May 21, 2013

I was asked on a survey last week whether I'm a published author, and I replied with "No."

Technically, in the weakest possible sense, I'm not. I'm writing under a pen name. Very few people I see in my daily life know that I've made ebooks available. For 95% of them, if I even identify myself as a writer (which does occasionally happen), when asked what I write, I respond with "Not very well." Oddly enough, in my public persona, the person who would be most closely identified as "me" to anyone else, I imagine that "I" would write terrible dramatic poetry, and the rare short-short story, in awful purple prose.

I have written a grand total of probably ten poems since I clawed my way out of my teenage angst phase, and I love to focus on form instead of content. I wrote a sonnet last year because I could, and published it in a small magazine; note I didn't even say "submitted it to," because there was very little in the way of a submission process. I handed it to the editors and said "If you don't want to take it, that's okay."

I seem to have developed some sort of preemptory knee-jerk reflex to dismiss my own writing as awful. I don't know when this began, and I think maybe I need to work on that. I'll put on an outfit that I like and not give a damn what anyone else thinks of it, as long as I like it. I'll refer to watching something on Lifetime Movie Network without a qualm. And yet, when it comes to my writing, when I allow people to see it, I end up apologizing before they read the first word: "I'm sorry, it's really not very good." I suppose I'm waiting for them to say, "You're right—it isn't."

Half the time I believe that apology is a lie. Half the time I think, "No, I'm very proud of what you're about to read. It represents a lot of time and energy I spent, and even if it isn't to your personal taste, I hope you enjoy it in some way."

The other half of the time, I think, "This is me being Ed Wood. This is totally me being Ed Wood. Anyone who has ever said anything nice about anything I've written was just trying to save my feelings. Secretly they all hate it. Why am I trying? Virtually any author is so much better."

But I don't honestly believe that every single positive review and piece of feedback I've received was just a total lie. Not honestly. So this is, at its heart, a self-esteem issue.

I'm supposed to be a cheerleader for my books. If I (electronically) hand a book to someone I've never met with an apology in my voice and a cringe on my face, that isn't going to sell anyone anything. "Well, if you have no faith in this, why should I bother even giving it a chance?" they might think. "I have a thousand other things I could be doing."

Would that there were some pill I could take that would temporarily give me self-confidence—without inebriation, anyway. I'd need a clear head for this, after all.

This makes me think that—right now, anyway—I'm not the best person to be writing the product description for my books. I only know what made me write it, and that was because I had these people running around in my head, or a vision of a green sash in moonlight and fingertips drifting along a rough stone wall, and I felt compelled to write it down, and then share it with the internet at large. When I read back over the stories, I see those things again, and a part of me wonders what the stories do to other people. Why are they appealing? What makes you go back and read it again, and if you wanted to convince someone else to read it, what would you say?

Hmm. All good things to consider while I'm on vacation.

(self-)promotion

Here's the thing - I'm divided.

On the one hand, I have zero advertising budget, and I'm not convinced that advertising really works when it comes to ebooks. I am far more convinced to buy a book via personal recommendation or testimony. If someone whose opinion I trust recommends a book, I become interested in it. I feel like there's something inherently disingenuous in asking bloggers to read my work just looking for a recommendation or review.

On the other hand, I'm more accustomed to fanfic, and it's easier to find stories in that format. Want a Chuck/Sarah story? Look in the Chuck fandom section, find something tagged with the Chuck/Sarah relationship, read the description and see if you're interested. The important thing is finding a large archive with plenty of stories. Then you're good. What about original fiction? There's so much of it out there. How do I reach my audience? I just want to announce to the world: "Hey, I've written a book. If you're interested, check it out. If not, that's cool too." I think awareness is really the important thing, maybe even above recommendations. Recommendations don't matter if the possible audience never sees them.

The tips I'm reading say that I need to picture the ideal audience for my work, but I don't have an ideal audience in mind. Just "a person mature enough to read adult material who understands English." I don't think I'm writing genre fiction, but then maybe I am. Maybe the story I've published is definitely just romance-genre, even though it feels like more than that to me.

It feels very hard to step away from what I'm writing and evaluate it with any objectivity whatsoever. I'm reminded, again, of the Ed Wood parallel. I love writing, maybe with the same zeal Ed Wood did. I've never been convinced that that passion is related whatsoever to actual ability.

I suppose this is why authors generally need agents and publishers. I'm interested in the writing side of things. I'm fine with putting it out there into the world and making it available for other people to read. Connecting the audience to the work, however, seems to be beyond me. I've let the people who know me as ndnickerson know I'm publishing. The rest of it - why would I want to waste time updating a Twitter feed or Facebook page when I could be writing instead?

Maybe I'm being naive. That's okay. I think I'm allowed to be naive, at first anyway.

pay as you go

I've been a fanfiction author for quite a while now. Technically since I was a pre-teen, I guess, although I definitely haven't published anything I wrote before the age of probably eighteen or so. (My first story, what I can recall of it—it is lost somewhere in the attic, I think/hope—was hilariously bad. I can't imagine how much it would make me cringe to read it now.) I'm used to being "paid" in comments/feedback, and sometimes on FFN I'm paid with follows/favorites instead of comments, and sometimes on AO3 I'm paid with kudos/bookmarks instead of comments.

And because I love that form of payment so much, I try to reciprocate. If I take the time to read a story, I try to leave a comment, but sometimes it's very hard to know what to say. "That was great!" sounds so trite. "Awesome story!" Again, is there any way to be less original? "You fucking rock!" Hmm. Sounds almost stalker-esque, eh. So I'm sad to say that sometimes I have indeed paid with kudos instead of words.

Professional authors, though, are paid in money instead of comments or verbal appreciation from the readers, generally. But the money doesn't come after the book is read; instead, it comes before. And then, of course, a person might buy another book in the series to show appreciation for that first book, or as a gift to someone else... so in a way, that's appreciation. Kind of.

However, now that I'm thinking about publishing, and possibly getting paid for my work for the first time, I'm falling back on what others have discovered or are saying about digital publishing. But I wonder... if I gave my ebook to someone without asking that person to pay up front, and said, after she (or he? Are men real?) finished reading it, "So, how much would you pay for the experience you just had?" I wonder what would happen. After all, I pay a set amount of money for concert tickets, movie tickets, actual books themselves, and hope to be entertained at least equally. But what is five dollars' worth of entertainment? What about fifty? What about a hundred? What about that concert where I paid for a right-smack-in-front-of-the-stage pit area ticket and was only able to stay for four songs because I became incredibly sick? Bands don't pro-rate, and I'm not exactly saying they should.

And sometimes I pay $10 for a DVD that I think is easily worth $20, because I know how much I love it and how much it will continue to entertain me. (Anchorman? Yep.) On the other hand, no matter how much I enjoy watching Chopped, I still think paying $3 per episode to watch it via iTunes is ridiculous.

What about other people who have been reading my work for free all this time? I'm thinking about offering a coupon to them once I have ebooks available for sale, as a way to show my appreciation. After all, they didn't have to read what I wrote. They still don't. But they have, and I'm very grateful.