The Other 98%

Last week I was rambling on about the modern day Lester Dents who write the books that, maybe 90% of ebook readers want to read. Writing as Kenneth Robeson, Mr Dent wrote 159 Doc Savage novels over the course of 16 years. He could write fast, had a flourishing imagination, and a winning formula for writing stories his readers loved. Lester Dents are rare, perhaps 1-2% of the ebook writers, but they sell probably something like 90+% of the books sold or read on Kindle Unlimited.

But what about the other 98% of writers who maybe serve the remaining 10% of the ebook market? What about them? Who are they, and what are we doing here?

I can't say for certain, except to say we're a motley crew. I think it's save to say that just about every author wants to make money writing books. The fact of the matter is that only .1% of them do, and .01% have a writing career that last more than a decade. And maybe .001% make a living at it. Writing to make money is a futile enterprise - despite the fact there are people who do make money at it a couple of thousand out of several million writers on Amazon.

That said, I will divide this motley crew into two camps. All of them write, all of them can write - you don't write a book if you can't. But some write primarily to make money, and other write primarily for the love of writing. 

The first group, the people who decide to write a book in order to make money will very likely fail to make money, either because they didn't do their homework and didn't write the type of story that a large group of readers want to read, and/or they failed to spend the effort, skill, and money needed for readers to find their book amongst the ten million other books. How accomplished they are at the craft and art of writing probably doesn't matter much, since very few people ever come across their books. These writers quickly discover that writing is not a way to make money, so after a book, or a trilogy, they go on to try to make money in some easier way. Their books of course, linger on as ghosts - their last book being released four, five, or more years ago, but the writers themselves have left the building. And in my opinion, good riddance. 

It might be hard to tell the second group of writers, from the first, since their results are much the same. These are the writers who wrote their book with a passion to write, to tell their story. They probably didn't do any homework because they were writing their story, not yours. Oh, they certainly hope you will enjoy it, and likely dream of lots of people reading and enjoying it as well. But they have published it, at least in part, because publishing completes the process of writing stories. Stories should be read, and they can't be read without being published. Very often they also only write a story or two, as they too suffer the disappointment of not finding the readers, and perhaps the money that they had hoped for. And perhaps many of them only had a story or two in them. But there are also writers who continue on simply because they love to write and tell stories.

These are the people like me. Though, I'm different in one respect from most writers in that I never have published my books to make money. This means that the lack of money has never discouraged me. I've have, however, been lucky enough to find enough readers to encourage me to keep writing. Who needs money to do what you love doing? It is the people who write for the love of it - no matter how accomplished they are in the art - that I admire. Whether they're good, bad, or indifferent writers - it really doesn't matter. Someone will like it no matter.

This is what self-publishing is all about for me. It's not about the readers, it's about writers doing what they love to do - write - and taking that love all the way to its natural end - showing their creation to the world, be it a largely uncaring audience. No half measures. No "trunk novels". Here it is - my book. I think it's good, good enough. I hope you do too, but I'm not letting doubts on that point stand in my way of sharing my work with you. All you have to do is find my book.

I don't know how many writers take this approach. As I said at the top, almost all of them would like to sell their work. But the ones who truly love to write will not stop writing if they make no money doing so. You will never get better if you stop writing. And well, writing - art - is its own reward. And it needs to be these days, with the ongoing revolution of artificial intelligence that within the next decade or so make artists of all sort redundant. The days are not far off when the only reason to do art will for the love of art. I think that's not only a pretty good reason, but the best reason. AI can sell it's soul to the Man.