The old paradigm is dead. Long live the new paradigm.
I had a rough night the other night. Ever get woken up with anxiety and then your mind goes places when you’re in that nerve jangling state wishing you could fall asleep again? Well, it made me consider some things I never thought of before.
Since maybe 2016, authors have been told more and more that the publishing world is changing and that they must do a lot more to be a published author, let alone a successful published author even if they are tradpubbed.
It used to be that a tradpub author, even a mid-lister, didn’t have to do much to be successful enough to make a decent living. Sure, book tours happened and other publicity appearances. That’s to be expected. Even Dickens did book tours all over the world in music halls akin to Vaudeville, reading from his books and answering fans. Big name authors would go on book tours to stores all over the nation too. This was expected. But then the author retreated to their den and wrote the next book or perhaps even more.
If they were pulp authors, they didn’t go on tours so much as they just pounded out the next short story or what we’d call a novelette today and kept right on publishing non-stop. Paid by the submission, not by royalty, they had to keep grinding and submitting to get paid. The lucky ones kept enough of their rights to resubmit and sell the same story twice or even more. There’s was the job of keeping the magazines full of stories and the magazines took care of their own advertising, not the author. So the pulp authors kept their typewriters banging away as consistently as they could.
No tours.
No publicity appearances.
Just more writing.
Today, this writer’s lifestyle of the more or less peaceful life in a lonely hermitage punctuated by short lived publicity tours managed by their publisher or agent that built their celebrity are all but gone. Only the previously famous and the lucky winners of the fame lotto get that level of treatment where they’re just the main attraction of a marketing and publicity campaign, or at least become the headliners with several warm-up acts.
Tradpub as we call it now, will not pay a dime for what was considered normal marketing responsibilities. They’ve abandoned those responsibilities forcing it on someone else, aka “the author”. The only people who get the power of the publisher behind marketing are those who are already famous on their own, and least likely to need it. Many are able to draw millions in sales on their own. Then tradpub put the money up for publicity and a book tour. It’s a sure money. Why wouldn’t they? Mid-listers though? Pffft. Here’s your budget of a hundred bucks a coupon code for social media ads and a pack of gum.
The author is now responsible, save at the highest levels of fame or earnings, to do all publicity, marketing and social engagement without any help from the publisher. Indie authors, it’s logical to understand that nobody’s riding to your rescue unless you pay them first. That’s also because an indie is doing everything the publisher is doing. Everything. That is the hell of being an indie author. They want a book tour, they gotta do all parts of it.
The saddest part is the author is often the LAST person who should be doing the publicity and marketing. They’re supposed to be writing and keeping the pipeline of content full. Not worrying if they can get a signing in an Albuquerque Barnes & Noble and if their ad campaign on social media’s getting any traction.
Life for writers right now is grim for although self-publishing has killed the industry gatekeepers, new ones have arisen. I wrote about that in a note recently so I won’t rehash it here. Furthermore, the public expectation has shifted hard and has created a new type of friction on authors. The public now seems to expect two things from authors: Total access and regular free content.
It’s hard to focus on writing when an author is being forced to be an open book themselves. Almost every shred of modern marketing advice is being constantly active on social media. Engage with your public! Let them see every wart, dimple and fart. Constantly pitch your books, but not so constantly as to distract them from getting to think you’re best buddies. You have to make them fans of you and your rapid fire daily content. I mean what the hell?! When is the author supposed to have time to write when they’re trying to satisfy the most stimulus addicted public? I’ve heard people say “It only takes maybe an hour a day to put up a post on social media”.
Bullshit. I can attest that unless you utterly half-ass your social media accounts, it takes a LOT longer unless you’ve hired someone else to do it for you. It takes time to get the right images (either by searching clipart or getting AI to generate something worth a damn). I can spend 8 hours a day trying to get everything set up for 2 posts a week and duplicate them to 4 total social media platforms because they refuse to work together so I can one click and simultaneously send and look correct.
That eats up your time so much. Plus, what’re you gonna write about? What does your public want to hear? How fast are you going to piss them off when you say you support [insert controvertial opinion here]. Suddenly you lose a big chunk of followers. There is no mystique anymore. Just like marriage and you discover your love’s REAL bathroom habits. The magic diminishes with that level of familiarity. An author’s fandom might not either.
The other side of total social media engagement is you quickly learn that someone else is doing it and you feel a bit betrayed, OR it’s curated more than a shallow OF influencer that only makes thirst traps in what seems to be exotic locations pretending to have access to mega wealth. In the end, the author is trapped by this, quickly burns out like a Youtube content creator doing 3 shows daily. A pace that even television networks can hardly expect of their creative talent.
Oh sure, there are rare people who can pull that off. And I do mean RARE, but they generally AREN’T authors as their primary gig. They’re people who love marketing and just want to market their own product. They’re content creators who’s books are an excuse for creating videos and things writing adjacent.
See the problem most indies have? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
And then there’s the angry mastodon in the room: the expectation that content must be free. Free content is wonderful. I admit I love it too. The problem is, free content may make an author popular, but that sort of popularity doesn’t pay the rent or the costs on publishing the next book. Free content is the realm of the hobbyist who is doing it for the love of the process, and that’s great. They have a full time job or trust fund somewhere paying all the bills. Covid writers are going back to work since the gub’mint checks are ended. All that free content, like “work from home” is drying up.
Something has to change if you want more.
“Like, Share and Subscribe!”
“Click that bell!”
“Turn on notifications!”
We hear that all the time on content creator channels because their pay is tied to how much engagement they get from their audience. (Assuming they don’t have paid subscription tiers or corporate sponsors.) The attention economy is incredibly important to social media platforms, and those who are trying to monetize their channels. The more attention you pay them, the more the platform pays.
It may seem like I wandered way off the reservation but let me bring it back together.
Authors require feedback, just as much as content providers do. If you’re getting free chapters, worldbuilding, personal stories and access to their lives, they’re like actors on the stage. They deserve applause and some sort of response from you the consumer of their content. Authors with books out need people to buy their books. If they’re an indie author, they really need the feedback on sites that sell them.
Even hobbyist and fanfic authors want the social media equivalent of applause from an audience who are entertained by their work. Authors struggling to make a career need even more so. As more content, free and paid enter the arena thanks to the changing nature of the publishing industry, the audience is gaining some new responsibilities too.
Passive engagement is dying. Authors who see people reading but get no engagement, not even a “like” get discouraged. It’s not like the old days where an author had to deal with almost zero public response except for occasional fan letters. Most of their social proof happened when they did go on book tours and appearances. It made all the time in silence working on their next work worthwhile.
The new form of a fan letter is writing a review on the site you bought the book or leaving a comment on their page. Some authors would enjoy engaging with those that send encouraging feedback.
The active author needs an active audience. This creates a dialogue and encourages more of what you love as an audience. And it only costs you a little time and your thoughts, well wishes and encouragement. Feed an author’s heart for what they have bled to create and you will get more.
