This morning I received email from Clint Catalyst announcing that Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache is on the LA Times Bestseller List. This is excellent for the book, the editors, and all of the writers. It is also quite encouraging that the book is doing well and getting positive reviews in major outlets, given that it is a small press anthology.
The next piece of email in my inbox was a discussion amongst professional writers on a listserve about an article detailing the tribulations of a midlist writer. I found the article interesting and funny, though I have never had any fantasies about my writing career.
The whole endeavor is mostly toil with a few erratic flashes of luck. Even the good things – the major interviews, nice reviews, being quoted in big mainstream magazines – are not what they would seem from the outside. I’ve always thought that publishing was a business much like the gas station my grandparents used to own. My experiences so far have supported this theory.
Most writers are never published at all. Those who establish a consistent visible career work hard. The few serious writers who break out and make money are the rare exceptions. This has always been true; the industry has changed in the last few decades but it was never as idyllic as people might wish to believe.
Experimental and serious writing is hard to sell. The major publishing houses want to earn a profit on the work they promote. Smaller and independent firms publish more diverse work but do not have the promotional clout of the larger firms. These facts are just true – and always will be.
Even those few writers who have achieved a level of notoriety are not generally earning a living wage. It is in fact possible to be famous and poor.
I know many brilliant people who can sell out events based on their reputation, but still need to work boring day jobs. Those who work in fields related to their art are no more (or less) inclined to be satisfied or productive.
The latent expectation on the part of writers and the audience that making work leads inevitably to a reasonable fee for service is simply misguided. It would in fact be easier to make a profit running a gas station (though that industry has consolidated and changed in much the same way as the publishing industry). Writing does not lead to riches. There are other reasons to write; most of them soppy but still worthy.
My essay in the Pills anthology is part of a piece of work that has been called “brilliant” and “beautiful” and “frightening” and “haunting” and, most telling of all, “not commercial.”
One version sold out a limited edition chapbook; more than 9,000 copies are in circulation and I can’t fulfill the additional orders. How can this be quantified? I know that the zine has sold better than many books, with absolutely no promotion or support except the goodwill of distributors and friends.
In book form, would it sell that well? No idea, because no publisher wants it. Too risky.
I am not trying to imply that I am above the sordid commercial aspects of publishing; I am not pure. I just know that money is not the only measure of success in a writing career.
