Do Writers Really Need Facebook?

Do Writers Really Need Facebook?

The Power to Publish

 

Photo courtesy Huffpost.com

Publishing is easy and instantaneous in the 21^st century. But that power bears enormous responsibility.

It’s a huge responsibility when you think about it. This new age of publishing is all about the freedom and the democratization of language. In place of the once speculative process of submitting our work in exchange for paid publication—a laborious process that can take weeks, months, and in some cases, years—we now have the power to publish complex thoughts, ideas, and stories, instantly. We choose to do this without contract, without direct payment in exchange for the adrenaline rush of publication. 

I once listened to a writing professor of mine announce to our humble workshop, “I lust publication.” His words hit home, even when I was starting out, and publication meant typing up a story, and sending it to a magazine via snail mail. Maybe you’d receive the coffee-stained story back in the mail three or four weeks later along with a form rejection letter, “Sorry but no dice.” Suddenly you’re back to where you started. Or hell, if that’s your twentieth rejection, maybe you just gave up and decided to drive a truck for a living. 

But now you don’t need the mail. You don’t need the publisher. You need your laptop and a place like Medium to publish whatever you want to write. Amazon KDP will publish your book, no questions asked. So will Kobo, Google, iBooks, and Barnes and Noble/Nook. ACX will record your audio. YouTube will make you a video star. Twitter will create scandal, for which you will become famous or infamous. Facebook and Instagram posts will make all your friends and colleagues jealous when you post pictures of your vacations and notices of your successes. Because no one ever posts pictures of their dirty toilet. No one ever posts news of their empty bank accounts. Or do they? 

Publishing in the new world order…The walls have been torn down, the gatekeepers removed, the barriers blown up. Writers (and that can anybody who calls him or herself a writer) now possess a tremendous amount of power. Imagine the enormous responsibility that comes with that power? 

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Market saturation? Nonsense...Build your own tribe separate from Facebook

The writing studio in Florence where I'm currently eating, drinking, writing...

One of my best writing buddies posted on Facebook this morning about his having to burn through two years to get the rights back to one of his novels from a rather prominent publisher. Said publisher wasn't doing dick to promote the book so my bud figured (wisely) he could do a much better job of it on his own.

Go figure.

Someone in the comments mentioned the terrible saturation situation that has afflicted the fiction market (and non-fiction market, I suppose). I guess something like 1.5 million books are being published per year, indie and traditional books combined. Is that possible? Or did I dream that stat?

Whatever the case, I don't consider myself competing against 1.5 million books or a million other authors both dead and alive or those about to be born. I write, for the most part in a specific genre that sees far fewer than 1.5 mil books being published each year. I'm talking noir, hard-boiled mystery, and psychological suspense. I'm also publishing erotic noir/suspense these days (Don't tell my mother). Being that publishing isn't a zero sum game, I consider my true competition to be myself. Sort of like a marathon runner who is always trying to best the completion time of his last race.

Here's how I'm bettering myself every year and improving my chances of success.
1. I'm writing more books per year than ever (and in turn writing less journalism)
2. I've hired a professional marketing team to set up ads and provide Book Bub like promos once every couple of months (right now this "growth" program is costing me a lot of money but in the long run...it's a marathon remember...this will pay off)
3. I'm building up my subscriber list to the tune of 10-15 new readers per day (in general, every time I send out a newsletter, I lose about 10 of these subscribers, leaving me with an excellent positive net return). No longer do I rely on asking my 9K friends and fans on FB to "Buy my shit!"
4. I've hired a brand new literary agent who has a killer reputation and who will most definitely land me more traditional deals, foreign deals, and multi media deals to compliment my indie publishing.
5. I'm also toying with the idea of taking on a small number of writing students who wish to be coached on both manuscript quality and publishing direction (more on this in 2018)
 6. I've rented a new writing studio/apartment and will no longer be writing "out of the house." I've seen lulls in my career happen before (they happen to all of us), and at least two of those times can be attributed to my working "at home."

This list is by no means comprehensive or complete. In fact, it's a fluid work-in-progress. But in the end, I wouldn't be worried about how many books are being published per year. In fact, bring them on, because one, most of them are pure shit. And two, most of the authors who produce those 1.5 mil books will never ever write another book again when they realize just how difficult it is to sell even a single copy.

Now get to work...

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Author Elyse Press Major Violates the VOX (In a good way!)

Elyse Press Major, showing us her right brain...

I've known Elyse Press Major for thirty years now (Okay, let's get this over with ... when she was a still a "minor" ... baddump bump). Well, to be more accurate, I should say I shared a brief friendship with Elyse back in the mid-1980s when we were both college students in Providence, RI. I was in a really bad punk rock band and the manual typewriter I kept on my desk in my red-lamp-lit, cigarette clouded, studio dorm room that overlooked what seemed to be the only wood in the city, click-clacked volumes regarding a future that, at the time, was still a great and wild unknown. Elyse and I often talked books and writers and writing, but mostly we talked about bands like Echo and the Bunnymen (sic?) and what shows were coming to the area's premier stage, The Living Room. I lost touch with Elyse after a short time, which is as common for young people as are defaulted student loans, until one day she reappeared for me on, what else, but FB. Imagine my shock and surprise when it turns out she's a writer, and successful one at that. I could only think and grin and recall that typewriter set out on the desk in that tiny little room that overlooked the trees. After a few minutes of thinking, it all made sense. Of course, Elyse is a writer. Having carved out a niche for herself in the "tinkering" and "home crafts" section of your local Barnes and Nobles (and arguably every newsstand in the country from Portland O to Portland M), the still youthful writer produces colorful and stunning coffee table books that aren't for decoration only. They are as well written as they are fun for the whole fam damily, as they say. Here's a guest post Elyse penned for the Vox. You won't find any homespun advice on how to make a sock puppet, but instead you might find something sculpted from her more philosophical right brain. With that, I give you, Elyse Press Major:

Knowing Me, Knowing You

“Wrong, a long time ago we knew each other for a short period of time; you don't know anything about me. “

Nick, The Big Chill

Even though I embraced blogging early on I was late to join the rest of the social media party, wary of it being the ultimate “worlds collide.” Facebook seemed like a toxic potpourri of former co-workers, family members and old boyfriends -- who could care about my every thought the second I had it? And MySpace looked messier and sounded noisier than my high school bedroom.

Then I attended a memorial service for the father of a dear old boyfriend. It was truly lovely to lay my eyes on so many faces I hadn’t seen in years. Over and over I heard, “You should get on Facebook to stay in touch.” Reluctantly I started an account that evening. Within minutes Friend Requests came out of the virtual woodwork. Some from faces I hadn’t seen in thirty years! One request from a woman who had ignored me hours earlier at the memorial service; I decided not to “let her in” to my new alterna-reality.

Cut to just a few years later and admittedly Facebook along with Twitter and Pinterest are regular parts of my day as a work-at-home writer seeking not only water-cooler interaction but publicity work as the admin for multiple pages. In the myriad of new platforms popping up daily somehow Facebook has become the “comfy slippers” but I do have my “walls” of what I will and will not share, and there are trust issues to be sure. While I’m happy to heckle parts of my own day or share a staged meal or view of the moon, I never share images of my children or their whereabouts.

One night I went to see that same old boyfriend play in his band and the night club was filled with people from Facebook. I had to chuckle as I could mentally assign minutia to people without even having had an out-loud conversation. He must be tan from that recent trip to Aruba. Boy, that sandwich sure looked good. She’s a Republican?!

Curiously some of these online friendships are becoming stronger now than ever. Like the cheerleader I don’t think I ever spoke to in high school who is now a great supporter of my work, the neighbor with whom I’ve bonded over a shared addiction to flavored seltzer and magazines, and the noir thriller author I dated for a few weeks in ’84 who has become a trusted mentor.

BIO

Elyse Press Major is the author of two craft books, Tinkered Treasures and Seaside Tinkered Treasures (CICO Books). An accomplished writer, Elyse regularly contributes features and articles to magazines such as Romantic Homes, Romantic Country and French Country Style. Visit Elyse at tinkeredtreasures.com and on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.

www.vincentzandri.com

Happy

 Courtney Sanford

Remember when you were a kid, and you couldn't wait for school to let out in June? You wished away the hours, the weeks, the months, so that time would move at lightning speed and the summer would arrive early. You lied about your age or, at the very least, stretched it by proudly announcing, "I am nine and a three quarters now." 

Then you get older. A lot older. Like pushing fifty older, and you start doing things to make time stop ticking so fast. Problem is, the older you get, the faster it goes. Time is indeed relative, but it is relative to age. When you're young, you are immortal and death is an incomprehensible concept at best. When you're no longer young, death seems as real as the old worn out clothing hanging in your closet or the reflection of your face staring back at you in the bathroom mirror each morning.   

You don't know when it's coming. That's a good thing.

Just two days ago, 32 year old Courtney Sanford was driving on a highway in North Carolina while rocking out to the "Happy Song." The tune was making her so happy, she picked up her cell phone and snapped a selfie, posting the word "Happy" along with the digital snapshot on her Facebook timeline. Problem is, during the process of telling the world how happy she was, she smashed head -first into a truck. The truck burst into flames and she died. All time stopped for Courtney then, but at least she died happy.

This weekend, a movie will open in the UK about a four year old boy who died on the operating table and went to heaven where he claimed to have met John the Baptist, Jesus, and even a sibling who had been stillborn. The movie, which is said to be based on real life events, is sure to raise some eyebrows amongst those Godless folks who believe heaven is as much fantasy as Candyland. Regardless of the truth about the boy's experiences, I find the subject infinitely fascinating. What if there really is a heaven, and conversely, what if there really is a hell? I'm not a religious man, but the spiritual side of me hopes for something beyond the here and now. Only the dead know the truth.

I can only imagine that prior to his surgery, the little boy was one of those happy go lucky kids who used to exaggerate his age while wishing time would speed up so that summer would get here already.  I also wonder if Courtney is in heaven or something like it. I wonder what she would have to say about her experience. I wonder if she is somehow, still happy. I can only imagine that she was trying to slow time down a little by telling the world how content she was at that very second in her life. The same exact second that the life became the death. 

They say that when we die, a we lose a small amount of weight. Some attribute this phenomenon to the soul leaving the body and heading off for new horizons. I like this concept. It's somehow comforting. Death is inevitable for all of us. The only thing we have between right now and that one singular moment when the heart stops beating is time. A lot of it, or a little. But of course, the amount is relative.

The point is to live for the moment. Choose to be happy, just like Courtney Sandford did during her final moment on earth. Don't choose to be sad and bothered by life's drudgery. Look forward to summer like that little boy, but also, be happy right now. Snap and selfie, and go ahead and tell the world.

Just don't do it while you're driving.

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