Money, Money, Money, Money! - Susan Malone

Welcome to guest blogger, Susan Malone, who is addressing our April theme. Can you guess what it is? (smile)

A necessary evil, money.  For most artists, we hate to even think about it.  And as a measure of success, well, the money often doesn’t match up with critical acclaim. 

That part hasn’t changed in this business. What constitutes a Best Seller often doesn’t correlate to “well written.” We all know that. Especially in this day and age of the e-book revolution, what sells well is often something quite different from a great book. Not always of course. But the devil is in the marketing now more than it ever has been. And we, as writers, of course, have to watch that dreaded bottom line. 

We all wear two distinct hats in this industry: the Writer and the Marketer. And most writers really hate that other hat. But without it, not only do we not pay our light bills, but our books languish in obscurity as well. All writers (at least on some level) want to find audiences for their babies. 

As publishing has been turned on its head over the last decade, the mid-list author has virtually disappeared. And with it, advances from traditional publishing houses. Not entirely of course.  Contracts with advances do still exist. But you hear about the big ones because they are of the one-in-a-million variety. Yep, happens. As do auctions. Just not very often, and with huge disparity between best-selling authors and everybody else. For most folks being traditionally published, that $5,000 average advance has gone with the wind. 

The good news about this revolution, however, is that social media has opened a huge door for authors to promote themselves, and many are gaining greatly because of it.  Now rather than going through the traditional gatekeepers, you can put out a book, fashion a savvy marketing plan, and make money, where in past decades that book might have never seen the light of day. And a new mid-list is sort of creating itself, online via e-books. 

As a mid-list author, I’ve had four books traditionally published. All earned-out the advance, and all made some money in later royalties.  The keyword here is “some.”  But the funny thing is, one of those, Five Keys to Understanding Men, which did fairly well when published, has gotten a kick in the butt of late.  The publisher re-issued it last year, along with an e-book version. To my delighted surprise, I’ve been receiving fairly fat royalty checks for over a year now. What fun! And on a book that had been out of print for years. 

I’m liking this revolution more and more all the time. 

But all of that is the side story. Yes, we have to make some dollars doing this or we might just lose whatever is left of our minds.  But for the artist in us, that’s not why we do what we do.  We do it because we grow somewhat insane if we don’t.  It’s as Rilke asked that young man in Letters to a Young Poet, “This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? . . .  then build your life in accordance with this necessity . . . “ 

And we do.  We fashion our lives so that creativity blossoms, no matter the financial constraints. 

Or, to turn a popular song around a touch:  "You gotta write, like you don’t need the money . . . " 

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Award-winning author and editor Susan Mary Malone has four traditionally published books to her credit (fiction and nonfiction) and many published short stories. A freelance editor, forty-plus Malone-edited books have now sold to traditional publishers. You can see more about her, and what authors say about working with her, at: www.maloneeditorial.com

Posted by Maryann Miller, who thinks we actually have three hats, writer, editor and marketer. She likes wearing the first two, the third, not so much.