I love to write. Love,
love, love it. And the fact that I can publish my stories and share them with
other people is so amazing. When other people like my stories, it’s gratifying
and validating. If my books didn’t get published, if they didn’t sell, if they
didn’t get good reviews…would I still write?
I’m not sure,
actually.
I don’t write just for
the money. There’s no way you could do that. Much as I love it, writing isn’t
easy sometimes. It’s hard work and a LOT of time. You have to love it to do it.
To understand this, I keep in mind the saying I’ve heard,
“I write for fun. I publish for money.”
The way I look at it
is, if I didn’t make money from my writing, it would be really hard to justify
all the time and effort I put into it, especially time that isn’t spent with my
family or cleaning my house (not that that’s high on my list of fun things to
do, but you know, it has to be done once in a while). My kids are older now so
it’s not like they need me, but it’s still important to spend time with them
and my husband, and contribute to the upkeep of the house. My husband does all
the laundry now, without complaint, so I have time to write, but if I wasn’t
making any money from my writing, I’d feel really guilty about that.
When I make decisions
about what projects to work on next, I try to do it with business in mind. But
that doesn’t always work. For example—my hockey books. I know with my business
brain that I should be taking advantage of all the interest and sales I’ve had
of those books and write the next one. I started writing it. But somehow my
writing heart blocked my business brain, and it wasn’t happening. (But it
will!)
My business brain has
looked at sales of my books with different publishers. I know which sell better
and how many copies they sell. I’ve made business decisions about the types of
books I’ll write and where I’ll submit them based on financial considerations.
It’s not worth it to submit an 80,000 word manuscript that took me months of
research and writing to a publisher where it won’t sell well. Also, the
different subgenres make a difference. I’ve seen that my recent romantic
suspense book hasn’t sold nearly as well as other books, and even though many
readers said they’d like more romantic suspense from me, that probably won’t be
a priority since the sales aren’t there. Although I do love
romantic suspense. On the other hand, my ménage books outsell everything else,
and clearly I should be writing more of them. And I will. But my writing heart
can’t write nothing but ménage stories. Then there are my BDSM stories, which
have gotten great reviews but not so great sales. I’m not sure if that’s
because of price, publisher, or because they’re BDSM, but my writing heart wants
to write more of them anyway.
So I have to try to
balance the love of writing and loving what I write, with practical business
decisions. It’s hard.
What do readers
expect? More of the same books that are so popular? Is there a risk of getting
tired of the “same old thing”? Should writers be trying new things and
experimenting with how they sell? Do readers understand that sometimes there
are business decisions behind what we write? Or am I the only author who thinks
this way?
Posts
2 comments:
I find this really interesting. I will read any and all of your books. But if I went looking for a new author to read, I would probably pick contemporary or BDSM before ménage.
I absolutely love your suspense and I have read some with your humor and they are awesome!!
I never really gave it much thought that sales might determine what genre you write, but it makes complete sense. But that may change in 2013! ;)
Great post you hit on so many great points.
As a writer, I try not to concentrate on market trends and just on what I as a reader would love to read more of, and then from there for my own writing.
You're not the only author who thinks this way, sometimes we have to make these hard decisions for the sake of the business side of things and try to balance it with our creative side.
Post a Comment