Take a long walk off a short career

by Giselle Renarde

I listen to podcasts while I clean the kitchen. Self-publishing podcasts, mostly. That's why the notebook on my fridge is covered in titles of books I want to write.

Books like: The Lazy Writer's Guide to a Sustainable Long-term Writing Career.

If I actually wrote that book I don't think anyone would buy it, so I probably won't write it. Mind you, I've written a lot of books nobody buys, so maybe I will. We'll just have to wait and see.

What brought this idea to mind in the first place? Most of the marketing advice geared toward authors (in the self-publishing sphere in particular) is stuff that I'm either way to lazy or way to cheap to put into play. Maybe I should call my book The Cheap-Ass Writer's Guide to a Sustainable Long-term Writing Career. Because, lazy as I am, I'm ten times cheaper.

There are a number of authors who make a mint self-publishing. They exist. They do. But the vast majority of those uber-earners work waaaaaaay harder than I'm willing to work. That, or they spend way more money than I'm willing to spend.

If I funneled hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of dollar into Facebook advertising maybe I'd make more money. Or maybe I'd be out hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars. Maybe if I purchased pricey advertising slots on bookish newsletters I'd sell more copies of my books. Or maybe I wouldn't.  I'm not the kind of person who likes to take risks. Just ask my sister how it works out every time she tricks me into going to the casino with her. I am not a gambler. In my mind, expensive advertising is always a gamble.

My book would be incredibly controversial. It would go against all the advice you'd typically get from those in the know. But what it really comes down to is how you want to live your life. I think a lot of advice is aimed at people whose idea of success is vast financial gain. If you want to earn a lot of money, you should be prepared to work hard and make sacrifices.

My advice would be geared toward people like myself: writers who are in it for the long haul, but who want a pretty peaceful life, who aren't expecting to make millions in their first year, or probably ever; people who are laying the groundwork for a slow and steady career as a writer.

You can work really hard if you want to. You can wake up at 5 in the morning to write until your brain melts. But the thing about writing 40 novels per year is that it's really fucking tiring. Maybe you can do it for a couple years, but most people aren't going to find that type of production schedule sustainable across the decades. And instead of backing off and just writing... oh, say, 30 novels per year... a lot of authors burn out and stop writing completely.

I don't want anyone to think I'm tearing down authors who make a quick buck and then ride off into the sunset. Earning a shit ton of money is a huge accomplishment--and it's certainly an accomplishment I have yet to accomplish.

My goal was to earn enough money from writing to pay my bills. I'm not a shifting goalposts type of person. I don't feel the need to earn more money this month than I earned last. I just need to keep afloat, and I can do that because I've being doing this work for more than 10 years. Every book is an investment. I couldn't pay the rent with my earnings in year one. Not sure I could have done it in year five. I've had a variety of part-time jobs over the course of my writing career, but the writing was never my part-time gig. The minimum-wage jobs were the part-time gigs. Writing came first.

Like I said: I don't think anyone would buy my guide to a sustainable writing career. Most people who are prepared to take ten years to reach their ultimate goal can probably figure out on their own how to get there. But maybe it would be encouraging for people like me to know that you can be a writer without being a go-getter. That's okay. You don't have to feel bad if you don't earn much or you don't release a book a week. It's still possible to make a living from your writing. It just takes a while.

But if you're lazy (like me), you'll wait.

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in well over 100 short story anthologies, including prestigious collections like Best Lesbian Romance, Best Women’s Erotica, and the Lambda Award-winning collection Take Me There, edited by Tristan Taormino. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, Cherry, Seven Kisses, In Shadow, and The Other Side of Ruth.

One Down

By Lisabet Sarai

Our topic for the coming fortnight is “Realizing Goals (or not)”. The theme could hardly be more timely, for me. This past weekend, I realized a goal that had been on my list for a quite a while. Finally, I self-published a book.

It’s not much of a book, mind you – just a 5K holiday short story – but I’m still feeling pretty proud of myself. For years I have been trying to avoid the whole self-publishing issue. I told myself that I didn’t have the time to futz around with formatting and cover creation. That I should be spending my time writing new fiction as opposed to worrying about mechanics. That I needed a publisher to support me via marketing, promotions and cross-over from other authors. That nobody would read my indie books anyway because the whole world knows that self-published fiction is crap.

Excuses, plain and simple. The main reason I didn’t self-publish earlier is that I was scared it would be too much work.

I was wrong. Aside from the inevitable frustration of trying to beat Microsoft Word into submission, everything went smoothly. The Smashwords platform turned out to be amazingly intuitive, with lots of information and guidelines for newbies. Amazon KDP isn’t nearly as well-designed, but after getting things set up for Smashwords, the extra effort required to convert the book for upload to Amazon was almost trivial. The whole process, for both sites, took about half a day, including creation of my cover.

Of course there were extenuating circumstances. I’d already written and edited the story. I’m confident enough in my technical writing skills that I don’t worry too much about grammar and spelling issues. I’d previously found a cover image, too, a single photo that I knew would be easy to convert to a cover simply by adding the title and author text. (When it comes to graphic arts, I know my limitations!)

Other factors helped me realize this goal, too, especially my recent experience publishing through Excessica. The Excessica co-op is halfway between a traditional publisher and self-publishing. The author is responsible for her own editing, formatting and cover. On the other hand, Excessica handles the format vetting, uploading, distribution and financial arrangements.

I started working with Excessica when several of my erotic titles went out of print due to a split with the previous publisher. Both Bangkok Noir and Exposure don’t fit the mold of erotic romance. The first, in particular, is one of my darker, more extreme works. Excessica seemed like the perfect venue.

So I’ve done some book formatting in the past few months, and I’ve made a few simple covers. To go from there to full self-publishing wasn’t such a major step.

However, more important than these concrete experiences, I’ve undergone a change of attitude. I’ve been pretty annoyed over the past year as my erotic romance royalties have dwindled, to the point where they didn’t even cover my marketing expenses. Meanwhile, I often find romance conventions a Procrustean bed; I’m forced to slash, stretch and contort my initial ideas in order to make them acceptable to the romance audience (or the publisher’s perception thereof). The process of editing my most recent romance novel, The Ingredients of Bliss, was especially painful, as the editor required me to suppress my heroine’s (admittedly rampant) sexuality in order to make her more faithful and committed. I did more rewrites on that book than on anything else I’ve written in my entire career.

The book was released in September. I wrote dozens of blog posts. I had articles on national news sites. I did two blog tours. I gave away gift certificates and even a few free copies.

A few days ago, I received my royalty statement for October. Want to know how many copies of The Ingredients of Bliss I sold?

Zero. Zilch. Nada.

As I’ve joked on the ERWA Writer’s list, I’m thinking of changing my tag line. My new slogan? “Too raw for romance, too sweet for smut.”

In any case, I’m ready to try some new approaches, because I’m not getting the benefits I expect from working with a traditional publisher.

Does that mean I’m going to self-publish everything from now on? Probably not. The amount of work involved in self-editing and self-publishing a novel far exceeds what I spent on Slush: A holiday romance. To some extent, this story was a throw-away effort, an experiment. I’d originally planned to give it away free, in fact, a kind of gift to my readers. Then I figured, why not give self-pubbing a go?

I don’t expect to get rich from this. In fact, the royalty percentages in self-publishing are not much different from what I get from publishers. (The only way to get 70% from Amazon is to publish with them exclusively.) I plan to promo this story like crazy, though, then see if it affects my other sales.

Probably my current feeling of self-satisfaction is my greatest reward from this endeavor. I managed to overcome my internal resistance and do it.

The next goal up? Trying to write a series, something else I’ve deferred for a long time due to laziness and fear.

Wish me luck!

[I don’t want to turn this post into promo, but if you’re interested you can see the cover I created for Slush, and read an excerpt, on my blog.]