Victoria Patterson – One Writer’s Argument Against Facebook and Twitter

I noticed the same thing about the bike-riding novelist: I was envious of all the attention he received, but then I realized that almost none of it was about the contents of the book. And then I was still envious—or maybe just frustrated. (His P&W cover came up in a FB conversation about a blog post by Tawni O’ Dell, who wrote about being sexed up for an Entertainment Weekly photo shoot. Someone wondered whether the male author had been complicit in HIS sexed up photograph, or whether he had been bullied, like O’Dell. I was not the one who wondered that.)

I wrote CURRENCY pre-social media and pre-kids, and I had a LOT more time than I do now. Still, it was never enough, and in the search for more I dropped many other activities, including writerly ones like putting out a zine. Sometimes I’ve regretted that move, the loss of a community and of a creative project that didn’t need to knock on the door of the gatekeepers. And when CURRENCY finally came out, I missed the lack of the platform the zine could have given me. But would I have finished the book without taking those steps?

Right now, I think I need the community I can get online more than I need to be free from distraction, if only because my writing time is so fragmented and far between, anyway. But I greatly appreciate this post.

I hope you’re doing your zine again.

Thanks, Art. I just looked up Web 2.0. Oh, my. Kinda ironic that I post my essay disparaging FB, twitter, etc. for writers, and then hope that others comment, twitter, and re-post it.

Ugh, the dilemma. For hermits like me who use FB as a way to get out and about—well, it has its charms. Using it as a marketing tool is a lot of disciplined work. I know people who have done it. It’s a matter of temperament, I think.

it’s a crossroads moment for authors. five years from now, my guess is that a lot of authors will be fleeing the old publishing model and publishing themselves — and selling their books, in print and digital format, on their own. and keeping all (or most) of the profits.

why? because the opportunity will be there.

also: because more than half of all books sold will be e-books. (my guess is that this this is a conservative estimate. it’ll probably be something like 75 percent before too long…maybe higher. print books will still exist, but market-wise, they’ll be like vinyl. or CDs.)

when most of the market is e-books, distribution is a moot point. anyone can get their title into a major retailer. and the imprimatur of having a “name publisher” behind you is rapidly fading. nobody cares who published it; they care if it’s good. plus, just about anyone with a little good sense can design a print edition that looks and feels like “the real thing.”

if this is a correct assessment (there’s always a pretty good chance that i don’t know what the fuck i’m talking about) the challenge then becomes: how to find your readers.

or, to put it in uncomfortable parlance: how to find your market.

an author might then say: “but what about the quality? i LIKE being edited.”

so hire a freelance editor. hire someone to design the book. hire a copyeditor. spend…what? $5k? $10k? maybe more, if you’re of means & you really want to go all out.

then put your book up for sale. if 75 percent of the book buying public is buying e-books, and all of your books sell at retailers like amazon, bn.com, powells, you’re going to be keeping 70 percent of the profit.

if you sell the book on your own website: 100 percent.

this, to me, is in many ways a terribly exciting prospect, because it will enable serious authors control over their own destiny. and it tips the business equation heavily in favor of the artist. which is unprecedented.

if you have a devoted fan base of 10,000 readers (no small feat) — a fan base that will buy up anything you write — and you do a book a year….and you keep, on average, 70 cents on the dollar — you can make a living writing. and you can live anywhere you want. go live in fiji in a bure. wear a sarong everyday. write your book. sell it online. make 70k a year. eat coconuts for breakfast.

most writers these days can’t make a living with their writing. in the coming years, i think that’s going to change for the better. maybe not HUGE change, but a detectable one.

so…

there are downsides, of course. if authors are going to have this much control over their own destiny, and this much of a reward, financially, then they’re going to have to be good at handling all of the aspects of bookmaking and bookselling. including marketing themselves. there’s no real way around it. particularly in the beginning, as the readership must be built.

the socially inept (and tori, i’m not referring to you here) will have a very difficult time finding readers in the new publishing world. the work will either have to be so irrepressibly brilliant that nothing can keep it down, or else other people will have to help with the marketing effort. or…

CONT’D…

in the future, i think we’re going to miss a lot of great books by social misfits. people who can’t (or won’t) go out and try to sell themselves. we won’t know about them, probably. maybe we don’t know about them now.

hopefully in the best of cases, books will “go viral” the way youtube videos of sneezing panda bears go viral. one can dream.

my point, i guess, is that authors, increasingly, are going to be 100% responsible for their own operations, unless they can afford to hire people and farm out responsibility. and in this system, authors with versatile skill sets and a willingness to engage in a variety of different tasks will have the decided advantage.

there are upsides and downsides. it’s good and it’s bad.

being sort of a terminal optimist, i tend to see it as net positive.

i definitely hear what you’re saying about social media and distractions and the weird, two-dimensional, transactional nature of the internet, but i think it can perform a valuable function for authors — and readers, too. facebook and twitter aren’t *inherently* evil. they’re tools. how we use them is what matters. it takes discipline to avoid getting sucked in. it can be easy to lose two hours looking at people’s vacation photos. (trust me, i know.)

but if you’re trying to let people know about your new book, having 50,000 twitter followers can be enormously helpful.

me? i’m inching back into regular tweeting and facebook updating after a long, ambivalent time away. it was like i was blocked or something. i didn’t know what the fuck to say. (some days, i still don’t.)

yes, i facebook and tweet for TNB in my duties as curator — and this is easy. it makes perfect sense to tweet links to other people’s work. but when it comes to me? i found myself flummoxed. until recently, when i decided to try to be funny. like…if you’re going to tweet something and waste someone’s time, at least make them laugh a little. make yourself laugh. for chrissake.

so yeah.

anyway.

rambling.

good thoughts. thanks for posting.

I think you’re right. I don’t have the right temperament!

Brad, you have some good points. But man, anyone who can develop and then maintain a base of 10,000 readers and put out a quality book a year–sheesh, they deserve more than 70K (minus costs). It makes me glad I have a day job and OV Books! When you have a book that will only have a small number of sales, might it not make sense to let someone else foot the copyedit bills and deal with the production and whatall? To have a partner? It’s been great in so many ways to have Gina in my corner. The whole publication process would have been way less fun without her and Stacy around.

And someone or something is going to have to play a big curatorial role. I guess TNB and The Rumpus are jumping stepping in that direction already, in some regard, with the book clubs (and Dzanc has one, too. I don’t know who else). But the picks of both clubs aren’t that obscure. Nothing self-published yet. It’s all pretty interesting.

Glad you found that link, Victoria. That post has stuck with me.

I completely understand why James Kaelan put himself out there like that. It’s what we’re told to do, right? And he totally succeeded. Even if he didn’t break through to 5 digit sales figures (or even 4 digits) I bet whatever he sold was twice as much as he would have otherwise. And if he gets another book out there, it will be reviewed, etc. He’ll be closer to his 50,000 twitter followers or whathaveyou, and when he writes his strongest book (assuming this one wasn’t it) it’s more likely readers will be around to notice.

It’s just–yeah, that sort of outgoing personality doesn’t always coexist with the temperament that can sit alone for the many quiet hours it takes to write even a short story, let alone a well-crafted book.

Oh, and does the DIY future of publishing further disadvantage writers who don’t have access to cash, or who need to funnell their cash to families? Because there are going to be upfront costs, even with ebooks.

Thanks, Brad. I’m sticking with TNB and 3G1B for now–grateful for those online forums for writers! But yeah, it will be interesting to see how things shake out. And, just so you know, I’m totally pro-Jazz Hands!

If the production of print books becomes prohibitively expensive in relation to etexts AND electronic readers continue to improve technically until it becomes easier to read an electronic copy than a physical copy, then physical books are over except as a curiosity. But I think that you need both conditions. If you don’t have both, then physical books survive.

The discussion of the social skills of writers is fascinating. If you have a sunny disposition then you’ll be stimulated by your fans. If you have the temperament of a lunar eclipse then you’ll find JE’s level of people connection impossible. It will exhaust you rather than inspire you.

But I think Brad Listi’s socially misfit writers can use the web to compensate. Just talk to me, talk to us Guys on the blog, talk to Brad, and if we like your work, I swear, we’ll move heaven and earth to support you. But you have to make some contact with strangers.

I’ve been reading the Yale volume: “The Book in the Renaissance” by Andrew Pettegree and there are some fascinating parallels. Even after the mechanically printed book came into distribution, hand copied books, books as works of art, persisted for a long time. You could visit a friend’s house across town and discover a hand-copied folio, say of Cicero’s Letters or of a Plato dialogue, that you didn’t know existed. We may be going back to more de-centralization. Maybe not all communities will have all books or be familiar with all writers. Some writers may end up as local possessions. It’s the opposite of a mass market mentality.

Can you imagine a BEA in five years with all the changes that may be coming? I can imagine a greatly altered one in which readers are allowed to participate. Or I can imagine no BEA, but a book fair for readers and writers to get to know each other. But maybe that’s what we have the internet for.

I’m grateful to my Twitter followers who don’t get as much from me as they deserve. I live on this blog. WIP? I guess you mean wireless device or the internet…I’m not sure which. (I had to look “WIP” up.) But I hope I’ve answered your question.

I think Work-in-Progress?

Hi, Victoria.
What I get from this discussion, and your point, is that writers need to know what works or is comfortable for their personality. No matter what the tools, there will be writers who are more comfortable with self-promotion, and writers who find the whole promo stuff extremely uncomfortable. For me, your point raises another point–that we all feel a sense of pull and push about this new way of getting our words out and maybe it’s just fine if not everyone wants to do it this new way. I say, keep writing what you need to write and start from there. I still think that’s the number one most important thing.

Thanks for this post, Victoria.

My first novel was published right around the time web publicity & marketing and social networking sites were taking off. I had an otherwise traditional launch and promotion. As an introvert, I had to access my situational extroversion on tour–a trait I developed through my work life. I quickly began to recognize that writers were becoming commodities, lite versions of actors, musicians, etc. This unsettled me.

My second novel will be completed soon. My radar is on again. I haven’t decided where I’ll be on the spectrum, and even if I gain clarity, who knows where the business will be when the book is actually published. Personal contact was important for the first book, but that was physically in person. I have welcomed and, for the most part, enjoyed the interaction with readers through e-mail and social networking sites. But where’s the line for me? I don’t do Twitter and can’t imagine doing that. Like you, I don’t feel I have a plethora of tidbits to share. How much time will I have to devote to social networking? How much energy will that take away from my writing–which, based on my experience for both books, I cannot squander–it demands so much?

What concerns me is that persona, rather than The Work, will become the focus. The charming and funny, the misanthropic and wry, etc….those folks are “marketable.” I wonder how much persona will influence The Work itself–a pressure both implicit and explicit for someone to produce the same kind of writing over and over until that’s exhausted.

Whatever you choose to do, now and in the future, I hope it remains in line with your values and brings you joy, fulfillment and, of course, success.

Thanks everyone for all your thoughtful comments. I really appreciate it. I agree that I need to find some way to embrace the changes in the writing business while keeping my personal integrity intact. I also agree that this change is inevitable–and both good and bad.

I’m an enormous admirer of Victoria Patterson, so I read this with interest. Victoria has clearly thought about this a lot and that is what makes it interesting. I think a lot of writers jump at this stuff–like the bike guy, I guess–without really thinking about how it actually will work toward promoting their work, and I think that’s a danger. But in this age of shrinking book tours and promotional help from publishers, I think social media offers some advantages. It’s always a choice though: promotion or actual product. Making that choice is hard.

There is a thing about knowing TOO much about a writer. When I was on FB, I friended writers that I admired. Some of them lost their appeal because they were on there constantly, posting. So I discovered that I wasn’t as eager to read their work.

Social unease–yes. I suppose for me it’s also this belittling of the work. The idea that I’m selling hamburgers or something, that everyone is supposed to like it. My work ends up making some people angry/upset/disappointed. It’s not all positive cheery sell sell sell message.

Interesting post My conclusion is that FB  and Twitter are distractions, but blogs are more like books and not all of them are just distractions.
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