Marketing And Volume

There are so many people out there who make their living exclusively by writing fiction. Man, would I love to be one of those people!

The trick with this is surmounting the fact that fiction pays peanuts in comparison to nonfiction (unless you're Stephen King, which I'm not). How is that possible? Two factors: Marketing and volume.

Marketing is a given no matter what you write. In this era, some of the lousiest works make it to the bestseller lists due to marketing, despite being nigh unreadable. Quality is not the biggest factor in determining success, though I do believe that it is essential if one wants to snag more discerning readers and appeal to a wider audience. Books don't sell themselves. They need marketing, and I'm talking unabashed, hardcore, persistent marketing. J. A. Konrath and Christopher Paolini, among others, are testaments to this. Too many writers write a book, publish it, and then sit back to let the dough roll in. That's not the way it works. Writing is the easy part.

Which brings us to volume. As I said before, fiction pays next to nothing in comparison to nonfiction. Which means if one is to make a living writing fiction, they need to churn out A LOT of it. Louis L'Amour, R. L. Stine, Issac Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and others are examples of guys who kept their fiction mills working constantly. And it paid off. They got to do what they loved AND make a decent living doing it.

So here I am, one of many, many dreamers who would give anything to be a full-time writer, working on increasing daily word count and jotting down story ideas despite jobs, kids, and daily demands, and studying marketing strategies in hopes of one day nailing the art.

Someday, I'll be writing a blog post or article about how I overcame all odds and became a career storyteller.

At least, so I hope. 

Conflict of Interests

By and large, I tend to read nonfiction far more often than fiction, especially in recent years. When I was a boy (and on through my early twenties), I devoured fiction of nearly every kind, mostly thrillers and fantasy, with a smattering of mysteries. I was up on most classic fiction -- heck, I even read War and Peace three times. But now that I'm older and my priorities have shifted, I'm far more apt to read nonfiction.

This in itself isn't strange. What's strange is that, while consistently reading nonfiction of late, I continue to write fiction. They say you're supposed to read what you write. If you write scifi, read scifi. If you write chicklit, read chicklit. If you write about cosmic marshmallow unicorns jumping through holes in the universe, read about cosmic marshmallow unicorns jumping through holes in the universe.

I have ignored this cardinal rule.

Well then, why don't I write nonfiction?

Here's the trick with nonfiction: In order to market and sell most nonfiction, the writer should have what is known as a "platform". For example, if I were to write about tumors in parakeets, I would be able to sell the book if I were a vet or ornithologist who lived with the parakeets in the spirit of Jane Goodall and made their tumors my object of study for ten years or so.

But I haven't, so I couldn't sell a book like that.

The nonfiction books I want to write would require a career in politics, a degree in history, and/or a position of theological eminence. I have none of these. I am not Sarah Palin, Stephen Ambrose, or Joel Osteen. Thus, were I to write such books, I would be unable to market them with much credibility.

So fiction remains.

Not that I resent being relegated by circumstance to the creation and sale of fiction. While I may not spend much time reading it of late, I do enjoy writing it. It's an escape from the real world that, to be honest, nonfiction does not provide.

I like escaping reality on occasion.

Making a career out of it wouldn't be so bad.