I have NEVER read an article that cuts through the noise and lays it all out on the table with such 'no bullshit' clarity as this one! Kristen has put all my resistance to creating a successful writing career into permanent trance. I admit, I've used every one of the excuses she elucidated to stay trapped in the tunnel of my own undoing. But now... no more. I'm torn between thanking her for launching a new-found resolve and hours'-long learning cycle in order to do what must be done and cursing her out for pulling me out of my comfort zone (Uncomfortable though my lack of success has been). "Kristin, you have an admirer for life! Thank you!!"
Thanks Mark! We’ve all been there. Learning new skills as an adult (with a job and a family) can feel impossible. But it must be done (gradually) to build an independent writing career
The writer that quit I know personally, and let me just say after privately reaching out and talking that it wasn't just one thing that set that off, it was a sequence of events that just culminated on a person taking all they could take personally and professionally.
But let me be fair in your assessment Kristin, that there is a serious issue right now between generations of writers. The writer in question who quit is the tail end of baby boomers. Baby Boomers do not and will not acclimate to tech. They just flat out won't. It isn't just that author. They came of age in the 60s and 70s where talent was enough, and they are having a hard time dealing with their age and the fact the world they created has knocked them on their ass. This was a world where a junkie doing a 5 year prison stretch for heroin possession writing on toilet paper could get a book deal (that would be Donald Goines). A world where a junkie thief could clean himself up and get out of prison with a book deal, and then an international deal (that would be Chester Himes). It's hard as hell to assimilate to the "don't call us go online and email" world that is completely automated to algorithms after witnessing such a magnificent time. People just don't get over that. They die with that.
Now I want to discuss what you've said overall. I don't disagree with any of it, but the reality is, talent stopped being good enough after 2000. Jackie Collins got kicked off Harper Collins after making them a billion dollars over the course of 15 years the minute her Santangelo series waned. The industry now, as I have said previously is now and has been since 2000 dominated by lipstick lesbian trust fund kids that want to wear their politics on their sleeve picking books to read, talent be damned. It's now filled with one or two companies dominating publishing, both on indie side and commercial side, filled with censorship and gatekeeping in a time of fucked up algorithms none of us can get a handle on. Writers have to deal with that reality or quit. That's the ultimate coming to terms moment.
This should be a golden age for writers across the board but its not. Writers are now forced to be publishers, which, despite the writer who quit efforts to explain that and failed miserably, hate. Not everybody can or should be in that type of role because they just don't have a clue or an aptitude for it. I agree writers should KNOW THE LITERARY BUSINESS, and not just the LITERARY. But the reality is most are not even that good to know the literary, and don't want to learn the business because they lack the aptitude since they are chasing fame and not the satisfaction of beating people on the page. What needs to be addressed is the fact there are way too many non-serious "writers" encroaching on the space of people that actually want this as a career, and the oversaturation of their bullshit is fucking it up for everybody, and only making people like Amazon win in the chaos. Also, because of Amazon's knit picking for throwing people off their platform and censoring them, it makes it harder for writers to have a home for their book. Not every writer is like me, willing to fight Amazon to the death for trying to fuck over me. 99% of the writers will shrug their shoulders and say "I can't. They're too big." That also is a problem - too many writers are willfully accepting bullshit to their detriment and they ARE OKAY WITH IT. Then, like the writer we know who quit, isn't, they melt down because it seems hopeless that there's no other path. For many that is the Gawds Honest Truth and when that hits they melt.
What works for one writer may not work for another. You learned Amazon ads. Great. How does that help someone that is kicked off their platform or shadowbanned on it? How are they supposed to get into that and make money when Amazon's put up a wall? Indies are especially vulnerable because they don't want to spend money 99% of the time on anything because their thought process is half in the 20th century that some big time publisher should be taking care of their business and the other half is in the 21st century and they're trying to be a Twitter influencer and that's about it. Hell, I know too many that had magazines that they hosted on blogger and blogspot and wouldn't pay 10 bucks a year just to have a unique URL domain - it's that level of cheap that I don't understand that's affordable but they flat out won't do. It's that level of branding that's basic and tends to offend people. When I did write short stories and sent them out, I would never submit to anyone that was too cheap to buy their url. I build websites as my side hustle so I know how much stuff costs, and to hear the writers bitch that they are spending thousands when its really a total 50 buck investment getting with a good web host that ain't godaddy after I tell them that just lets me know they don't feel what they do is worth any investment, which comes out later. The same could be said for publishers, who are not paying anything to have a KDP account but decide they are financially in the hole and shut it all down, which is just bullshit, but that's another discussion entirely.
The reality is the audience is tired of being nickled and dimed on subscriptions. They are tired of the online drama. They are tired of engaging. Politics has worn everybody out - just look around substack. People will like here and there but not comment too tough unless its something political. The audience doesn't want to be stimulated intellectually, they want the lowest common denominator of entertainment, which is mudslinging. That was hard to process for the writer who quit because they thought their work was going to rise to the top like cream when the audience sinks to the bottom every time.
Tia I enjoy and appreciate your commentary on writing in Kristin's newsletter. You make me reflect more than I disagree with.
I'm picking out specific comments here though because from outside the US and outside fiction publishing, it can look different.
> This should be a golden age for writers across the board but its not.
Writers are knowledge workers. They'll thrive in an economy that differentiates on insight, quality and relevance.
But this is an attention economy. It favours promoters and publicists.
I work in a knowledge industry in an attention economy. My business thrives when you create a knowledge market which screens out the noise. That can happen *inside* an attention economy in the same way that manufacturing can work inside an energy economy. We live and die as fiction writers always have on the 'three Rs' of Reputation, References and Referrals; not Product, Price, Position and Promotion.
> The reality is the audience is tired of being nickled and dimed on subscriptions.
YES. Subscriptions aren't for individual authors writing long-form or anything else that's time-consuming. They work okay for journalists with daily deadlines, and better for magazine and news publishers who cost-balance across multiple writers.
BUT Kristin's previous advice about True Fans has worked for some musicians; it'll work for some raconteur writers but it's crowd-sourced patronage and that's a death-sentence for most serious writers. Her current advice on platforms and clients is on the money, but your comment is right too that it's hellishly expensive. You're literally learning three separate jobs.
Conclusion? It needs a new cadre of intermediates. I think it's low-overhead micro and mini publishers to make use of the diversity. But they need to be business-people who know writing; not shonk writers who want to copy the Big Five and rent-seek. So that'll take some shaking out.
> People will like here and there but not comment too tough unless its something political. The audience doesn't want to be stimulated intellectually, they want the lowest common denominator of entertainment, which is mudslinging.
I strongly disagree here, Tia. You're living in the domestic selection bias of the US echo-chamber and talking only about your most convenient audience. That's 330m English-speakers in a world of 1.5m. Although the US is a cultural foghorn in publication, it's only a dominant minority linguistically and Americans are not great readers. The UK, Australia and Canada all rank higher per capita and I don't know what's happening in Nigeria, India or Singapore, say.
From an outsider's perspective, your people are parochial, fractious, entitled, isolationist and utterly self-absorbed in a pathological, multigenerational identitarian fight that neither frames nor adequately represents the questions and concerns elsewhere in the world. We're sick of hearing from you about what you think about you and how that should tell us about us, so we're having multiple conversations among ourselves.
Yet you can engage internationally whenever you want with another 820m people, on a broader range of topics in a broader range of ways. You just need to learn to ask questions that aren't all about you.
Rav, I deeply have enjoyed your retort but I must address a few points.
All of my commentary was completely directed to the American market. I thought I was clear when I made mention of that, because its better to understand what our specific problems are versus including everyone when most of our issues do not apply outside of the states.
“Writers are knowledge workers. They'll thrive in an economy that differentiates on insight, quality and relevance. But this is an attention economy. It favours promoters and publicists.”
America’s knowledge industry is almost always academic, an not usually categorized in the literary conversation, even with university presses. Right now, that industry is being decimated by pussy grabber policies and the universities having to trim the fat as they lose the funding for such. Things outside of academia are given little to no consideration. Also, the 3Rs are very much a 20th century concept, as most technical and copywriters and others in related field are losing their gigs left and right to companies going with AI, which is the US race to the bottom.
“Conclusion? It needs a new cadre of intermediates. I think it's low-overhead micro and mini publishers to make use of the diversity. But they need to be business-people who know writing; not shonk writers who want to copy the Big Five and rent-seek. So that'll take some shaking out.”
Easier said than done now, especially with pussy grabber trying to race to the bottom with AI. The arts here have become decimated from it, starting with graphic design. Low overhead micro and mini-publishers are closing left and right, tired of the gatekeeping, the drama, and the inconsiderate writers talking shit as they struggle to buy ISBNs and deal with the tax liabilities for the books they publish, which is dirty pool and an entirely separate discussion. Also, most of the American micro and mini publishers are trying to be PenguinRandomSchuster as a matter of policy, so there’s that as well here. Understand, I get what you’re saying but there’s too much of a high school mentality here for it to be productive.
“I strongly disagree here, Tia. You're living in the domestic selection bias of the US echo-chamber and talking only about your most convenient audience.”
My audience is mostly overseas as that’s where I’ve sold the most books. The average American indie author’s demographic are other writers they have befriended, and maybe family and friends because that’s all they care to cater to. They don’t care about the UK, Austrailia, Canada, New Zealand; their racism is expensive and their gate keeping cost prohibitive. They limit themselves with genres that are overwhelmingly American and refuse to come outside of that box.
Yes, some AMERICAN WRITERS IN GENERAL are parochial, fractious, entitled, isolationists, self-absorbed, pathological, stuck in their rut, and can be lazy, shiftless, cliquish, gatekeeping, asskissing, and racist, sexist, misogynist, while reveling in the pit of their own demise. I’m not, but I’m a minority within a minority and thankful that I have a foreign audience while some of my peers are not or are foreigners trying to break into the American market because they think their country’s market is too tiny or they can’t be big stars there. I do not consider myself in the American market, as I divested all of my literary business out of the country for a host of reasons, but for my peers that choose to continue to do business in a closed minded market I do share the benefit of my wisdom about the market. And they don't understand what's going on, because if they did I wouldn't even be discussing it because it would be a moot point.
My comments are not really to offend the foreigners such as yourself, and by all means you should be having conversations about the bullshit going on here, but this might surprise a lot of you but the things that we’re discussing are still quite shocking and unknown from the vast majority of American authors. I speak differently on topics such as this when the market is different (i.e. the UK or Aussie market) and most of the writers are from there, but in no way am I implying that you should think anything. All I’m saying is, if you’re going to be an indie in the American market, or even a commercial writer, you need to know what’s behind door number 2 and 3, because door number one 9x out of 10 will be locked for you.
“Yet you can engage internationally whenever you want with another 820m people, on a broader range of topics in a broader range of ways. You just need to learn to ask questions that aren't all about you.”
I do engage internationally, but the point of the convo is that Americans refuse to do that, both readers and writers. I read in two languages outside of English; I have no problems with other cultures and living in other countries and INTEGRATING INTO THE CULTURE. Others though won’t given half the chance. It’s a cultural problem that is in a long line of other cultural problems fucking up American literature. And in the context of what Kirstin wrote, we are exclusively discussing a very direct American issue with indie American writers and I just highlighted some of the bullshit she didn’t. Trust and believe I ask my international copatriots a shit ton of questions and actually do write commentary about it (especially the differences in ISBN costs, the support of the government, etc.) as well as how culturally supportive their countries are towards literature while America consistently discourages it (see Pussy Grabber supporting book bans based on race, sex, history, gender).
Again, I am hearing you but our conversation is exclusively American (and for good reason because there is a big listening problem within our own ranks, which is an entirely in depth tiresome discussion).
Tia, thank you for your gracious, patient and fulsome response. You wrote plenty of context that’s interesting in its own right, which I appreciate and will think about.
For avoidance of doubt, I also wasn’t offended by anything that you wrote (though I am now keenly interested to read your stuff. Big ups for your international sales.)
I feel responsible though for an assumption that I held, and which I didn’t spell out. It’s from my own cultural context so the fault is mine.
Australian authors don’t really feel that there is much domestic market. I’ve known about it since the 1980s, but some have bemoaned it since at least the 1960s. If you wrote Australiana, then you’ll mostly sell in Australia and might move 2,000 copies if it’s backed by a big publisher or 10,000 if you’re also a name: our A-list is your mid-list. Otherwise it’s tens and hundreds of e-sales, much as US authors lament.
But many Australian authors focus overseas if they can for a small piece of a much bigger pie. They drift naturally toward international themes and international settings and may salt in some Australian setting or perspective either intentionally, or because that’s just how they think. International travel and multicultural family connections are also a big part of our modern culture, and that helps.
You may know yourself: markets are not naturally created by coloured blobs on a political map. They’re created by common trade and bounded instead by logistical impediments, jurisdictional rules, exchange rates and of course, language and culture. Yet we’ve had some 20 years now of electronic fulfillment, a quarter century of Print-on-Demand and about two decades of popular social media. So why are we still talking domestic markets as a default?
Americans not reading is a chilling problem for the future. But why is it insurmountable for writers today? The Irish do very well selling outside Ireland, and not because their meagre domestic sales can support international marketing, but because their writers excel at drawing broad human themes from hanging out laundry, and on the page, those freckled gingernuts punch like Tyson.
Many small authors are friends selling to friends, but everyone on Facebook and Instagram is now a memoirist, every teen on TikTok is now a copywriter/performer for 15 second infomercials, and people now have thousands of ‘friends’ that they spend hours grooming every week yet have never shared a meal with. So what should we expect?
There’s a lot to say about the current crises in US culture and governance. Lliterature has a critical role in discussing and exploring that while also being a drive-by victim of it, and I share that anguish more than can be expressed here.
But as you know, that’s not Kristin’s topic. It’s getting writers focused outward in commercially productive ways, and you virtually repeated my point when you wrote in rebuttal:
> I do engage internationally, but the point of the convo is that Americans refuse to do that, both readers and writers.
That’s cultural (which was my point), and as you illustrated with your own example, it’s also individual which means there’s no freakin excuse.
Australians and Irish have to think internationally to sell, and they do it before they write the first paragraph, even when they use local settings. Why do Americans still think that they don’t have to do that, when the evidence culturally, in restructured markets, and supported by your own experience, is that they do?
Finally, back to me being cheeky again (and thank you for tolerating it): Americans are a culture of great promoters, nobody better.
But you are also the biggest producer of get-rich-quick cut-n-paste turd pedlars in the Anglosphere, and those oxygen thieves in particular are about to be quietly stifled by AI, likely all overnight in one big, shrink-wrapped corporate-branded baggie.
Is that actually worth saving? Will you lose tooth enamel over reheated write-to-market fanfic, self-help popcorn and wellness factory franks?
Kristin wants to help anyone willing to sweat find a platform. You’ve warned that cranking the noise alone won’t help. I agree. So why not focus on the good writers who want to get better, and help them not just find a platform, but refocus and market internationally?
What, other than your nation’s cherished tatters of rancid exceptionalism, is stopping you? (Plural — I can’t say y’all as I don’t own the right hat.)
So why are we talking about domestic markets as a default? Because America leads the pack in what is/what ain't in the global sphere, and their self isolationist behavior (which has finally caught up to it) has caused other nations of writers to adopt that SAME BEHAVIOR.
Let's look at a country like Canada, that shuns everybody that isn't from Canada out. I know their market very well, as my latest novel is the great Canadian novel and about to be banned there. They flat out are anti-everybody that isn't born/bred citizen of that country, and they sell poorly outside of their country because of their self isolationism across the board. Celine Dion and Bryan Adams got no radio play there because they recorded albums that did not have at least 90% Canadian musicians - that is how extreme it is there. As a non-Canadian, I can't even be nominated for Canadian awards, be featured in any press, or get any type of attention there. That makes their market exclusively domestic.
America not reading is a chilling problem TODAY - see the political shit storm we are currently in. It will be worse tomorrow because it will cause even more racism, sexism, etc and a complete rollback of constitutional and other rights. Other nations I think are okay for reading because of their cultural compassion for it (and they know better) but because the big publishing PenguinRandomSchuster and Amazon control the world's publishing, the perspective of other nations enthralled in reading is sorely missed from the general public view internationally. This is what happens when multiconglomorates from America dictate the international markets.
I must say Rav, I am against authors selling to other authors, though I'm okay with them selling to friends because with the right friends the book can get traction. But the last 10 years of Twitter being the center of marketing for literature, and now TikTok BookTok being the standard for the lipstick lesbian trust fund kid agents to peddle their vampiric werewolf smut romance novels to tweens and no one else has become disastrous. People are tired of social media, they are tired of being sold a product every time they come on, from ads, from artists selling their latest thing, to AI fucking up their algorithm. This is why true engagement is down.
I agree, literature has been a critical role in discussing/exploring/sharing the issues of the world, specifically in the US, but it is in danger with Pussy Grabber banning books, arresting journalists, and every damning thing he does when he wakes up in the morning and chooses, as we say, violence. It's to keep the population ignorant, which is working for 60% of the country that embrace being ignorance and illiteracy because how dare women have opinions, Black people actually learn something, Latinos learn the language and demand equal rights. Even better, having the tech companies double down on it because they want everybody using AI (and see Zuckerberg saying people using Instagram or FB will be interacting with nothing but And yes, that goes in part to Kirstin's topic, because some of those issues I've explained contributed to the writer we discussed meltdown. That's happening more and more in the indie markets and circles, as evident by the shutdowns that have happened this year and the authors that have vanished.
Australians and Irish should not sell internationally but build up their markets domestically. Americans by and large are taught they are the center of the damn universe and that everyone else is beneath them. That's why they don't. They flat out don't care what another nation thinks. You know most Americans, like 85%, will NEVER LEAVE THE UNITED STATES. 80% will never get a passport (and felon laws make it illegal for felons even to obtain one to travel). 99% don't even understand the term "Anglosphere" and that they are in it. Let that shit sink in a minute. They are content in staying in their cesspools of self inflicted pain, and the rest of the world be damned. PenguinRandomSchuster exploits this. That mentality is persistent in a vast majority of literary circles, which is why so much drama spills out from America when their authors take it upon themselves to scold/cancel writers from other countries about what they say/do.
Americans are not great promoters though; some are great hustlers. There is a difference and why, as you say, America is the "biggest producer of get-rich-quick cut-n-paste turd pedlars in the Anglosphere". Everything here is taught to be in competition, to be cut throat, to get over on the "little guy", the "honest man is a fool". You can even see this in Saturday Night Fever, when Tony and his friends are at the car lot and one of his friends brags on his Uncle being rich by giving his business partner a good screw (and that was 1977).
No, all the self help, AI infested snowflake shit isn't worth saving and in a real market would have already self destructed, but Amazon is the devil in the details and lets the demons run free.
"Kristin wants to help anyone willing to sweat find a platform. You’ve warned that cranking the noise alone won’t help. I agree. So why not focus on the good writers who want to get better, and help them not just find a platform, but refocus and market internationally?"
Nothing wrong with that, but most American writers cannot nor will not want to "get better" as they think they are flawless and they will flat out refuse the international markets altogether. There is a saying here - if you can't make it (pick your city) you can't make it anywhere. For literature it's like if you can't blow up and make it big in America you ain't shit to begin with, a tenant 95% of writers I know from here hold dearly to. They'd rather be mediocre and sell to coworkers and friends than try their hand outside of their comfort zone.
I know better and absolutely love the international market, because I think worldly. Hell, I'm a Black chick from Chicago in a country that has told me (on my very own Birth certificate since your nationality is your race on there) that not only am I not American, but I see Pussy Grabber waiting on a green light to deport me/mine from here. Let that sink in. Now imagine how in a literary industry that is 98% white, 95% male dominated, how that's gonna work out, especially since this is the era of white men feeling like they've been left behind and standing behind pussy grabber to drag America kicking and screaming back to the good old days of Jim Crow, where white women couldn't work or vote, and Black folks were slaves to be toyed with. Then apply that to literature, which is like a Democrat land mind of ass kissers virtue signaling politics they think will get them a great deal at PenguinRandomSchuster and letting that influence what/how they write.
It is a flat out shit show, and why commercial book sales have absolutely plummeted. Don't even get me started on the literary tokenism of "we want BIPOC/underpriviledged writers" bullshit, and trust, I might have to do a substack newsletter about that shit.
What is stopping American writers other than your nation’s cherished tatters of rancid exceptionalism? Nothing. That IS what is stopping them and they will cling to it like they cling to a gun in Charleton Heston's cold dead hands. It's just a lot of internal shit to deal with, conditioned shit, and then, external shit. Some people can handle it, some can't.
So we're violently agreeing with one another, but from different cultural contexts?
That's hilarious, Tia. Your added perspective has made that clear to me now, and I appreciate it.
You're entitled to every grievance that you uttered and I can't argue with a single one, but if you want to find a root cause for your nation's current slide, I think you'd have to go back to the era of Clinton and Gingrich to start with.
Clinton not for his philandering but for the Telecommunications Act 1997, which was a mixed blessing.
Gingrich for beginning the political rockslide from Reagenesque conservatism back toward McCarthyism.
Contemporaenous with all that, I think you'd need to look at the travesty of Creation Science, which actually had its roots in disenfranchised US Conservative Protestantism a century earlier.
And... on the left you'd need to look at the failure of the humanities (the institutional discipline) to learn from the Science Wars of the 1990s. They were academically stupid before that, but sunk into obstinately stupid thereafter.
I think all those forces are still playing, but from how disparate they are I think it's fair to say there's a lot of economic and cultural momentum behind them. Demographers like to say that demographics are destiny, but economics and culture are strategic too and not just tactical, and as we're seeing now, they shape generations.
> Some people can handle it, some can't.
Of course, but do you recognise that's opportunity too?
You're a black Chicago chick. I'm a Gypsy boy who grew up working poor but pulled a PhD in nerdology out of his arse (tr: 'ass.') You can build up a lot of identitarian resentment if you want to, but what you *don't* get if you've actually struggled is a lot of entitlement.
Your nation DEIs the hell out of itself, but better than DEI is just to let people who know how to struggle, outsmart the folk who think they don't have to.
Props to our beloved Ginger Hostess, who knows that in a permissive environment, that's character and culture rather than identitarian. But it's also steeped in the economics of comfort. The Greatest Generation had many faces that sunburned easily, but they grew up a lot less comfortable, a lot less entitled and a lot more capable.
And there's 340 million of you. You're not all idiots. (And it's an Australian saying that, so good luck!)
> you can say y'all, lol.
That's kind of you, but I have to live with my neighbours.
I wouldn't say violently agreeing, I'd say passionately agreeing, lol.
The root causes that you listed I do not disagree with, but that really is geared more towards white people than black people to be honest, as there has always been two different sets of rules for each side, with a bone thrown here and there for the ruling political structure to feel "progressive". I was in college doing a Communications major when Deregulation happened, and I vividly remember my hippie professors having a shit fit about it for two semesters. However it goes before Gingrich. Look at Rush Limbaugh leading the charge to get Judy Blume banned in the early 1980s. As a writer I think that's where it started to start policing writers. As far as the travesty of Creation Science, absolutely agree, and it went on steroids with people like Anita Bryant in the 1970s, which has led to what we have now. But I will say the failure of the humanities had more or less to do with government funding influencing what was celebrated and taught versus anything else. The minute money became something that was judged based on what the money people wanted, that's when it went tits up.
"I think all those forces are still playing, but from how disparate they are I think it's fair to say there's a lot of economic and cultural momentum behind them. Demographers like to say that demographics are destiny, but economics and culture are strategic too and not just tactical, and as we're seeing now, they shape generations." That is what we say on the block "That part".
Sure, there's an opportunity but in America that's easier said than done for the people that don't want to get outside of their comfort zone. As a person that does that regularly, I will say I have faced immense challenges this year internationally as Pussy Grabber's policies are now starting to turn the stomachs of overseas markets who think all of America is down for his bullshit and/or the boycotting outright of American imports or anything done by transplant Americans. I'm a black Chicago chick that worked my ass off for my real PhD (not knocking your nerdology doctorate) so I can tell you about the struggle being real, especially the reality of the American job market saying thanks, no thanks, DEI is why you have a degree.
Now let me mention "DEI". We had EEOC since the early 70s that INCLUDED EVERYONE, and was necessary since half the country was gleefully still living in separate but equal across the board. DEI was created to switch the influence of political talking points from black people to sexuality issues, aiding and abetting the trans community in culturally re appropriating their struggle to the black civil rights movement. That just infested into every sector of the arts like a cancer, and created BIPOC, which is, to me, worse than calling a black person nigger and causes all types of segregationist problems, many which found its way into American literature across the board.
And there's 370 million of us. Thank you for recognizing some of us went to school and learned critical thinking in the good old days of the late 20th century, lol.
Tia thank you for the gift of so many interesting and provocative thoughts.
I read each of your responses multiple times, excerpted bits for a systematic point-by-point reply, and then realised that you might just appreciate some curated reflections instead. So that's what I'll do. If I overlook anything that you want a response to, please tell me.
> Australians and Irish should not sell internationally but build up their markets domestically.
The domestic Australian publishing market is pretty small -- $US1.2b in 2023 or about 5% of the US and 14% of the UK, with about half the local bestsellers being Australian.
Our national population is about that of Texas, so if you would be happy as an author trying to make a living by publishing only within that state, then that's what you're asking Australians to do by publishing only domestically.
Meanwhile, Ireland is even smaller -- including news and mags, its whole publishing industry is only $878m from 5m people. So you're asking the population of Alabama to publish only to itself when ethnically, around 70m people of Irish descent live overseas.
I strongly support a nation investing in its culture, but also think that intercultural conversations are critical. Writers and thinkers are precisely the people who most need to read globally. My interests are international and you can take my imported titles from my cold, dead hands. If Australia stopped importing foreign titles then we'd be in the company of North Korea. I strongly support Australians exporting what they can too. If you want to make a living here publishing in a niche genre like Fantasy, SF or thriller, then you have no choice.
(And if we don't export everything we can then some chick in Chicago will tell everyone that we only write smut.)
> Canada […] flat out are anti-everybody that isn't born/bred citizen of that country
They certainly don't like importing US goods at the moment, yet I was surprised that you thought it hostile to Australian titles too. I didn't know what's happening there with Australian authors so I dug it up.
Their biggest online domestic bookstore is indigo.ca, and in hunting Australian authors there I had no trouble finding niche players like (say) Garth Nix, Greg Egan or Isobelle Carmody in the FSF genres, or Trent Dalton, who was our biggest domestic seller last year. None of the titles I looked for were listed on backorder -- they were all in stock. All the prices seemed as expected too -- no crazy tariffs.
I don't know how big a market Canada is for Australian titles, and I'm not aware of book tours there by these authors, but an international name like Richard Dawkins toured there only last year and he's a Brit.
So I'm wondering if President Muff Mitts might have provoked Canadian nationalism a time too many?
In any case I'm sorry that they're not accepting your titles and I note that your latest is set in Quebec so it would be natural to promote there. Have they said why? And is French one of your languages? Is it French-french or Québécois-french?
> America leads the pack in what is/what ain't in the global sphere
I know many Americans believe that, yet I have never understood why. For example, the US lags substantially behind the EU in data privacy, chemical regulation, food safety and agricultural standards, consumer protections, environmental and climate regulations and digital markets. EU bureaucracy isn't exactly fast, yet the US can neither sway the EU's preferred way of doing things, nor apparently, catch up to align with it.
In my day-job I also work with key Australian regulators, and know who they harmonise with -- the US is often not their first port of call. New Zealand is the same.
I'm not aware of big US economic influence in the Asian powerhouses of Japan, South Korea or China (all major trading partners for Australia.) Nobody has economic sway with India, which is every bit as nationalistic as you are. Your Obama-era Pacific free trade arrangements were staggering drunkenly along the road before your 45th presidency commenced, and by the 47th, are now dead in a ditch, wafting of malt liquor and blue ruin.
My conclusion? Your financial markets still matter because nobody hates money, but the developed world has just quietly told you that outside computer chips and software maybe, your trade no longer does.
Once you were globally respected but now, nobody even trusts you. That's not coming back for at least another 12 years (the current presidential term and probably two more to see whether your democracy can stabilise, and how the chips will fall.)
With climate change, Chinese ambition and Russian aggression, nobody's waiting so long. Even militarily, the EU is already planning for a post-NATO world.
So what 'world' is the US still calling the economic shots in? Is it just South America and the Caribbean? This might illustrate what I was saying before about US not asking the right questions and simply not hearing conversations that should matter domestically, taking place offshore.
Your people wanted to be on your own, talking only to yourselves about yourselves like a demented cat-lady, and now, God help you, you are. Even the Canadians are now offended by your international manners and lifestyle choices, and they only riot over hockey scores.
> People are tired of social media, they are tired of being sold a product every time they come on, from ads, from artists selling their latest thing, to AI fucking up their algorithm. This is why true engagement is down
If they're not then I can only wonder when they will be.
You're seeing the limit of my social media interaction here, Tia. I'm not on YouInstaTwitFace.
But since I limit what I read on social media and who I talk to, I also don't mind people who think interesting things selling ideas to me. I recently picked up a title of Kristin's not because she pushed it but because I became interested in what she thought about some topics. I hope to pick up one of yours now too even though you also weren't pushing it.
> literature has been a critical role in discussing/exploring/sharing the issues of the world, specifically in the US, but it is in danger with Pussy Grabber banning books, arresting journalists, and every damning thing
I want to say two things here.
Firstly, it's terrible and undeserved and although I have all manner of cultural criticisms I am in outright admiration for how your population is handling the current attempts at autocracy.
The humour, intelligence and courage on display from your citizens every day is literally the best that I have seen from your country since footage from the 1960s. I don't know what other nation could equal it and I think it's inspiring people worldwide.
Secondly, when I look at what has happened historically in Europe, South America or China under similar circumstances, I note that autocracy is terrible for the volume of literature and access to it, but has often produced amazing quality. I don't know why, but I wonder whether trying harder to communicate about the unthinkable increases empathy, insight and respect for subject. I wonder too whether that's part of why Irish literature has been so strong.
In any case, you're not there yet.
> I will say the failure of the humanities had more or less to do with government funding influencing what was celebrated and taught versus anything else
I don't know enough, but I'm inclined to believe it just on principle.
However, there's also a line of thought from the UK that right-wing populism is what happens when progressivism gets unsupportably idealistic. You've critiqued that in passing, and I agree. But the driver for that appears to be the academic left and I'm not so much concerned about what they believe as their incapacity to test what they say before pushing it. You've mentioned critical thought and that's part of it, but I'd also insist on empirical evidence for empirical claims.
You and Kristin have both argued how such stuff kills literature (I agree: that's in Australia too.) It clouds political debate, disrupts friendly and respectful conversations and has the capacity to politicise anything and everything.
It's noxious, but I think you could take the funding away tomorrow and they'd still do it with whatever budgets they had left because their whole edifice of quality control is corrupt and phony. This was proven in the Sokal prank of the 1996, and proven again in the Sokal Squared hoax of 2017-18. (This is a hobbyhorse of mine. More only if interested.)
As for DEI, that was just a passing comment. My personal experience is that social disadvantage programs were pretty poor when I was a kid. But Australia at that time had deep publicly-funded education and health, which made a huge difference.
I still struggled (my PhD isn't really in 'nerdology' but informatics), but my struggle was only cultural and logistical -- which was plenty -- but it wasn't financial.
I think had it been some sort of diversity program, I wouldn't have been eligible. Especially not the way they're shaped nowadays.
Outside the US, socialised education and health aren't even controversial. They're what a wealthy country does that gives a shit about its citizens, its culture and its future. It immediately eliminates all the cherry-picked minority rules, which is a problem that you created for yourselves from your own Not Invented Here exceptionalism. Once you socialise health and education, the only remaining question is in how you adapt and sustain it.
Ruv, I adore your response. This is what I love - the discussion/dialogue between writers and addressing the problems (which in the olden days would give us solutions). I had to break my comment up because substack said it was too long so this is part one.
I am cool with a few Australian (and also New Zealand) authors, so hopefully you will be gracious to my response about the scene there, which is totally based on their tales of highs and lows as an outsider looking in (and my lore of book history).
Aussies, as you mentioned, have not had that much of a domestic market, but that is because of the success, IMHO of Colleen McCullough's "The Thorn Birds". That book was a international hit that also captivated the American audience, especially with the various miniseries that were the 2nd highest rated miniseries 2nd to Alex Haley's Roots saga in the 1970s & 1980s for ABC network. "The Thorn Birds" came out in 1977, so a lot of modern Australian authors that were born 1975-2000, they probably got bitch slapped with that being the "standard" of Australian literary success, since that book is still, to this day, credited with being "The Great Australian Outback Novel". No one, not even the author herself, really could sell as many copies as "The Thorn Birds", which made an unrealistic expectation on what it meant to be an Australian author, and what subject matter was okay/not okay.
The Aussies I know write what's known as "dirty fiction", filled with a lot of adult themes but not genre specific so to speak, but a throwback to literature from the 70s that encompassed several genres/themes, and are completely shunned/shuttered by their communities for writing it and choose to jump in the American market since we don't have that much of a morality when it comes to race/violence/gender. However, the pushback that they found stateside was equal to what they found at home, because of who they associated with in the literary front and not for the quality of their work. They weren't prepared for the high school cliquish type games and wound up in the same place, just different reasoning.
The Aussies that I know try not to drift to international themes though they are influenced by American writers, especially in detective genres and such, but they spin it to reflect their city/province/towns painstakingly, down to the local jargon and verbiage (which I admire because that makes it unmistakably Aussie). That too, does not go over well outside of Australia, neither in UK or US or Canada, though New Zealand is more tolerant of it. And yes, their initial expectation was that they would go over big here because of American "freedoms of speech/expression" but they fail to realize that the racist/sexist/misogynistic issues of the virtue signalers in the community censor things of that nature, and box them out. They want whitewashed censored literature and they are very cliquish about it. Now with all the ICE stuff and the open deportation of Aussies, including those of military personnel here, they aren't coming here for literary conferences or just to see family/friends, making the American outlet shut out to them and back to square one.
Markets in America though are created by blobs of politics, not by common trade. That is something I think the rest of the Anglosphere doesn't realize about the American market in general, and is disappointed when their crossover efforts fail because they don't meet the "checklist criteria" of race, religion, politics, etc. Much of this was started by PenguinRandomSchuster and went on steroids in the era of Print On Demand from self appointed gatekeepers. I agree with you wholeheartedly, we have had 20 years of electronic fulfillment, 25 years of POD, and about 25 years of social media. However, America was SLOoOoOOOoooW adopting all of that hardcore, as our generational divide made that at first something only 80s kids did in college (think the CollegeClub/BlackPlanet days before FB), then MySpace opened up a little more to the Milllenials, then Facebook, which is now just a depot of Baby Boomers trying to show how cool they are being on social media to their grandkids.
> This is what I love - the discussion/dialogue between writers and addressing the problems (which in the olden days would give us solutions).
Me too. I'm largely absent in Notes and Posts here, but active in comments where I talk to interesting people about what *they* think.
And I'll come back to your thoughtful comments on Australia vs US. However it's morning here. I'm taking a friend cycling up a mountain and then fixing some of their electrical and I'm on the clock.
The simple fact is that writing—whether it’s a book, an article or a blog post—is a product. And that product does not (except in rare circumstances) find an audience on its own, or by accident. Someone has to connect the work with the audience, and if you’re an indie writer, that someone is you.
If you want to be an exception, you have to be exceptional. Same as it ever was. But yeah, it’s undoubtedly more difficult today—not only for writers, but for creatives of every kind. Write anyway. Or don’t.
This was a fantastic article. A hard pill to swallow too, but truth is like that sometimes.
My question, however, is this: when we have tried to learn how to do things like email newsletters, understand k-lytics, build a email list and so on, we get so many conflicting pieces of advice we end up spinning our wheels and getting no where. Such as building a newsletter for instance and teh use of an email list. We have mailerlite set up, use Substack, but we cannot find the success other people do with those methods and cannot figure out what we are doing wrong. And when we ask other writers, we get 20 different, conflicting answers, and none of them help us pinpoint the problem.
My husband tried to sit down and watch the videos to learn k-lytics and walked away even more confused and disheartened than before.
Where do we find real, honest, well written or produced instructions on how to do all these little business things that doen't leave us confused, lost, bewildered, and feeling like failures when trying to learn something and getting nowhere? Because in our case, its not that we haven't tried to learn it - we can't seem to make it work or understand it!
I've never used klytics so I can't speak to all its features. But I've heard its primary use is for people who want to write to market with a rapid release model. If that's not you, it may not be helpful. In terms of the newsletter/email list, or blog, the question is how are you driving traffic to it. If it's exclusively through offering freebies to other authors, that will not be helpful. It tends to be one of two things: you drive traffic to your newsletter with a platform (social media content) or through ads. You can build the email list through free giveaways and swaps through sites like Bookfunnel, but in my experience those big lists don't translate to big sales.
It's for rapid release, market chasers is what I finally realized. Good tool for those who can punch out a 50-75k word novel in 2 months or less. I cannot and I'm not bashing anyone who can. Nor can I manage chasing any trends because my writing process doesn't work that way. But for those who can, it's probably a perfect tool.
For whatever this is worth, I found that the best advice on selling and marketing came from professional salesmen and marketers. (Shocking, yes?)
Not writers on Facebook, not self-publishers on forums, not the gurus catering to those audiences. Going back to the source, finding the principles and methods, and learning what works from the people that sell for a living.
The writer-focused crowd is, as you say, a confused muddle. You've got Tier 3 gurus playing telephone game to an audience that has no idea what they are buying, confused amateurs sharing tactics without deep understanding of why they work and what they're for, and more obfuscation than help.
Get away from writers and people selling to writers, and head up to the source.
I second this advice. My background is media, but I remember a light bulb moment during a meeting with our marketing team. I had quietly noticed "click rates" and "open rates" that were seemingly low for our newsletters (like 30%, 40%), and the marketers explained that this wasn't the disaster it seemed. That those were actually GOOD rates.
This puzzled me, until I thought of my own habits as a subscriber to a couple of writers' newsletters. It's true, I didn't necessarily open their emails. The point of getting the newsletter was to alert me that the writer still exists, and has a new book out, and I should go to Amazon and buy it.
So if a writer is just looking at the "final column" of "did they open the newsletter" metrics, they would think they had failed when the rate is only 30%. But in fact they succeeded, because I bought their book, which was the actual point of the newsletter. I would only open the newsletter if the subject line indicated a necessity, such as entering a contest or getting early access to something. If the subject line indicated a generic announcement of a new release, I didn't open it.
I actually tend to hate when people (especially companies I work for) extol metrics, because they're only as good as the analytical skills of the person looking at them. If the "analyst" -- and I use that term extremely loosely -- doesn't know how to look at variables / constants, they screw over everyone else, including themselves. They have to KNOW what's actually "typical" for their situation. They have to know the variables, they have to know their audience, and a snake oil salesman isn't going to tell them that. Just go to the source, the professional salesmen and marketers.
I went to "the source" when I learned about typetting print (and by extension ebooks). I didn't ask techphobic, tech-illiterate writers with poor pattern matching skills. They were full of stupid advice. I looked to typographers / typesetters, web developers, web designers, etc. They were full of excellent advice. Go to the source!
Kristin, I was reading this in bed at 2:30am and jumped out to respond. I think that this is your best ever.
I have run a consulting business for 25 years, and this is the very conversation that I've had at least three times -- once with academics who hated being tied to their cynical, corporatist institutions but didn't know how to turn being clever into a business; and again with fiction-writers in training on two different writing development sites about how turning a phrase by itself won't turn a buck.
I think you've presented it better than I did on any of those occasions. There are multiple reasons why.
But let me also say that I'm relieved that you have dropped the 'True Fans' advice in this article too. That works for some musicians because they're live performance icons, but doesn't necessarily work for session musicians who are the ghostwriters of the musical world, and who are often more talented than the recording artists they support. It will work for a smaller number of writers too, who happen to be raconteurs on stage and page. But when your job is to think, imagine and polish expression onto a page, patronage comes at a huge unseen cost and it won't be for most. I hope you've moved away from giving that advice for good.
But here you've said 'platform' instead, which is exactly right. That can mean many things, but will definitely include a receptive, interested community, which every writer needs to catch what they throw. Critically, they don't have to be 'your' community, but you have to be 'their' writer and they have to know it. That's about building intimacy, credibility, reliability and focus on their shared concerns -- i.e, trust. It's more than just self-promotion.
The self-care while you build that is critical and you've nailed that if you're developing your writing too, then you'll suffer two different kinds of anxiety at once: a creative anxiety in your writing, and a social anxiety in your marketing.
I'd like to add here that writers may also suffer a third anxiety, which is the intellectual anxiety of not understanding what fiction is when you first try and write it, what a genre is if you're trying to write genre fiction, and what *your* genre is in particular.
Good writers *need* to be good readers. They need to be well-read in depth and breadth and they need to be reflective. If you're not then you need to hang with writers who are, and that's going to make you feel dumb quite a lot. It's also going to expose you to a lot of pretentious shonks, but the dumb that you feel when you don't know the leaders in your genre and how their work differentiates and why a reader you want to read your stuff first read *their* stuff is the dumb of not knowing how a genre works and therefore what works in your target market. That dumb wasn't painted upon you -- it's just you noticing the smell.
As you know, this needs to be an ongoing conversation because the 'be talented and get discovered' BS was created by big publishing houses and served them the way that it served Hollywood in film and the big corporates in music. It's an abattoir full of wolves playing 'come join us, little lamb' on the hurdy-gurdy.
It needs demythologising. Big publishers were gatekeepers to production and publishing logistics, but never to genre. Neither were agents or retailers -- genre was always defined by shared community interest between writers and readers; the intermediators were followers and not leaders in this and much of the time had no clue, whatever they pretended to know.
You're the right person to lead that demythologising here. There is more to be said, and this conversation needs to continue.
Love the article! It expertly maps out the problem, the illusion that it used to be different and then actually offers some solutions, which is rather unusual. Brava!
My absolute favorite marketing technique is from those assholes on 20 to 50k. "Here's my first book, I can't believe I sold 100,000 copies on my first book in the first week! All I did was dump fifty thousand dollars into marketing and BAM! Thanks everybody!"
LOL. LMAO even.
I got a new marketing campaign I'm kickign off next month, it's going to be pretty agressive, and I don't think I've seen anyone do even anything close with it, I'll report back in a year.
We CAN work towards a World where Art has value! Till then, we must acknowledge what Kristin is saying...
In the film industry, vapid & vacuous films get produced because it's business first! Hollywood has an aversion to depth of meaning because it, itself, is a very shallow venture made up of superficial people. BUT we CAN (and at this point, need) put an end to that:
Vote with your wallets, folks. Consumers, flex your muscles! You control the markets!!
“Vote with your wallets” THIS! Many who complain about the vacuous nature of modern media do not spend money on more artistic ventures, perpetuating the idea that only slop is profitable
My response to this is....there is an ENTIRE WORLD outside of America, and countries that actually do value mise en cine. Stop focusing on America and you can be a creative with meaning.
I don't think many people realize that 1099 work exists or are fearful of it because of taxes, but truth is, taxes is not a good enough reason or excuse to avoid getting creative with your portfolio of work!
Yes! Now that you can pay your estimated taxes every month (instead of putting it aside for the quarterly payments) it makes things so easy! It’s just a bill like your rent
Great read, feel mildly slapped upside the head, but in a good way—reminds me of my junior high football days.
Probably gonna read it again to chew on some points. I think my biggest challenge is just finding a new rhythm to write and promote. Started a new job back in March, it’s much more demanding of my energy.
I feel you. Writing and promoting at the same time feels like the steepest climb of all because it’s such a jarring shift. At the very least try to do them on separate days, if not in different parts of the year
I see something similar happening with many modern pro athletes. The smart ones have realised that pro athletics is part of the entertainment industry, and have started building their own media presence.
Once you are indecently successfully, then then gatekeepers will want to know you - and you need to decide if any given offer is a force multiplier or parasitic
First of all, I'd like to read something Mr. Ragequitter wrote, because I respect his decision as an artist.
Second, artists are never going to be adept at business, and the converse is true for businessmen.
It may be that those artists who manage to survive in modern times are the ones that can competently handle their own business, but people can only be good at so many things. And the digital world seems rather hard to keep up with; why learn ABC when next year you're going to have to know XYZ?
You've diversified yourself very nicely, which I'm sure is extremely wise--it would be terrible to put all your eggs in one basket.
I definitely support people quitting, however. If I have anything wise to offer in this reply, it's this:
It really really sucks that self-publishing coincided with an eternal, worldwide market. Yes, anyone can put themselves on the electric bookstore shelf, but that shelfspace is now infinitely large.
Every writer is competing for attention with everything that's ever been written. That's extremely tough. No shame in bowing out if you can't handle the bullshit.
I have NEVER read an article that cuts through the noise and lays it all out on the table with such 'no bullshit' clarity as this one! Kristen has put all my resistance to creating a successful writing career into permanent trance. I admit, I've used every one of the excuses she elucidated to stay trapped in the tunnel of my own undoing. But now... no more. I'm torn between thanking her for launching a new-found resolve and hours'-long learning cycle in order to do what must be done and cursing her out for pulling me out of my comfort zone (Uncomfortable though my lack of success has been). "Kristin, you have an admirer for life! Thank you!!"
Thanks Mark! We’ve all been there. Learning new skills as an adult (with a job and a family) can feel impossible. But it must be done (gradually) to build an independent writing career
The writer that quit I know personally, and let me just say after privately reaching out and talking that it wasn't just one thing that set that off, it was a sequence of events that just culminated on a person taking all they could take personally and professionally.
But let me be fair in your assessment Kristin, that there is a serious issue right now between generations of writers. The writer in question who quit is the tail end of baby boomers. Baby Boomers do not and will not acclimate to tech. They just flat out won't. It isn't just that author. They came of age in the 60s and 70s where talent was enough, and they are having a hard time dealing with their age and the fact the world they created has knocked them on their ass. This was a world where a junkie doing a 5 year prison stretch for heroin possession writing on toilet paper could get a book deal (that would be Donald Goines). A world where a junkie thief could clean himself up and get out of prison with a book deal, and then an international deal (that would be Chester Himes). It's hard as hell to assimilate to the "don't call us go online and email" world that is completely automated to algorithms after witnessing such a magnificent time. People just don't get over that. They die with that.
Now I want to discuss what you've said overall. I don't disagree with any of it, but the reality is, talent stopped being good enough after 2000. Jackie Collins got kicked off Harper Collins after making them a billion dollars over the course of 15 years the minute her Santangelo series waned. The industry now, as I have said previously is now and has been since 2000 dominated by lipstick lesbian trust fund kids that want to wear their politics on their sleeve picking books to read, talent be damned. It's now filled with one or two companies dominating publishing, both on indie side and commercial side, filled with censorship and gatekeeping in a time of fucked up algorithms none of us can get a handle on. Writers have to deal with that reality or quit. That's the ultimate coming to terms moment.
This should be a golden age for writers across the board but its not. Writers are now forced to be publishers, which, despite the writer who quit efforts to explain that and failed miserably, hate. Not everybody can or should be in that type of role because they just don't have a clue or an aptitude for it. I agree writers should KNOW THE LITERARY BUSINESS, and not just the LITERARY. But the reality is most are not even that good to know the literary, and don't want to learn the business because they lack the aptitude since they are chasing fame and not the satisfaction of beating people on the page. What needs to be addressed is the fact there are way too many non-serious "writers" encroaching on the space of people that actually want this as a career, and the oversaturation of their bullshit is fucking it up for everybody, and only making people like Amazon win in the chaos. Also, because of Amazon's knit picking for throwing people off their platform and censoring them, it makes it harder for writers to have a home for their book. Not every writer is like me, willing to fight Amazon to the death for trying to fuck over me. 99% of the writers will shrug their shoulders and say "I can't. They're too big." That also is a problem - too many writers are willfully accepting bullshit to their detriment and they ARE OKAY WITH IT. Then, like the writer we know who quit, isn't, they melt down because it seems hopeless that there's no other path. For many that is the Gawds Honest Truth and when that hits they melt.
What works for one writer may not work for another. You learned Amazon ads. Great. How does that help someone that is kicked off their platform or shadowbanned on it? How are they supposed to get into that and make money when Amazon's put up a wall? Indies are especially vulnerable because they don't want to spend money 99% of the time on anything because their thought process is half in the 20th century that some big time publisher should be taking care of their business and the other half is in the 21st century and they're trying to be a Twitter influencer and that's about it. Hell, I know too many that had magazines that they hosted on blogger and blogspot and wouldn't pay 10 bucks a year just to have a unique URL domain - it's that level of cheap that I don't understand that's affordable but they flat out won't do. It's that level of branding that's basic and tends to offend people. When I did write short stories and sent them out, I would never submit to anyone that was too cheap to buy their url. I build websites as my side hustle so I know how much stuff costs, and to hear the writers bitch that they are spending thousands when its really a total 50 buck investment getting with a good web host that ain't godaddy after I tell them that just lets me know they don't feel what they do is worth any investment, which comes out later. The same could be said for publishers, who are not paying anything to have a KDP account but decide they are financially in the hole and shut it all down, which is just bullshit, but that's another discussion entirely.
The reality is the audience is tired of being nickled and dimed on subscriptions. They are tired of the online drama. They are tired of engaging. Politics has worn everybody out - just look around substack. People will like here and there but not comment too tough unless its something political. The audience doesn't want to be stimulated intellectually, they want the lowest common denominator of entertainment, which is mudslinging. That was hard to process for the writer who quit because they thought their work was going to rise to the top like cream when the audience sinks to the bottom every time.
Tia I enjoy and appreciate your commentary on writing in Kristin's newsletter. You make me reflect more than I disagree with.
I'm picking out specific comments here though because from outside the US and outside fiction publishing, it can look different.
> This should be a golden age for writers across the board but its not.
Writers are knowledge workers. They'll thrive in an economy that differentiates on insight, quality and relevance.
But this is an attention economy. It favours promoters and publicists.
I work in a knowledge industry in an attention economy. My business thrives when you create a knowledge market which screens out the noise. That can happen *inside* an attention economy in the same way that manufacturing can work inside an energy economy. We live and die as fiction writers always have on the 'three Rs' of Reputation, References and Referrals; not Product, Price, Position and Promotion.
> The reality is the audience is tired of being nickled and dimed on subscriptions.
YES. Subscriptions aren't for individual authors writing long-form or anything else that's time-consuming. They work okay for journalists with daily deadlines, and better for magazine and news publishers who cost-balance across multiple writers.
BUT Kristin's previous advice about True Fans has worked for some musicians; it'll work for some raconteur writers but it's crowd-sourced patronage and that's a death-sentence for most serious writers. Her current advice on platforms and clients is on the money, but your comment is right too that it's hellishly expensive. You're literally learning three separate jobs.
Conclusion? It needs a new cadre of intermediates. I think it's low-overhead micro and mini publishers to make use of the diversity. But they need to be business-people who know writing; not shonk writers who want to copy the Big Five and rent-seek. So that'll take some shaking out.
> People will like here and there but not comment too tough unless its something political. The audience doesn't want to be stimulated intellectually, they want the lowest common denominator of entertainment, which is mudslinging.
I strongly disagree here, Tia. You're living in the domestic selection bias of the US echo-chamber and talking only about your most convenient audience. That's 330m English-speakers in a world of 1.5m. Although the US is a cultural foghorn in publication, it's only a dominant minority linguistically and Americans are not great readers. The UK, Australia and Canada all rank higher per capita and I don't know what's happening in Nigeria, India or Singapore, say.
From an outsider's perspective, your people are parochial, fractious, entitled, isolationist and utterly self-absorbed in a pathological, multigenerational identitarian fight that neither frames nor adequately represents the questions and concerns elsewhere in the world. We're sick of hearing from you about what you think about you and how that should tell us about us, so we're having multiple conversations among ourselves.
Yet you can engage internationally whenever you want with another 820m people, on a broader range of topics in a broader range of ways. You just need to learn to ask questions that aren't all about you.
Rav, I deeply have enjoyed your retort but I must address a few points.
All of my commentary was completely directed to the American market. I thought I was clear when I made mention of that, because its better to understand what our specific problems are versus including everyone when most of our issues do not apply outside of the states.
“Writers are knowledge workers. They'll thrive in an economy that differentiates on insight, quality and relevance. But this is an attention economy. It favours promoters and publicists.”
America’s knowledge industry is almost always academic, an not usually categorized in the literary conversation, even with university presses. Right now, that industry is being decimated by pussy grabber policies and the universities having to trim the fat as they lose the funding for such. Things outside of academia are given little to no consideration. Also, the 3Rs are very much a 20th century concept, as most technical and copywriters and others in related field are losing their gigs left and right to companies going with AI, which is the US race to the bottom.
“Conclusion? It needs a new cadre of intermediates. I think it's low-overhead micro and mini publishers to make use of the diversity. But they need to be business-people who know writing; not shonk writers who want to copy the Big Five and rent-seek. So that'll take some shaking out.”
Easier said than done now, especially with pussy grabber trying to race to the bottom with AI. The arts here have become decimated from it, starting with graphic design. Low overhead micro and mini-publishers are closing left and right, tired of the gatekeeping, the drama, and the inconsiderate writers talking shit as they struggle to buy ISBNs and deal with the tax liabilities for the books they publish, which is dirty pool and an entirely separate discussion. Also, most of the American micro and mini publishers are trying to be PenguinRandomSchuster as a matter of policy, so there’s that as well here. Understand, I get what you’re saying but there’s too much of a high school mentality here for it to be productive.
“I strongly disagree here, Tia. You're living in the domestic selection bias of the US echo-chamber and talking only about your most convenient audience.”
My audience is mostly overseas as that’s where I’ve sold the most books. The average American indie author’s demographic are other writers they have befriended, and maybe family and friends because that’s all they care to cater to. They don’t care about the UK, Austrailia, Canada, New Zealand; their racism is expensive and their gate keeping cost prohibitive. They limit themselves with genres that are overwhelmingly American and refuse to come outside of that box.
Yes, some AMERICAN WRITERS IN GENERAL are parochial, fractious, entitled, isolationists, self-absorbed, pathological, stuck in their rut, and can be lazy, shiftless, cliquish, gatekeeping, asskissing, and racist, sexist, misogynist, while reveling in the pit of their own demise. I’m not, but I’m a minority within a minority and thankful that I have a foreign audience while some of my peers are not or are foreigners trying to break into the American market because they think their country’s market is too tiny or they can’t be big stars there. I do not consider myself in the American market, as I divested all of my literary business out of the country for a host of reasons, but for my peers that choose to continue to do business in a closed minded market I do share the benefit of my wisdom about the market. And they don't understand what's going on, because if they did I wouldn't even be discussing it because it would be a moot point.
My comments are not really to offend the foreigners such as yourself, and by all means you should be having conversations about the bullshit going on here, but this might surprise a lot of you but the things that we’re discussing are still quite shocking and unknown from the vast majority of American authors. I speak differently on topics such as this when the market is different (i.e. the UK or Aussie market) and most of the writers are from there, but in no way am I implying that you should think anything. All I’m saying is, if you’re going to be an indie in the American market, or even a commercial writer, you need to know what’s behind door number 2 and 3, because door number one 9x out of 10 will be locked for you.
“Yet you can engage internationally whenever you want with another 820m people, on a broader range of topics in a broader range of ways. You just need to learn to ask questions that aren't all about you.”
I do engage internationally, but the point of the convo is that Americans refuse to do that, both readers and writers. I read in two languages outside of English; I have no problems with other cultures and living in other countries and INTEGRATING INTO THE CULTURE. Others though won’t given half the chance. It’s a cultural problem that is in a long line of other cultural problems fucking up American literature. And in the context of what Kirstin wrote, we are exclusively discussing a very direct American issue with indie American writers and I just highlighted some of the bullshit she didn’t. Trust and believe I ask my international copatriots a shit ton of questions and actually do write commentary about it (especially the differences in ISBN costs, the support of the government, etc.) as well as how culturally supportive their countries are towards literature while America consistently discourages it (see Pussy Grabber supporting book bans based on race, sex, history, gender).
Again, I am hearing you but our conversation is exclusively American (and for good reason because there is a big listening problem within our own ranks, which is an entirely in depth tiresome discussion).
Tia, thank you for your gracious, patient and fulsome response. You wrote plenty of context that’s interesting in its own right, which I appreciate and will think about.
For avoidance of doubt, I also wasn’t offended by anything that you wrote (though I am now keenly interested to read your stuff. Big ups for your international sales.)
I feel responsible though for an assumption that I held, and which I didn’t spell out. It’s from my own cultural context so the fault is mine.
Australian authors don’t really feel that there is much domestic market. I’ve known about it since the 1980s, but some have bemoaned it since at least the 1960s. If you wrote Australiana, then you’ll mostly sell in Australia and might move 2,000 copies if it’s backed by a big publisher or 10,000 if you’re also a name: our A-list is your mid-list. Otherwise it’s tens and hundreds of e-sales, much as US authors lament.
But many Australian authors focus overseas if they can for a small piece of a much bigger pie. They drift naturally toward international themes and international settings and may salt in some Australian setting or perspective either intentionally, or because that’s just how they think. International travel and multicultural family connections are also a big part of our modern culture, and that helps.
You may know yourself: markets are not naturally created by coloured blobs on a political map. They’re created by common trade and bounded instead by logistical impediments, jurisdictional rules, exchange rates and of course, language and culture. Yet we’ve had some 20 years now of electronic fulfillment, a quarter century of Print-on-Demand and about two decades of popular social media. So why are we still talking domestic markets as a default?
Americans not reading is a chilling problem for the future. But why is it insurmountable for writers today? The Irish do very well selling outside Ireland, and not because their meagre domestic sales can support international marketing, but because their writers excel at drawing broad human themes from hanging out laundry, and on the page, those freckled gingernuts punch like Tyson.
Many small authors are friends selling to friends, but everyone on Facebook and Instagram is now a memoirist, every teen on TikTok is now a copywriter/performer for 15 second infomercials, and people now have thousands of ‘friends’ that they spend hours grooming every week yet have never shared a meal with. So what should we expect?
There’s a lot to say about the current crises in US culture and governance. Lliterature has a critical role in discussing and exploring that while also being a drive-by victim of it, and I share that anguish more than can be expressed here.
But as you know, that’s not Kristin’s topic. It’s getting writers focused outward in commercially productive ways, and you virtually repeated my point when you wrote in rebuttal:
> I do engage internationally, but the point of the convo is that Americans refuse to do that, both readers and writers.
That’s cultural (which was my point), and as you illustrated with your own example, it’s also individual which means there’s no freakin excuse.
Australians and Irish have to think internationally to sell, and they do it before they write the first paragraph, even when they use local settings. Why do Americans still think that they don’t have to do that, when the evidence culturally, in restructured markets, and supported by your own experience, is that they do?
Finally, back to me being cheeky again (and thank you for tolerating it): Americans are a culture of great promoters, nobody better.
But you are also the biggest producer of get-rich-quick cut-n-paste turd pedlars in the Anglosphere, and those oxygen thieves in particular are about to be quietly stifled by AI, likely all overnight in one big, shrink-wrapped corporate-branded baggie.
Is that actually worth saving? Will you lose tooth enamel over reheated write-to-market fanfic, self-help popcorn and wellness factory franks?
Kristin wants to help anyone willing to sweat find a platform. You’ve warned that cranking the noise alone won’t help. I agree. So why not focus on the good writers who want to get better, and help them not just find a platform, but refocus and market internationally?
What, other than your nation’s cherished tatters of rancid exceptionalism, is stopping you? (Plural — I can’t say y’all as I don’t own the right hat.)
So why are we talking about domestic markets as a default? Because America leads the pack in what is/what ain't in the global sphere, and their self isolationist behavior (which has finally caught up to it) has caused other nations of writers to adopt that SAME BEHAVIOR.
Let's look at a country like Canada, that shuns everybody that isn't from Canada out. I know their market very well, as my latest novel is the great Canadian novel and about to be banned there. They flat out are anti-everybody that isn't born/bred citizen of that country, and they sell poorly outside of their country because of their self isolationism across the board. Celine Dion and Bryan Adams got no radio play there because they recorded albums that did not have at least 90% Canadian musicians - that is how extreme it is there. As a non-Canadian, I can't even be nominated for Canadian awards, be featured in any press, or get any type of attention there. That makes their market exclusively domestic.
America not reading is a chilling problem TODAY - see the political shit storm we are currently in. It will be worse tomorrow because it will cause even more racism, sexism, etc and a complete rollback of constitutional and other rights. Other nations I think are okay for reading because of their cultural compassion for it (and they know better) but because the big publishing PenguinRandomSchuster and Amazon control the world's publishing, the perspective of other nations enthralled in reading is sorely missed from the general public view internationally. This is what happens when multiconglomorates from America dictate the international markets.
I must say Rav, I am against authors selling to other authors, though I'm okay with them selling to friends because with the right friends the book can get traction. But the last 10 years of Twitter being the center of marketing for literature, and now TikTok BookTok being the standard for the lipstick lesbian trust fund kid agents to peddle their vampiric werewolf smut romance novels to tweens and no one else has become disastrous. People are tired of social media, they are tired of being sold a product every time they come on, from ads, from artists selling their latest thing, to AI fucking up their algorithm. This is why true engagement is down.
I agree, literature has been a critical role in discussing/exploring/sharing the issues of the world, specifically in the US, but it is in danger with Pussy Grabber banning books, arresting journalists, and every damning thing he does when he wakes up in the morning and chooses, as we say, violence. It's to keep the population ignorant, which is working for 60% of the country that embrace being ignorance and illiteracy because how dare women have opinions, Black people actually learn something, Latinos learn the language and demand equal rights. Even better, having the tech companies double down on it because they want everybody using AI (and see Zuckerberg saying people using Instagram or FB will be interacting with nothing but And yes, that goes in part to Kirstin's topic, because some of those issues I've explained contributed to the writer we discussed meltdown. That's happening more and more in the indie markets and circles, as evident by the shutdowns that have happened this year and the authors that have vanished.
Australians and Irish should not sell internationally but build up their markets domestically. Americans by and large are taught they are the center of the damn universe and that everyone else is beneath them. That's why they don't. They flat out don't care what another nation thinks. You know most Americans, like 85%, will NEVER LEAVE THE UNITED STATES. 80% will never get a passport (and felon laws make it illegal for felons even to obtain one to travel). 99% don't even understand the term "Anglosphere" and that they are in it. Let that shit sink in a minute. They are content in staying in their cesspools of self inflicted pain, and the rest of the world be damned. PenguinRandomSchuster exploits this. That mentality is persistent in a vast majority of literary circles, which is why so much drama spills out from America when their authors take it upon themselves to scold/cancel writers from other countries about what they say/do.
Americans are not great promoters though; some are great hustlers. There is a difference and why, as you say, America is the "biggest producer of get-rich-quick cut-n-paste turd pedlars in the Anglosphere". Everything here is taught to be in competition, to be cut throat, to get over on the "little guy", the "honest man is a fool". You can even see this in Saturday Night Fever, when Tony and his friends are at the car lot and one of his friends brags on his Uncle being rich by giving his business partner a good screw (and that was 1977).
No, all the self help, AI infested snowflake shit isn't worth saving and in a real market would have already self destructed, but Amazon is the devil in the details and lets the demons run free.
"Kristin wants to help anyone willing to sweat find a platform. You’ve warned that cranking the noise alone won’t help. I agree. So why not focus on the good writers who want to get better, and help them not just find a platform, but refocus and market internationally?"
Nothing wrong with that, but most American writers cannot nor will not want to "get better" as they think they are flawless and they will flat out refuse the international markets altogether. There is a saying here - if you can't make it (pick your city) you can't make it anywhere. For literature it's like if you can't blow up and make it big in America you ain't shit to begin with, a tenant 95% of writers I know from here hold dearly to. They'd rather be mediocre and sell to coworkers and friends than try their hand outside of their comfort zone.
I know better and absolutely love the international market, because I think worldly. Hell, I'm a Black chick from Chicago in a country that has told me (on my very own Birth certificate since your nationality is your race on there) that not only am I not American, but I see Pussy Grabber waiting on a green light to deport me/mine from here. Let that sink in. Now imagine how in a literary industry that is 98% white, 95% male dominated, how that's gonna work out, especially since this is the era of white men feeling like they've been left behind and standing behind pussy grabber to drag America kicking and screaming back to the good old days of Jim Crow, where white women couldn't work or vote, and Black folks were slaves to be toyed with. Then apply that to literature, which is like a Democrat land mind of ass kissers virtue signaling politics they think will get them a great deal at PenguinRandomSchuster and letting that influence what/how they write.
It is a flat out shit show, and why commercial book sales have absolutely plummeted. Don't even get me started on the literary tokenism of "we want BIPOC/underpriviledged writers" bullshit, and trust, I might have to do a substack newsletter about that shit.
What is stopping American writers other than your nation’s cherished tatters of rancid exceptionalism? Nothing. That IS what is stopping them and they will cling to it like they cling to a gun in Charleton Heston's cold dead hands. It's just a lot of internal shit to deal with, conditioned shit, and then, external shit. Some people can handle it, some can't.
And yes you can say y'all, lol.
So we're violently agreeing with one another, but from different cultural contexts?
That's hilarious, Tia. Your added perspective has made that clear to me now, and I appreciate it.
You're entitled to every grievance that you uttered and I can't argue with a single one, but if you want to find a root cause for your nation's current slide, I think you'd have to go back to the era of Clinton and Gingrich to start with.
Clinton not for his philandering but for the Telecommunications Act 1997, which was a mixed blessing.
Gingrich for beginning the political rockslide from Reagenesque conservatism back toward McCarthyism.
Contemporaenous with all that, I think you'd need to look at the travesty of Creation Science, which actually had its roots in disenfranchised US Conservative Protestantism a century earlier.
And... on the left you'd need to look at the failure of the humanities (the institutional discipline) to learn from the Science Wars of the 1990s. They were academically stupid before that, but sunk into obstinately stupid thereafter.
I think all those forces are still playing, but from how disparate they are I think it's fair to say there's a lot of economic and cultural momentum behind them. Demographers like to say that demographics are destiny, but economics and culture are strategic too and not just tactical, and as we're seeing now, they shape generations.
> Some people can handle it, some can't.
Of course, but do you recognise that's opportunity too?
You're a black Chicago chick. I'm a Gypsy boy who grew up working poor but pulled a PhD in nerdology out of his arse (tr: 'ass.') You can build up a lot of identitarian resentment if you want to, but what you *don't* get if you've actually struggled is a lot of entitlement.
Your nation DEIs the hell out of itself, but better than DEI is just to let people who know how to struggle, outsmart the folk who think they don't have to.
Props to our beloved Ginger Hostess, who knows that in a permissive environment, that's character and culture rather than identitarian. But it's also steeped in the economics of comfort. The Greatest Generation had many faces that sunburned easily, but they grew up a lot less comfortable, a lot less entitled and a lot more capable.
And there's 340 million of you. You're not all idiots. (And it's an Australian saying that, so good luck!)
> you can say y'all, lol.
That's kind of you, but I have to live with my neighbours.
I wouldn't say violently agreeing, I'd say passionately agreeing, lol.
The root causes that you listed I do not disagree with, but that really is geared more towards white people than black people to be honest, as there has always been two different sets of rules for each side, with a bone thrown here and there for the ruling political structure to feel "progressive". I was in college doing a Communications major when Deregulation happened, and I vividly remember my hippie professors having a shit fit about it for two semesters. However it goes before Gingrich. Look at Rush Limbaugh leading the charge to get Judy Blume banned in the early 1980s. As a writer I think that's where it started to start policing writers. As far as the travesty of Creation Science, absolutely agree, and it went on steroids with people like Anita Bryant in the 1970s, which has led to what we have now. But I will say the failure of the humanities had more or less to do with government funding influencing what was celebrated and taught versus anything else. The minute money became something that was judged based on what the money people wanted, that's when it went tits up.
"I think all those forces are still playing, but from how disparate they are I think it's fair to say there's a lot of economic and cultural momentum behind them. Demographers like to say that demographics are destiny, but economics and culture are strategic too and not just tactical, and as we're seeing now, they shape generations." That is what we say on the block "That part".
Sure, there's an opportunity but in America that's easier said than done for the people that don't want to get outside of their comfort zone. As a person that does that regularly, I will say I have faced immense challenges this year internationally as Pussy Grabber's policies are now starting to turn the stomachs of overseas markets who think all of America is down for his bullshit and/or the boycotting outright of American imports or anything done by transplant Americans. I'm a black Chicago chick that worked my ass off for my real PhD (not knocking your nerdology doctorate) so I can tell you about the struggle being real, especially the reality of the American job market saying thanks, no thanks, DEI is why you have a degree.
Now let me mention "DEI". We had EEOC since the early 70s that INCLUDED EVERYONE, and was necessary since half the country was gleefully still living in separate but equal across the board. DEI was created to switch the influence of political talking points from black people to sexuality issues, aiding and abetting the trans community in culturally re appropriating their struggle to the black civil rights movement. That just infested into every sector of the arts like a cancer, and created BIPOC, which is, to me, worse than calling a black person nigger and causes all types of segregationist problems, many which found its way into American literature across the board.
And there's 370 million of us. Thank you for recognizing some of us went to school and learned critical thinking in the good old days of the late 20th century, lol.
Tia thank you for the gift of so many interesting and provocative thoughts.
I read each of your responses multiple times, excerpted bits for a systematic point-by-point reply, and then realised that you might just appreciate some curated reflections instead. So that's what I'll do. If I overlook anything that you want a response to, please tell me.
> Australians and Irish should not sell internationally but build up their markets domestically.
The domestic Australian publishing market is pretty small -- $US1.2b in 2023 or about 5% of the US and 14% of the UK, with about half the local bestsellers being Australian.
Our national population is about that of Texas, so if you would be happy as an author trying to make a living by publishing only within that state, then that's what you're asking Australians to do by publishing only domestically.
Meanwhile, Ireland is even smaller -- including news and mags, its whole publishing industry is only $878m from 5m people. So you're asking the population of Alabama to publish only to itself when ethnically, around 70m people of Irish descent live overseas.
I strongly support a nation investing in its culture, but also think that intercultural conversations are critical. Writers and thinkers are precisely the people who most need to read globally. My interests are international and you can take my imported titles from my cold, dead hands. If Australia stopped importing foreign titles then we'd be in the company of North Korea. I strongly support Australians exporting what they can too. If you want to make a living here publishing in a niche genre like Fantasy, SF or thriller, then you have no choice.
(And if we don't export everything we can then some chick in Chicago will tell everyone that we only write smut.)
> Canada […] flat out are anti-everybody that isn't born/bred citizen of that country
They certainly don't like importing US goods at the moment, yet I was surprised that you thought it hostile to Australian titles too. I didn't know what's happening there with Australian authors so I dug it up.
Their biggest online domestic bookstore is indigo.ca, and in hunting Australian authors there I had no trouble finding niche players like (say) Garth Nix, Greg Egan or Isobelle Carmody in the FSF genres, or Trent Dalton, who was our biggest domestic seller last year. None of the titles I looked for were listed on backorder -- they were all in stock. All the prices seemed as expected too -- no crazy tariffs.
I don't know how big a market Canada is for Australian titles, and I'm not aware of book tours there by these authors, but an international name like Richard Dawkins toured there only last year and he's a Brit.
So I'm wondering if President Muff Mitts might have provoked Canadian nationalism a time too many?
In any case I'm sorry that they're not accepting your titles and I note that your latest is set in Quebec so it would be natural to promote there. Have they said why? And is French one of your languages? Is it French-french or Québécois-french?
> America leads the pack in what is/what ain't in the global sphere
I know many Americans believe that, yet I have never understood why. For example, the US lags substantially behind the EU in data privacy, chemical regulation, food safety and agricultural standards, consumer protections, environmental and climate regulations and digital markets. EU bureaucracy isn't exactly fast, yet the US can neither sway the EU's preferred way of doing things, nor apparently, catch up to align with it.
In my day-job I also work with key Australian regulators, and know who they harmonise with -- the US is often not their first port of call. New Zealand is the same.
I'm not aware of big US economic influence in the Asian powerhouses of Japan, South Korea or China (all major trading partners for Australia.) Nobody has economic sway with India, which is every bit as nationalistic as you are. Your Obama-era Pacific free trade arrangements were staggering drunkenly along the road before your 45th presidency commenced, and by the 47th, are now dead in a ditch, wafting of malt liquor and blue ruin.
My conclusion? Your financial markets still matter because nobody hates money, but the developed world has just quietly told you that outside computer chips and software maybe, your trade no longer does.
Once you were globally respected but now, nobody even trusts you. That's not coming back for at least another 12 years (the current presidential term and probably two more to see whether your democracy can stabilise, and how the chips will fall.)
With climate change, Chinese ambition and Russian aggression, nobody's waiting so long. Even militarily, the EU is already planning for a post-NATO world.
So what 'world' is the US still calling the economic shots in? Is it just South America and the Caribbean? This might illustrate what I was saying before about US not asking the right questions and simply not hearing conversations that should matter domestically, taking place offshore.
Your people wanted to be on your own, talking only to yourselves about yourselves like a demented cat-lady, and now, God help you, you are. Even the Canadians are now offended by your international manners and lifestyle choices, and they only riot over hockey scores.
> People are tired of social media, they are tired of being sold a product every time they come on, from ads, from artists selling their latest thing, to AI fucking up their algorithm. This is why true engagement is down
If they're not then I can only wonder when they will be.
You're seeing the limit of my social media interaction here, Tia. I'm not on YouInstaTwitFace.
But since I limit what I read on social media and who I talk to, I also don't mind people who think interesting things selling ideas to me. I recently picked up a title of Kristin's not because she pushed it but because I became interested in what she thought about some topics. I hope to pick up one of yours now too even though you also weren't pushing it.
> literature has been a critical role in discussing/exploring/sharing the issues of the world, specifically in the US, but it is in danger with Pussy Grabber banning books, arresting journalists, and every damning thing
I want to say two things here.
Firstly, it's terrible and undeserved and although I have all manner of cultural criticisms I am in outright admiration for how your population is handling the current attempts at autocracy.
The humour, intelligence and courage on display from your citizens every day is literally the best that I have seen from your country since footage from the 1960s. I don't know what other nation could equal it and I think it's inspiring people worldwide.
Secondly, when I look at what has happened historically in Europe, South America or China under similar circumstances, I note that autocracy is terrible for the volume of literature and access to it, but has often produced amazing quality. I don't know why, but I wonder whether trying harder to communicate about the unthinkable increases empathy, insight and respect for subject. I wonder too whether that's part of why Irish literature has been so strong.
In any case, you're not there yet.
> I will say the failure of the humanities had more or less to do with government funding influencing what was celebrated and taught versus anything else
I don't know enough, but I'm inclined to believe it just on principle.
However, there's also a line of thought from the UK that right-wing populism is what happens when progressivism gets unsupportably idealistic. You've critiqued that in passing, and I agree. But the driver for that appears to be the academic left and I'm not so much concerned about what they believe as their incapacity to test what they say before pushing it. You've mentioned critical thought and that's part of it, but I'd also insist on empirical evidence for empirical claims.
You and Kristin have both argued how such stuff kills literature (I agree: that's in Australia too.) It clouds political debate, disrupts friendly and respectful conversations and has the capacity to politicise anything and everything.
It's noxious, but I think you could take the funding away tomorrow and they'd still do it with whatever budgets they had left because their whole edifice of quality control is corrupt and phony. This was proven in the Sokal prank of the 1996, and proven again in the Sokal Squared hoax of 2017-18. (This is a hobbyhorse of mine. More only if interested.)
As for DEI, that was just a passing comment. My personal experience is that social disadvantage programs were pretty poor when I was a kid. But Australia at that time had deep publicly-funded education and health, which made a huge difference.
I still struggled (my PhD isn't really in 'nerdology' but informatics), but my struggle was only cultural and logistical -- which was plenty -- but it wasn't financial.
I think had it been some sort of diversity program, I wouldn't have been eligible. Especially not the way they're shaped nowadays.
Outside the US, socialised education and health aren't even controversial. They're what a wealthy country does that gives a shit about its citizens, its culture and its future. It immediately eliminates all the cherry-picked minority rules, which is a problem that you created for yourselves from your own Not Invented Here exceptionalism. Once you socialise health and education, the only remaining question is in how you adapt and sustain it.
Rav, thank you for such a thorough reply. I shall read and respond as soon as I'm done with my afternoon soiree, lol.
Ruv, I adore your response. This is what I love - the discussion/dialogue between writers and addressing the problems (which in the olden days would give us solutions). I had to break my comment up because substack said it was too long so this is part one.
I am cool with a few Australian (and also New Zealand) authors, so hopefully you will be gracious to my response about the scene there, which is totally based on their tales of highs and lows as an outsider looking in (and my lore of book history).
Aussies, as you mentioned, have not had that much of a domestic market, but that is because of the success, IMHO of Colleen McCullough's "The Thorn Birds". That book was a international hit that also captivated the American audience, especially with the various miniseries that were the 2nd highest rated miniseries 2nd to Alex Haley's Roots saga in the 1970s & 1980s for ABC network. "The Thorn Birds" came out in 1977, so a lot of modern Australian authors that were born 1975-2000, they probably got bitch slapped with that being the "standard" of Australian literary success, since that book is still, to this day, credited with being "The Great Australian Outback Novel". No one, not even the author herself, really could sell as many copies as "The Thorn Birds", which made an unrealistic expectation on what it meant to be an Australian author, and what subject matter was okay/not okay.
The Aussies I know write what's known as "dirty fiction", filled with a lot of adult themes but not genre specific so to speak, but a throwback to literature from the 70s that encompassed several genres/themes, and are completely shunned/shuttered by their communities for writing it and choose to jump in the American market since we don't have that much of a morality when it comes to race/violence/gender. However, the pushback that they found stateside was equal to what they found at home, because of who they associated with in the literary front and not for the quality of their work. They weren't prepared for the high school cliquish type games and wound up in the same place, just different reasoning.
The Aussies that I know try not to drift to international themes though they are influenced by American writers, especially in detective genres and such, but they spin it to reflect their city/province/towns painstakingly, down to the local jargon and verbiage (which I admire because that makes it unmistakably Aussie). That too, does not go over well outside of Australia, neither in UK or US or Canada, though New Zealand is more tolerant of it. And yes, their initial expectation was that they would go over big here because of American "freedoms of speech/expression" but they fail to realize that the racist/sexist/misogynistic issues of the virtue signalers in the community censor things of that nature, and box them out. They want whitewashed censored literature and they are very cliquish about it. Now with all the ICE stuff and the open deportation of Aussies, including those of military personnel here, they aren't coming here for literary conferences or just to see family/friends, making the American outlet shut out to them and back to square one.
Markets in America though are created by blobs of politics, not by common trade. That is something I think the rest of the Anglosphere doesn't realize about the American market in general, and is disappointed when their crossover efforts fail because they don't meet the "checklist criteria" of race, religion, politics, etc. Much of this was started by PenguinRandomSchuster and went on steroids in the era of Print On Demand from self appointed gatekeepers. I agree with you wholeheartedly, we have had 20 years of electronic fulfillment, 25 years of POD, and about 25 years of social media. However, America was SLOoOoOOOoooW adopting all of that hardcore, as our generational divide made that at first something only 80s kids did in college (think the CollegeClub/BlackPlanet days before FB), then MySpace opened up a little more to the Milllenials, then Facebook, which is now just a depot of Baby Boomers trying to show how cool they are being on social media to their grandkids.
> This is what I love - the discussion/dialogue between writers and addressing the problems (which in the olden days would give us solutions).
Me too. I'm largely absent in Notes and Posts here, but active in comments where I talk to interesting people about what *they* think.
And I'll come back to your thoughtful comments on Australia vs US. However it's morning here. I'm taking a friend cycling up a mountain and then fixing some of their electrical and I'm on the clock.
The simple fact is that writing—whether it’s a book, an article or a blog post—is a product. And that product does not (except in rare circumstances) find an audience on its own, or by accident. Someone has to connect the work with the audience, and if you’re an indie writer, that someone is you.
If you want to be an exception, you have to be exceptional. Same as it ever was. But yeah, it’s undoubtedly more difficult today—not only for writers, but for creatives of every kind. Write anyway. Or don’t.
This was a fantastic article. A hard pill to swallow too, but truth is like that sometimes.
My question, however, is this: when we have tried to learn how to do things like email newsletters, understand k-lytics, build a email list and so on, we get so many conflicting pieces of advice we end up spinning our wheels and getting no where. Such as building a newsletter for instance and teh use of an email list. We have mailerlite set up, use Substack, but we cannot find the success other people do with those methods and cannot figure out what we are doing wrong. And when we ask other writers, we get 20 different, conflicting answers, and none of them help us pinpoint the problem.
My husband tried to sit down and watch the videos to learn k-lytics and walked away even more confused and disheartened than before.
Where do we find real, honest, well written or produced instructions on how to do all these little business things that doen't leave us confused, lost, bewildered, and feeling like failures when trying to learn something and getting nowhere? Because in our case, its not that we haven't tried to learn it - we can't seem to make it work or understand it!
I've never used klytics so I can't speak to all its features. But I've heard its primary use is for people who want to write to market with a rapid release model. If that's not you, it may not be helpful. In terms of the newsletter/email list, or blog, the question is how are you driving traffic to it. If it's exclusively through offering freebies to other authors, that will not be helpful. It tends to be one of two things: you drive traffic to your newsletter with a platform (social media content) or through ads. You can build the email list through free giveaways and swaps through sites like Bookfunnel, but in my experience those big lists don't translate to big sales.
It's for rapid release, market chasers is what I finally realized. Good tool for those who can punch out a 50-75k word novel in 2 months or less. I cannot and I'm not bashing anyone who can. Nor can I manage chasing any trends because my writing process doesn't work that way. But for those who can, it's probably a perfect tool.
For whatever this is worth, I found that the best advice on selling and marketing came from professional salesmen and marketers. (Shocking, yes?)
Not writers on Facebook, not self-publishers on forums, not the gurus catering to those audiences. Going back to the source, finding the principles and methods, and learning what works from the people that sell for a living.
The writer-focused crowd is, as you say, a confused muddle. You've got Tier 3 gurus playing telephone game to an audience that has no idea what they are buying, confused amateurs sharing tactics without deep understanding of why they work and what they're for, and more obfuscation than help.
Get away from writers and people selling to writers, and head up to the source.
I second this advice. My background is media, but I remember a light bulb moment during a meeting with our marketing team. I had quietly noticed "click rates" and "open rates" that were seemingly low for our newsletters (like 30%, 40%), and the marketers explained that this wasn't the disaster it seemed. That those were actually GOOD rates.
This puzzled me, until I thought of my own habits as a subscriber to a couple of writers' newsletters. It's true, I didn't necessarily open their emails. The point of getting the newsletter was to alert me that the writer still exists, and has a new book out, and I should go to Amazon and buy it.
So if a writer is just looking at the "final column" of "did they open the newsletter" metrics, they would think they had failed when the rate is only 30%. But in fact they succeeded, because I bought their book, which was the actual point of the newsletter. I would only open the newsletter if the subject line indicated a necessity, such as entering a contest or getting early access to something. If the subject line indicated a generic announcement of a new release, I didn't open it.
I actually tend to hate when people (especially companies I work for) extol metrics, because they're only as good as the analytical skills of the person looking at them. If the "analyst" -- and I use that term extremely loosely -- doesn't know how to look at variables / constants, they screw over everyone else, including themselves. They have to KNOW what's actually "typical" for their situation. They have to know the variables, they have to know their audience, and a snake oil salesman isn't going to tell them that. Just go to the source, the professional salesmen and marketers.
I went to "the source" when I learned about typetting print (and by extension ebooks). I didn't ask techphobic, tech-illiterate writers with poor pattern matching skills. They were full of stupid advice. I looked to typographers / typesetters, web developers, web designers, etc. They were full of excellent advice. Go to the source!
Kristin, I was reading this in bed at 2:30am and jumped out to respond. I think that this is your best ever.
I have run a consulting business for 25 years, and this is the very conversation that I've had at least three times -- once with academics who hated being tied to their cynical, corporatist institutions but didn't know how to turn being clever into a business; and again with fiction-writers in training on two different writing development sites about how turning a phrase by itself won't turn a buck.
I think you've presented it better than I did on any of those occasions. There are multiple reasons why.
But let me also say that I'm relieved that you have dropped the 'True Fans' advice in this article too. That works for some musicians because they're live performance icons, but doesn't necessarily work for session musicians who are the ghostwriters of the musical world, and who are often more talented than the recording artists they support. It will work for a smaller number of writers too, who happen to be raconteurs on stage and page. But when your job is to think, imagine and polish expression onto a page, patronage comes at a huge unseen cost and it won't be for most. I hope you've moved away from giving that advice for good.
But here you've said 'platform' instead, which is exactly right. That can mean many things, but will definitely include a receptive, interested community, which every writer needs to catch what they throw. Critically, they don't have to be 'your' community, but you have to be 'their' writer and they have to know it. That's about building intimacy, credibility, reliability and focus on their shared concerns -- i.e, trust. It's more than just self-promotion.
The self-care while you build that is critical and you've nailed that if you're developing your writing too, then you'll suffer two different kinds of anxiety at once: a creative anxiety in your writing, and a social anxiety in your marketing.
I'd like to add here that writers may also suffer a third anxiety, which is the intellectual anxiety of not understanding what fiction is when you first try and write it, what a genre is if you're trying to write genre fiction, and what *your* genre is in particular.
Good writers *need* to be good readers. They need to be well-read in depth and breadth and they need to be reflective. If you're not then you need to hang with writers who are, and that's going to make you feel dumb quite a lot. It's also going to expose you to a lot of pretentious shonks, but the dumb that you feel when you don't know the leaders in your genre and how their work differentiates and why a reader you want to read your stuff first read *their* stuff is the dumb of not knowing how a genre works and therefore what works in your target market. That dumb wasn't painted upon you -- it's just you noticing the smell.
As you know, this needs to be an ongoing conversation because the 'be talented and get discovered' BS was created by big publishing houses and served them the way that it served Hollywood in film and the big corporates in music. It's an abattoir full of wolves playing 'come join us, little lamb' on the hurdy-gurdy.
It needs demythologising. Big publishers were gatekeepers to production and publishing logistics, but never to genre. Neither were agents or retailers -- genre was always defined by shared community interest between writers and readers; the intermediators were followers and not leaders in this and much of the time had no clue, whatever they pretended to know.
You're the right person to lead that demythologising here. There is more to be said, and this conversation needs to continue.
Great work.
👏👏👏👏👏
I’m saving this post for any time someone needs to hear it. Well done!
Love the article! It expertly maps out the problem, the illusion that it used to be different and then actually offers some solutions, which is rather unusual. Brava!
My absolute favorite marketing technique is from those assholes on 20 to 50k. "Here's my first book, I can't believe I sold 100,000 copies on my first book in the first week! All I did was dump fifty thousand dollars into marketing and BAM! Thanks everybody!"
LOL. LMAO even.
I got a new marketing campaign I'm kickign off next month, it's going to be pretty agressive, and I don't think I've seen anyone do even anything close with it, I'll report back in a year.
Semper Fi, mother fucker.
P.S.- Keep up the good work
Yeah I left that group for this very reason. “Oh I sell books by sending emails to my list.” Gee thanks
We CAN work towards a World where Art has value! Till then, we must acknowledge what Kristin is saying...
In the film industry, vapid & vacuous films get produced because it's business first! Hollywood has an aversion to depth of meaning because it, itself, is a very shallow venture made up of superficial people. BUT we CAN (and at this point, need) put an end to that:
Vote with your wallets, folks. Consumers, flex your muscles! You control the markets!!
“Vote with your wallets” THIS! Many who complain about the vacuous nature of modern media do not spend money on more artistic ventures, perpetuating the idea that only slop is profitable
My response to this is....there is an ENTIRE WORLD outside of America, and countries that actually do value mise en cine. Stop focusing on America and you can be a creative with meaning.
I don't think many people realize that 1099 work exists or are fearful of it because of taxes, but truth is, taxes is not a good enough reason or excuse to avoid getting creative with your portfolio of work!
Yes! Now that you can pay your estimated taxes every month (instead of putting it aside for the quarterly payments) it makes things so easy! It’s just a bill like your rent
Great read, feel mildly slapped upside the head, but in a good way—reminds me of my junior high football days.
Probably gonna read it again to chew on some points. I think my biggest challenge is just finding a new rhythm to write and promote. Started a new job back in March, it’s much more demanding of my energy.
I feel you. Writing and promoting at the same time feels like the steepest climb of all because it’s such a jarring shift. At the very least try to do them on separate days, if not in different parts of the year
I see something similar happening with many modern pro athletes. The smart ones have realised that pro athletics is part of the entertainment industry, and have started building their own media presence.
Once you are indecently successfully, then then gatekeepers will want to know you - and you need to decide if any given offer is a force multiplier or parasitic
Way to cut to the heart of the matter. Many will gnash teeth and wail, but you catch the most flak when you’re right over the target
Nicky Picone at Iron Age Marketing and the gentleman who runs Novel Marketing on YouTube have been great for solid and practical advice.
Sustained effort over time is critical... something I have failed at in the past.
Great article.
This brings up so much shit...
First of all, I'd like to read something Mr. Ragequitter wrote, because I respect his decision as an artist.
Second, artists are never going to be adept at business, and the converse is true for businessmen.
It may be that those artists who manage to survive in modern times are the ones that can competently handle their own business, but people can only be good at so many things. And the digital world seems rather hard to keep up with; why learn ABC when next year you're going to have to know XYZ?
You've diversified yourself very nicely, which I'm sure is extremely wise--it would be terrible to put all your eggs in one basket.
I definitely support people quitting, however. If I have anything wise to offer in this reply, it's this:
It really really sucks that self-publishing coincided with an eternal, worldwide market. Yes, anyone can put themselves on the electric bookstore shelf, but that shelfspace is now infinitely large.
Every writer is competing for attention with everything that's ever been written. That's extremely tough. No shame in bowing out if you can't handle the bullshit.