During my grad school days nearly a decade ago, I relished the stories of editor extraordinaire Maxwell Perkins nurturing a promising, yet unknown F. Scott Fitzgerald. Granted, by the time I was studying book publishing, tales of editors and authors toiling together for years to perfect a manuscript were no longer occurring in a business at the mercy of output, distribution, and rising production costs. Those days had been long gone.
Yet, still, I knew writers at the time who wrote books for a living. That’s it. Career authors who weren’t cut from the same cloth as brand James Patterson or renowned writer Maya Angelou or self-publishing marketing phenom Amanda Hocking. They were what the industry considers mid-list writers — talented, consistent, thoughtful, between brands and one-hit wonders, but a necessary piece of America’s literary tradition all the same. A great novel still had the power to trump the number of Twitter followers an author had. Well, Twitter had not yet existed.
These days, however, I know literary mid-list writers who are self-publishing because, while their work has been celebrated, book sales haven’t kept up and their longtime publishers no longer have a place for them on their front lists. Some are excited to take control of their work into their own hands but are simultaneously overwhelmed by the prospect. A number of them, however, are resentful, tired and defeated. They aren’t, understandably so, marketing gurus or on the pulse of the e-book evolution. They are, simply, writers.
The future of books is certainly not a new conversation. But what’s often left out of the discussion is what is to become of the author — the consummate writer who made her living by writing books. The young man who dreams of being a novelist in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway. What will become of him?
The effort vs. compensation split
When we talk about the future for books, what role will the author play? And will that role be significant enough to support her craft? Or will craft become a smaller and smaller aspect of a career that will become increasingly driven by technological forces? Is it possible that authors will assume a lofty position of storyteller where story trumps format?
If bestselling writing team Donna Grant and Virginia DeBerry is any example, that role will continue to diminish. The duo has written several novels together, spanning two decades. They officially put their writing careers on hold through an announcement on their blog.
An excerpt:
https://twitter.com/colsonwhitehead/status/266958121115713537
This isn’t to say that authors don’t appreciate the passion of their readers and the opportunity to connect with them and be opened up to the spectrum of interpretations their writing presents. Or that all writers hate both the idea and reality of social media. (Have you ever read Colson Whitehead’s Twitter feed? It’s comedic, inside-his-head brilliance.) But writing books is a solitaire activity, one that can be easily corrupted by the pressure to be socially, technologically, and marketing savvy.
Reconciling Literature with Tech
I’m torn. I’ve written several books and actually enjoy when the harder work begins — connecting those books with audiences, a task that I’ve had to assume on my own several times without significant support from my publishers. They just didn’t have a marketing budget for my work.
I still have a sweeping novel in me and look forward to holding its hardcover edition in my hands.
I’m a proponent of content and do believe that she is queen. I think that book publishing would be a lot better off if they too believed this.
I am excited by new technologies and innovative ways to tell stories. I like when stories leap off the page and onto the stage, screen, or my mobile phone.
I do think self-publishing can be empowering and democratizing. But when I think about some of my favorite novelists like Maryse Condé and Percival Everett, I shudder at the thought that the future of books could mean that talented writers can no longer afford to create beyond personal satisfaction.
I was one who used to preach that writers can learn from hustlers (at the time, usually defined as self-published writers who were better at marketing than writing) and that hustlers could learn from writers.
But hustling is its own art form — one that writers shouldn’t have to master in order to maintain their careers. A writer’s merit can’t be based on book sales and Facebook fans alone, but of the content of the characters found in their books.
While I still haven’t reconciled the balance between literature, business, and technological advances, it is more important than ever to simultaneously nurture ecosystems that support (not just appreciate) the literary arts, including taking into account the place of the print book as a form, and carving out the role that writers will play. Not just for the short term, but for the long term; the goal should be sustainability, even within periods of change, disruption, and delirium. And this decision shouldn’t be one based merely on book sales or author platform or gimmicky uses of technology.
I can’t say for certain what the future will look like for authors and, by extension, we readers, but we’re already seeing the loss of publishing’s middle class equivalent for authors. And well, we know how important the middle class is to the overall health of the economy. Writers deserve to tell stories for a living, as a career. Their needs must be in the forefront of any discussions and plans for the future of books, because without writers, there is no future.
Felicia Pride (@feliciapride) runs a team of story fanatics at Pride Collaborative and is the founder of The Create Daily, a daily resource for content creators. Her latest book, The Message was recently published by NBC.