kindle will be the final publisher, the firm that publishes the book to a person.

Your company will be the originating publisher and have your name on it, but Kindle will be the final publisher, because they take the content, convert it, and sell it.

New York publishers take your content, convert it, and sell it.

Bookstores and distributors are not publishers, but only distributors of product, sort of like your cell phone or your Kindle machine or your iPad.

“A publisher is a person or firm that issues copies of a book, magazine, etc to the public.”

A New York publisher is no different from Smashwords in that respect. They are both publishers. Big difference is that Smashwords and other ebook publishers have no editor oversight, no filters that assure a certain level of quality of what is published.

And I have a hunch, in the future, there will be ways that the public and readers find to help that quality process some. But that’s not here yet and is a topic for a future post.

Now I have to hit the “publish” button and publish this, which, guess what, makes me a publisher.

This myth is so solid, I hear it repeated over and over again. And just today, a person I follow on Twitter repeated it yet again, sending all her followers to a web site that had some writer say simply “There are only about 200 or 300 writers making a living at fiction.” With nothing at all to back up the statement or even a second thought about what that statement meant if true.

The number is total and complete hogwash. I’m going to lay out some facts. And I will use math and other ugly arguments to show you that this number is a total and complete myth. And I hope to maybe dive a little into why this myth persists. Why beginning writers need it. So hang on. This myth is as ugly as it is stupid.

Before I go anywhere, there was an article in Publisher’s Weekly tracking the top book sales in 2009. For hardcover fiction, they list about 138 books down to 100,00 copies in hardback, for mass market the book had to sell above 500 thousand copies to even get mentioned, and trade paperbacks are added at certain levels. Go take a look at the article on Publisher’s Weekly and then read on.

Now, if you took a hard look at those numbers and authors, you would realize that even with the same author having more than one book on the lists, there are around 300 different names on those fiction lists. I am not on that list anywhere, neither is Kris or any number of writer friends who make their living writing fiction.

For the moment, let me leave that point and back up.

What is making a living?

For the longest time, I considered making a living at fiction at making more than $100,000 per year. Then in three or four workshops, I started talking to writers about reality. The writers’ reality and the amount it would take for them to “make a living.”

Most of the writers I talked to thought they would quit their day job if they were making fifty to sixty thousand a year with their writing. A number said that their spouse earned half their income, so they only needed thirty or forty thousand a years to make it happen.

After taking that poll for a number of workshops, I decided that six figures wasn’t required for “making a living” at fiction writing. Which just added in a lot more writers into the mix.

But for this discussion, lets just leave the number at one hundred thousand a year from your writing. Math is simpler. And besides, hard to argue with that number as a decent living in these recession times.

Right now, most new writers are saying, “Oh, I wish.” Yup, I would have to in my early days.

In the chapter FICTION WRITERS CAN’T MAKE A LIVING I talked about the Magic Bakery and talked about a theory where this 200 or 300 number comes from. So please right now go read that again and then come back, because now I’m going to jump off of some of those points. (And in the actual book this chapter will follow that chapter.)

Okay, now to that ugly math I promised above.

In the summary of book sales from 2009 in Publisher’s Weekly, the bottom book in Hardcover they listed had sold 100,099 copies.

So, the author makes on average 10% on each book sold (allowing for discount schedules and other contract things) and the book is priced at $25.00 (for easy math), the author makes $2.50 per book. 100,000 books equals $250,000. (Remember, that’s the very bottom PW figured was worth reporting.)

And it was for JUST THE HARDBACK. Now, if you went to the previous chapter on this topic and read about how a book or story works in the magic bakery, you will understand that this figures does not count any other income source for this one book. Paperback, audio, ePub, overseas sales to other countries, and so on and so on. And don’t even think about the money for possible movie options.

So bottom line, any author on that list from Publisher’s Weekly summary is making a LOT of money per book, far, far in excess of $100,000 per year.

On one book.

If you count all the different authors on those lists, which I did not exactly, but at a glance I can tell there are at least 300 different authors who made those lists. Some more than once. (See why the top brand name authors hit the Forbes Top Income Earners lists?)

Okay, so we’ve dealt now with the 300 top authors in fiction. But what about all the rest of us.

Or what about the fifty to one hundred writers who only sold between 80,000 and 100,000 hardbacks and didn’t make the list? Or what about those hundreds and hundreds of poor writers who only sold in the area of 30,000 copies in hardback and can only dream about that top list?

Let’s take one of them, shall we, and do that ugly math.

Same 10%, same $25 price, so author gets $2.50 per book. Author “ONLY” sells 30,000 copies in hardback, author only makes $75,000 in HARDBACK . Again, not counting all the other sales like paperback and overseas and so on. Again, we are back over six figures for that one book easily. Hundreds and hundreds more writers pile into the total number of writers who make a living.

I am still not included.

So, what about the writers who are more normal in publishing then the folks playing at the top levels? How do we make a living? How do us “working writers” do it who haven’t hit with any big books, or books that even sell 30,000 in hardback?

Actually, pretty simply. We write a lot more.

Back to the ugly math.

Say a writer does a small genre book. Books sells nicely at 20,000 copies in paperback actually sold. Writer got a $8,000 advance for the book. $6 book at 6% is .36 cents per book. Income is $7,200 so writer gets no more money than the advance, but publisher is happy and writer sells another book to them, or two or three.

So writer can do four books a year and makes $32,000 on just the advances from those books. (Now, remember that magic bakery?) Maybe not the second year at this pace, or the third, but at some point the author will have built up enough inventory that more things are popping. At four years, the author will have 16 novels finished. Overseas sales happen on a couple of them, audio sales happen every year on a couple of others, maybe a small option on one of them from Hollywood, rights reverted on two and the books are now selling on Kindle and other income sources directly to the writers.

And the pace just builds up. As each year goes by, more and more factors in the magic bakery kick in until at one point you find yourself doing just fine.

That’s the group I’m included in.

But understand I’m a lot faster than four books a year. I write across genres, I ghost novels for writers, I write a ton of short fiction as well. I make money on all of that as well with my little magic bakery.

Am I unusual? Oh, of course not. There are far more writers like me than writers on that big Publisher’s Weekly list. Or playing in the big books just under the list. In fact, the majority of writers who make their living at fiction seldom, if ever make that yearly list. Granted, those brand names on that list get all the press, but the thousands of us just working along do just fine and dandy.

SOME WONDERFUL NUMBERS

—Bowker reported that last year (2009) there were 75,000 publishers.

—Bowker reported that last year (2009) there were 47,541 NEW books published through standard fiction publishers. (Not counting POD at all.)

—Bowker reported last year (2009) that three were 29,438 new young adult books published.

(Get the full report here.)

That means that EVERY DAY through normal major publishers there were 213 regular fiction and young adult fiction novels published. (47,541 plus 29,438 divided by 365 days.)

Every day.

Let me repeat that one more time to let it sink in. 213 NEW FICTION TITLES EVERY DAY.

Ugly math: If a writer could manage four books a year, it would take OVER 19,000 writers doing four books a year just to fill what was published last year.

19,000 writers doing four books a year. Or 38,000 writers doing two books a year.

Yup, there are only 300 writers making a living writing fiction. SNORT! Anyone who repeats that number is just too stupid to do a simple Google search to find the real truth.

(And also Bowker announced there were about 250,000 POD books done as well in 2009, but they didn’t break then down as to how many were fiction.)

Still don’t believe the numbers? Want a test as to how many fiction writers there really are with your own two eyes?

Walk into a Barnes and Noble superstore and stand just inside the door and look around. Realize that most of those books you are seeing in that store will be replaced by the “turn” in less than a month. And the ones up front will change daily or weekly.

Now simply start picking up books and see if you recognize the author name. Up front you’ll find the brand names and the folks who are on that big list. But at the new release table how many names do you recognize?

Then walk the aisle of the romance section, the mystery section, the science fiction section, and then go to big section, the “fiction” section. Your eye will be drawn to the big names scattered in there, but look between them and the thousands of authors with books there THAT month. Most of their books will be replaced within the month by the same number of new books coming in by a different thousand authors.

And B&N can’t begin to carry every one of the six thousand new books in fiction being put out every month between adult fiction and young adult.

The truth: The publishing industry is a huge machine that needs product.

I have no clue how many thousands and thousands of fiction books a standard superstore holds, but if there were only 300 major authors making their living and writing one or two books a year, those shelves would be pretty empty, those stores soon out of business.

So, why do I think this silly number, this stupid myth gets repeated over and over?

My opinion only. (No math, no study behind this opinion.) Two reasons. First, I think it’s fear that causes this myth. And it works like this:

New Writer is afraid to actually take a chance and write and practice and put work out there in the real world. And if there are only 300 people making a living at writing, it is therefore impossible to do and so why should I even try.

In other words, those who hold that silly myth and repeat it need the excuse it gives them for there own lack of trying.

Second reason: Ego. New writer writes a book, sends it to an agent, no agent likes it, so therefore IT’S HARD to get published, and that has to be because there are only 300 people doing it. It CAN’T be the new writer’s fault, it can’t be because the writer can’t write well enough to even get into the 77,000 new fiction books being published in a year. It can’t be because no one who could actually publish the book has even seen it because of a myth the writer believes in with agents. It has to be someone else’s fault because the writer thinks their very first book is brilliant. Ego.

Well, no excuse. Over 200 new fiction books a day are put out by major publishers in JUST THIS COUNTRY alone. You stop making excuses and get past the myths and get your skill levels up and do four books a year, after a few years you are making a living. And if you write something that hits bigger for you and you end up on that Publisher’s Weekly list, you are pretty rich by most standards.

That only 300 people make a living at writing fiction is the stupidest and most destructive myth outside of the agent myths. Time to get past your fear and your own ego and chase your dream of making a living at fiction.

There are a very, very large number of us doing just that. After all, someone has to fill those shelves every month.

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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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This is now part of my inventory in my bakery. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, having it made, more on agents, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.

Thanks, Dean

I got the following question from a top writer who knows the answer, but I am sure he wanted me to make this very clear. So here I go.

Question: Are there good agents who perform according to the guidelines I have been talking about in these blogs?

The answer is: Yes, of course.

And even though I am getting known as anti-agent, I am not. Kris has a great agent that works perfectly with everything I have been talking about here. And I have had three good agents that worked perfectly for me as well. I am not agented at the moment because, as it has turned out in the last few years, I haven’t needed an agent’s help for anything. I might in the future, and if that day comes, I will hire a good agent (for me) in a heartbeat.

What I am banging against is not only the bad agents, the new agent model of rewriting their client’s work, and the refusing to mail work, but the stupidity of how writers deal with agents caused by the myths spread everywhere. And these myths, as Laura Resnick has pointed out in many of her great comments, are deep in all of us. I was no exception.

So, yes, there are great agents and good agents, and I think there are agents that fit every different writer’s style. Just this weekend I gave advice to a first time novelist (who just sold a four book deal ON HIS OWN) as to how to find a good agent and what to watch out for and if he was on the right track with his agent choice. (I thought he was.) Those that know me and listen to me and actually don’t get angry at every word I say realize I actually have no problems with agents.

I have problems with writers and how they deal with agents.

I believe we (writers) are all responsible for our own careers. We make the choices, we are the bosses. If a writer wants to hand over their entire income and career to a stranger without checking on them, just because of a myth, they make that choice. So I have nothing against agents at all.

Let me say this clearly: Bad agents would not exist without uninformed writers.

I am trying to help the writers get through the myths so they can make smart agent choices. Nothing more.

Now, one more point. I get a vast amount of anger directed at me by new writers because I challenge these myths and tell them they have to learn the business themselves. I understand clearly that the first defense when you don’t like message is to tear down the provider of the message. I expect that and the anger at me comes with two major focuses.

One: “Oh, he’s been around a long time and doesn’t know how it really is now.”

Two: “Oh, he only writes Star Trek and doesn’t know.”

Answering #2 first, the fact that I only write Star Trek must come as a complete shock to the fine folks at Pocket Books, who haven’t had me write a Star Trek book for almost nine years. (Hard Rain came out in 2002, I wrote it in 2001. However, I did keep editing for Pocket Books for a few years after that on Trek.) In fact, I haven’t written a media book of any type at all for over six years. I wonder how I’ve been making my living? Hmmmmmm…. The idiots who toss this out have never heard of pen names, of course.

Answering #1. Go to the top of this page and click on the “Workshops” tab. Kris and I, sometimes with the help of major writers and major New York editors, have been teaching workshops now to newer professional writers for over ten years, off and on. Most who have sold first novels out of the writers who have attended (a lot of first sales over the years, actually) have done it on their own, then gone and gotten a good agent, often with advice and help from me and Kris. A few got agents first and then sold, which is also just fine. Whatever works.

So, to be blunt, I have stayed completely informed about the current world, and stayed in close contact with hundreds of newer writers working to break in. I know the current world and what it’s like to break in. I have to do it as well every time I start a new pen name.

So I am not, in any way anti-agent. There are good agents out there. Great ones in fact.

But I am anti-uninformed-writer. I believe that the more informed and clear thinking writers are as a class, the better we all are in this business.

That clear enough?

(Next Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing chapter coming on Monday.)

Folks, on the first Agent chapter that you can find right here, Laura and Nathan, two established professional writers, have added in some great comments about agents and the state of the industry right now, started mostly from a post by WriterGirl, so read that first. They are the last five or six comments on that chapter. Worth going to read. Trust me.

Thanks, guys! Great stuff!

A new chapter in Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing is coming soon. I’ve almost managed to pound it into shape. It’s about the myth everyone hears so often that only 200 people make a living writing fiction.

Why isn’t it out now? Because I make my living writing fiction and have a really fun book I’m just finishing up, plus I just got hired to work on an fantastic book as a ghost. Both projects have me excited and willing to spend more time at my writing computer than at this internet computer. And that’s a good thing.

So, I will rope this myth to the ground in a few days, or maybe by Monday. It’s a fun one, actually.

And on a side agent note: If you haven’t gone back and read some of the comments on the very first agent post titled just Agents Sell Books, do so. The conversation has gone on there off and on as people find this book, and there is a horror story from a writer calling herself Writer Girl in a comment you all should read. (Next to the last comment.) Some of you might be in the middle of the same horror or thinking the same way this writer thought. You can find that first post either at the top of the page under the title of the book Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing or just click Here.

Back soon.

Cheers, Dean

Nice guy and long time editor and freelancer in publishing, Tom Dupree puts in a single post a very, very concise and clear history of why publishing is the way it is today, with women in control.

Brilliant post. A must read for anyone in or coming into this business.

http://tomdup.wordpress.com/2010/05/09/chix-n-boox/

Great stuff, Tom. Thanks for doing it!

Cheers, Dean

Hey, Mom, happy Mother’s Day.

And the same for all the mothers out there reading this. Hope you are all having a great day.

I got an interesting lesson on the power of the simple press release this last week. Not sure if you have heard or not but Kris (Kristine Kathryn Rusch) and I have been asked to be judges in the Writers of the Future contest along with Kevin J. Anderson and Fred Pohl and Anne McCafferty and Dave Wolverton and K.D. Wentworth and Mike Resnick and others. Great honor.

We had both been asked once before, but at the time I was still editing Strange New Worlds for Pocket Books and didn’t feel it was right to be involved with two new writer contests, and Kris was just finishing up her stint as editor of F&SF Magazine and didn’t feel up for it. But now, as only freelance writers, we are honored to be asked again and said yes quickly.

What I found startling is that Writers of the Future did a press release about us being asked and it got picked up across the country by television and radio stations, by newspapers, by blogs, you name it.

As any writer does, I have Google Alerts set up to let me know when my name or names come up somewhere on the web or in the media. Since that press release, my Google Alert has exploded with one day alone over 50 news outlets. And for a week now it hasn’t let up much. Now normally I only get an alert when someone reposts my blog or mentions my name or gets angry at me in some blog somewhere. Or when someone is selling one of my books somewhere. I usually go look but never say anything. That happens about four to ten times a day normally, a few more when I post a new Sacred Cows blog.

But wow, the simple power of that press release from the Writer’s of the Future shocked me. Shows how really important that contest has become in 26 or 27 years of existence.

It was honor to be in the very first book all those years ago, and be the first one across the stage at the very first ceremony, and it’s an honor now to go back and be a judge and help the new writers today. Kris and I also hope to help out for a few hours at the workshop if they need us while we are down for the ceremony every year. Only time will tell on that.

Kris and I met at the very first Writers of the Future workshop. Amazing how the contest is really been a part of our lives from the start. Glad it’s back in our lives again.