ANYONE CAN BE A BEST-SELLING AUTHOR!! (But should they be?)

June 7, 2008 - Saturday


ANYONE can be a Best-selling Author! (But should they be?)**oops, I forgot something**
Current mood: creative
Category: Writing and Poetry

So I went to a writer's conference today. My first. I haven't been to any before because 1) I don't pay enough attention to the outside world to know when they are and b: They usually cost around 150 bucks to attend, and I need to save my money for more important things like playing blackjack in Tahoe.

Being "In Charge" of a local writers' group, I recently received an email on the group's website from a publicist for a small local publisher. They were hosting a conference today, the "6-7-8 Conference" (get it?) in a tiny town an hour away. They were only charging $25 and including lunch, so BINGO! I signed up. No one else from my group did. Maybe that should have been my first clue.

I'll admit it; I'm not always good at doing my homework. I'd never heard of this publisher, but I know that there are several small publishing houses in the area, and had heard this small town was considered "progressive" for the area it is in, so figured it'd be okay. Finally Googled the place on Wednesday. It's an LDS publishing company. As in, they pretty much only publish Mormon authors writing about Mormon or local-interest books, or at least one has to mention that they are a Child Of God and know how the Golden Plates song goes in the book to get in. Not that there's anything wrong with that. This is the land of Zion, after all.

I am soooooo not a Mormon author. My book is sooooooo not mentioning the Nephites, the temple or the funny underwear in a godly way. No one is converting to the Chosen People at the end. But, what the hell; free lunch. I just planned on bee-lining it out of there if there was an opening prayer. Not that there's anything wrong with that either, but I've spent enough time being talked (down) to about the glories of the church. I get it. I'm a gentile and okay with that. I began to have some trepidations that this was mostly going to be seminars on how to incorporate the D&C into one's story arc or something. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I don't want to. But I girded my loins and went.

It was nice, mostly. There was no coffee, obviously, but I'd anticipated that and had tanked up at home and was comfortably superhypercaffeinated at the go. There was no mention of the religious thing, the room was about a quarter full of non-Mormon authors from what I could tell, and there was absolutely no proselytizing. But still no coffee. And I kind of felt like a normal person at a job: I was bored shitless and kept wanting to sneak a look at my MySpace page.

What there was lots of was:

How to SELL YOURSELF as an author!!!

How to help your publicist SELL YOUR BOOK!!!

How to put together a Media Kit so the newspaper people will totally review your book!!!

Um. O-kay.


See, the naive babe-in-the-literary-woods thought that a writer's conference might be about....um....writing? Maybe? Like, how to strengthen a character or align a plot or maybe how to write a query letter. No. It was all about how to sell yourself and your book, no matter if it's done yet; no matter if it sucks. Sell it, baby.
**One of the presenters wanted us to each come up with a way to market ourselves, write it on a piece of paper and she would choose the best one for a prize. Not being good at this kind of thing AT ALL, I rolled my eyes and wrote:
"I could make a sandwich-board placard with my book cover on it, hang it on the Great Dane and take her for a walk at the dog park. Then I could get her a harness and pretend she's a therapy dog so we could get into the mall." Typical smartassery.

I won.

Have you ever been in a room full of authors? Let me tell you, it's like a party at the beach. If it's raining and dark and someone is insisting on playing charades. Writers, by and large, are not "people persons". They're awkward. They're socially inept. They have bad breath. That's why they write. To become someone else. (Not me, of course, this is just what I've observed...) How can these people possibly be expected to market themselves?


I was chastised for not having a "real" website and blog (Nope, MySpace doesn't count), and for not having business cards with my book title and the word "Author" after my name.

E'scuse me, WTF?


My book isn't done. I don't feel right about calling myself a "writer", much less bestow that honored title of "author" on myself, before I've been published. I don't know if my book sucks. (Haha, it doesn't suck. It's the best piece of literary awesomeness that has ever been trapped inside a Mac). I don't know if I'll ever get published, and yet, I'm supposed to act as though I already am? Am I just too humble? Is it silly of me to be a bit ashamed of the hubris it takes to do these things?

I've always considered writing to be an Art. A Craft. (Not like toll-painting or knitting; like the old-school meaning of the word). Something that one toils at, bleeds over, rends hair and shirts about, shyly keeps it close to the vest about, hopes and prays that some editor, agent and/or publisher will beg to put it on parchment and bind it together for all eternity. Amen.

Nope. It's a business. Anyone and everyone can be a best-selling author nowadays. It doesn't matter if your topic is a snore-fest, if your grammar is pure Utahvoo, if you have humans mating with eagles. Get a business card, put up a self-aggrandizing website, find ten people who like reading your crap and your in.

Sigh.


The only rays of heavenly light I saw today came from the keynote speaker (who wrote a book on how to use surfing philosophies to become a better salesman) and from the publisher himself, with whom I got to have a one on one meeting.

From the keynote speaker: "How many of you feel like you're not writing a book; but that THIS BOOK has chosen YOU to write it?"


From the publisher, who is very Mormon, and with whom I was straight in telling him that he would never publish my book: "It doesn't matter if you're following anyone's formula or writing what other people think you should be writing. I want to see a story that is written from the heart; one that means everything to someone."

Amen.

I'm going to go write now.