What I learned today…

Today I got a taste of the power of the social side of the Internet.  Intellectually, I’ve been aware of it for quite a while, but today I learned it in my gut.

Last night I was moved to hammer out some opinions on the Amazon/Macmillan/iPad/etc event.  I expected to share them with about twenty people….this is not a high-traffic blog.  But Elaine, who usually knows my opinions before they show up here and who has been quite thoroughly seduced by her Kindle, offered to cross-post my opinions onto KindleBoards.com.

Seeing no downside, I accepted the offer and within minutes, I had new readers…readers who left comments here and over on KindleBoards.  Readers who found resonance in my opinions.

Trust me on this: the thrill of being agreed with never grows old!

I also learned that what I’ve taken on faith for a number of years is, in fact, demonstrably true: given the opportunity, readers want to support authors.  They have preferences among publishers, marketplaces, formats, and devices, but their passion is reading itself and their primary loyalty is to storytellers.

This should be self-evident: no one arranges their library by publisher or point of sale.  (Some people arrange their books by color and size for greater decorative effect….call me prejudiced, but when I see such a display, my assumption is that I’m not standing in a reader’s home.)

Speaking for myself, I’m not the life of the party.  I’m shy and a bit of a loner.  I live in my head a lot.  There are gregarious writers, but I’m fairly typical of the breed and for literally centuries publishers have taken advantage of this.  Sit up there in your garret, they’ve said, spin your tales, and we’ll do the rest.

(It’s possible to imagine Charles Dickens blogging, but Emily Bronte?  Ernest Hemingway—yes; William Faulkner—probably not.)

It’s a deal with the devil….but one that’s been entered into knowingly, because it’s been the only deal around.  I’ll accept pittance royalties and get sucked into living off advances for books that can’t earn out (because the publisher won’t print enough copies for the book to earn out.)  I accept what amounts to a sharecropper’s existence because I’m really, really lousy at self-promotion.

So, what did I learn today?

That I haven’t lost my fire when it comes to storytelling.  I want to spin my tales with an enthusiasm I haven’t felt in more than a decade.  And that’s all I want to do.  I like blogging….but it’s like having a deadline every twenty-four hours!  I want to let people know about my stories; I want people to buy my stories (‘cause Rice Krispies are no fun when you have to eat them with water rather than milk), but when I think of covers and advertising and marketing and all the other things that go into turning a story into a book, my eyes glaze over.

In short, I’d still be willing to let a publisher handle all that…and as maddening as editors can be, there’s a real place for them in the prose-to-book department….. If only they would treat me a little better.

It’s pathetic, but true:  I’d give up a lot for the simple freedom of writing my stories.

I did give up a lot.  It’s taken a lot of neglect and abuse to convince me that I’ve got to get vertical and do it all for myself.  If once burned is twice shy, then I’m about a hundred shy, but ready for the challenge.