Proliferation to Profit: A Lesson Learned

Harlan Ellison. One of the most prolific pulp writers ever. Courtesy the NYTimes.

  

Do you write only when you feel like writing? Perhaps you consider yourself a hobbiest and you don’t much care about making a profit from your words. It could be that you have a day job, preferably one you like, and you don’t need the money that can potentially come from your writing. If that’s the case, may you go with God and prosper. 

But what about the rest of us who write for a living, be it as a freelance writer, journalist, blogger, nonfiction book author, fiction book author, or a rather strange and stressful all-of-the-above combination? We have no choice but to profit from our words, one by bloody one, or else the rent doesn’t get paid...The food doesn’t get served...The car gets repossessed. The words stop flowing, the cash stops coming in. What’s the only choice you have left? Getting the dreaded day job.

I'd rather hang from the ceiling by my nipples. 

Writing School

In writing school, I wrote far more material than was required by my professors. I wrote so many words, I drove some of them nuts. But when I told them that I planned on making a career out of my writing…that I planned on “entertaining” readers...I was only derided, and laughed at behind my back when the professors returned to their dorms for the evening. Well, laugh it up, because while you’re still teaching the same thing over and over again, year after year, I’ve sold hundreds of thousands of books and made close to a million bucks in the past ten years alone. And I’m not even close to being as popular an author as say the Dan Browns of the world, or even uber-successful indie authors like Hugh Howey or JR Rain.

The Value of the Written Word: Pay the Writer

Words should be exchanged for cold hard cash. I’m a staunch believer that if your words get printed, you should be paid for them. Sadly, we no longer get paid for everything we write. With the advent of the Internet, our words have become democratized. Blogs like this one are all the rage, but so are YouTube videos, Tweets, Facebook Posts, and more. I’ve even written for some stellar publications that no longer pay (they shall go unnamed). Payment, they say, is exposure, or perhaps the reader will pay indirectly by buying one of my books. I find this appalling on one hand, but reality on the other.

Writers have always had to beg and grovel to get ahead. Why should that change now?

 

Proliferation

What’s a writer to do? Quite simply, write. I’m not necessarily a speed demon at the typewriter, but I can easily write 2,000 new fiction words a day while also leaving time for blogs like this one and/or magazine articles. What’s 2,000 words a day equate to? Approximately one new novel per month. That’s a lot of books. My ability to do this day in and day out means that I’ve accomplished what I set out to do in writing school, when the profs were having a good belly laugh.

Proliferation is Profit but…

Just because I can, theoretically write one novel per month, doesn’t mean I should be publishing one novel per month. Over the course of three years, I’ve published maybe thirty products, most of them under my own imprint, Bear Media, and some of them with publishers like Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing Imprints), Down & Out Books, and Polis Books (I'm what they call a hybrid author). My belief was that the more content the better. That might hold true for the romance genre, but as it turns out, it doesn’t necessarily hold true for the crime, hard-boiled mystery, and thriller genres.

Flooding the Market

I believe at present there’s something like six million books available on Amazon. You might ask yourself, How the hell can I compete? The market is flooded. But I firmly believe that I’m only competing against my own genre(s). Maybe there’s far more thrillers available today than when I first started, but many of them are subpar or aren’t really competition anyway. However, when I flood my own market with too much of my own work, I actually rob myself of royalties. Even if the Beatles had put out a new record every month for ten years, there would have come a time when they would have been stretched just a little too thin, and sales would have suffered. One must give one’s readers (and listeners) a chance to keep up. One must give them a chance to breathe, or so I've discovered.

Proliferation to Profit Conclusion

After speaking candidly with one of my publishers, 2020 will usher in a new phase for me, in which I will only publish one full-length novel per quarter. This should give my readers both old and new, a chance to catch up with all of my published works. It doesn’t mean I might not put out a novella or a short story or two in between, but full-length works will be released one once per quarter. That should make everyone happy, including my publishers and my wallet.

In this new golden era of writing and publishing, proliferation is extremely important if not necessary. But man was not made to eat a full meal, every hour on the hour. He was made to eat three squares per day. Anything beyond that, and you just make yourself sick. 

Vincent Zandri's lastest novel is The Extortionist. 

 WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

Feel the Beat: How to Propel Plot

I did a reading in New York this past week as a part of the Mysterious Bookstore launch for Orchard Grove, my new standalone noir novel from Polis Books. After the reading, a fan asked me how I'm able to balance my dialogue with the prose while pushing along the plot so swiftly. It wasn't an easy question to answer. In many ways, it was like trying to find an answers for why do our hearts beat? Or why life?

Ask one hundred authors how they go about writing something and you'll get one hundred different answers. But for me, it's a matter of rhythm. Of creating a specific beat to the writing, much like a drummer laying down the back beat behind a particular piece of music. I'm able to make this analogy because I'm a drummer. And when I'm drumming, I feel the beat more than I hear it.

It's the same with writing.

I'm able to create 3,000 new words a day, not because I grind through it, but instead because of an ability to create a specific rhythm or beat that I feel inside my body and that is made manifest on the paper (or digital screen of my laptop). The steady beat comes about by a balancing act of description and dialogue. Never should one overtake the other or the entire piece of music will crash and burn. The reader senses the rhythm, and whether they end up liking the story or not, they will almost always point out, "Holy crap, I just could not put the book down."

Sometimes I'm writing to a frantic punk rock beat and other times, I'm writing to a more creative, improvised jazz rhythm. Sometimes it's funk, and other times, I'm writing to a slow, lovely but sad ballad like The Long and Winding Road, strings and choral voices bringing tears to my eyes.  

Looking for a way not only to write more words per day, but to create novels and stories that are unputdownable? Think in terms of rhythm. Feel the beat, man...Feel the beat. 

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM


  

The Worst Writing/Publishing Advice I Ever Did Get

It seems like every author I know is blogging about the best and worst writing advice they ever got. My colleague Stant Litore just published his in a very cool blog at ZOMBIE BIBLE, and I thought I would do the same here. Only difference with my little piece is that I am including publishing advice as well as some other gossipy juicy tidbits.

1. If you write five good stories in your life, that's a lot.

Source: Creative writing prof at MFA school. What a douche.


2. It's image that propels a novel, not plot.

Source: Creative writing prof at MFA school. I actually did my thesis on this huge pile of steaming MFA-writing-style dog shit. Ok, there's some veracity to it, but if you don't have a plot in your novel, than you might as well, ummmmm, teach at an MFA program for a living.

3. If it isn't literary it's sub-par.

Source: MFA school in general. For the most part I write in the hard-boiled genre and my sentences are at least as good as some stuck up literary stiff who wouldn't know a plot if it got undressed in front of him.


4. "When I begin to read violence in a novel, I toss the book across the room."

Source: That's a direct quote by an MFA prof of mine who spoke with a faux French accent and had written one novel about working as a used car salesman like thirty-five years ago, and nothing ever since. That's because he considers himself such a great writer that putting words on a page, not to mention words that convey violence, is beneath him. Again, total fucking douche.

5. "You can write on the side while you work for your family business."

Source: I can't tell you but it's a direct quote. Enough said about that topic...But sill, if I were to translate it would be, "You can be miserable and trapped like the rest of us or you can write and have a great life."

6.  "You will never get another major deal again."

Source: A local independent bookstore owner who is supposed to be a pillar of society. Two months later I proceeded to sell a couple hundred thousand copies of The Innocent, The Remains, and Godchild, which lead to my signing a "very nice deal" in an 8 book acquisition with Thomas & Mercer at Amazon Publishing (and yes my agent had other offers from some of the traditional Big Six houses which we turned down. Gladly!). I was definitely thinking of that bookstore owner while hanging out at the T&M publishing party in NYC during the BEA two weeks ago, along side some reporters from The New York Times,  the Wall Street Journal, etc.

7. "Write one true sentence."

Source: Ernest Hemingway. Papa I love you man, and if it weren't for you I probably would have done the family business thing the unmentionable source wanted me to do. But you lost me on this one...


8. Once you strike the major deal, you got it made.

Source: other writers, most of them from MFA school. Most times, after you sign the major deal and secure the first portion of the advance, you find yourself in trouble. You have no idea how to market yourself so you leave it up the marketing team. Usually, you end up selling nothing. Getting the major deal doesn't mean you've got it made. It means  they are giving you a chance to sell some books. Writing isn't only an art. It's a business. Don't blow your chance to be a success.

9. E-Books are a fad.

 Source: That bookstore owner....Ha, ha, hahahahaha....


10. Social media doesn't sell books. Traditional book signings sell books.

Source: Some author who still listens to cassette tapes in his car and who still misses Borders Books.


11. You need an MFA in Writing.

Source: MFA teachers who depend upon you for their paycheck.



All this said, what's the best advice I ever received?

1. Write what you like to read.

Source: Vincent Zandri, bestselling noir author.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

 

Writing Advice for Newbies (Education)

Some of you might want to punch me in the face for what you're about to read. If only it were possible to put a fist through your screen without trashing it. But this is one of those reality check blogs that needs to be addressed. And I feel like I should be the one to do it.

Here's my 21st century take on investing in advanced educational opportunities if you see yourself becoming a professional fiction writer.

--finish high school.

--Now the sticky part. College is expensive. Super expensive. Unless your folks are very very well off, you will be stuck with repaying huge loans. Something freelance writers and fiction writers just starting off will find impossible to pay. At the very least, consider attending a junior college first and if you wish to go on for your undergraduate, try and attend a less expensive state school. And by all means, don't major in English. Major in something that will land you a real job, like journalism, accounting, or nursing.

--Instead of attending college right away, consider gathering some precious life experience instead. Travel, write newspaper articles, blog, take photographs, work in a coal mine, steal away on a tramp steamer, join the Army, wait tables in Europe, become a prison guard, work construction, work on a fishing boat in Alaska and don't forget your dogeared copies of Jack London's, White Fang and Call Of The Wild.

--NOw here's the even sticker part. M.F.A. or what's commonly referred to as "Writing School." DO NOT GO THERE! The MFA is a useless degree. Trust me, I have one. MFA programs are rackets designed to keep old fashioned, often washed up writers who can't sell employed and to attract would-be writers who won't write another word once they've graduated and exhausted another fifty to sixty grand from their savings account. Try and make that up in terms of today's average publisher advance. Like Jim Harrison once said, MFA programs are like Pampers and Budweiser. They exist because there's a market for them.

Now what are you going to do about educating yourself to become a fiction writer?  

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The Best Writing Advice

"Dawn...Get up and bite the nail!"

I've been doing a lot of interviews lately about the best writing advice anyone ever gave me. One such interview I did (if you want to call it that) was for my rock star agent, Chip MacGregor or the MacGregor Literary Agency. Chip has just put the finishing touches on a "very nice" 7 book deal for me, which includes two new ones, Blue Moonlight and Murder by Moonlight for the Dick Moonlight series and five of my back-list titles, the top ten and top twenty Amazon Kindle bestselling  The Innocent and The Remains among them.

In his newest blog post at MacGregor Literary.com, Chip asks me and several other authors in his stable, what's the best writing advice anyone has ever given you. Here's my answer:  "The best writing advice I ever got came from Ernest Hemingway in the form of his memoir, A Moveable Feast. If writers are worried about one thing, it's the ability to keep a story moving from day to day. To avoid the 'block,' as some people call it. Papa wrote slowly and methodically in the early morning hours, and trained himself to stop at a point where he knew what was going to happen next. That way he could be sure of getting started the next day -- and it left him the afternoons to play, exercise, fish, drink, or do whatever he wanted."

Taking this a step further, I want to talk a little about mornings.

My band mates in The Blisterz used to get so frustrated with me. Whenever we'd have a gig, I'd request we play the earliest spot possible...You know, when nobody has shown up yet...so that I could get myself home at a decent hour, get to bed, and get up to write. If you're in a band, you don't want to play the early spot. You want to play the late, late, late spot, when the bar is major league packed and everyone is pretty well lubed up. Lubed up audiences are very forgiving. Even when they're shouting out for FreeBird, and you start playing Beat the Brat instead.

But I digress...

As a writer, mornings are precious. Like Hemingway suggested long before me, the morning is the time when you're are most alone and isolated with your thoughts. The dawn is peaceful and the daily rigors of every life like emails, snail mail, needy kids, grumpy spouses, telephone calls, uninvited guests, and more get in the way of your work.

But hey, that's life!

If, however, you can manage to get your page quota in by noon, you then have the rest of the day to deal with said life, and all the adventures it promises to bring your way. Somehow a phone call from the wife telling you she just rear-ended the guy in front of her while she was texting doesn't sound as painful as it might otherwise be if your pages are completed. If you receive an IRS bill for unpaid taxes, it becomes more like water rolling off a duck's back so long as you have gotten your daily quota of words in.

Your writing is your shield and your sword and your rock. It is what you have in the face of uncertainty. It is surety and stability when the earth beneath your feet is splitting open, and about to swallow your home with the dig still asleep inside it. And it all begins in the dawn, when you are the only person awake on earth.

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