I was waiting in the Doctor’s surgery for my name to be called out and idly leafing through a glossy magazine when I chanced upon an article. It showed a bestselling author in her country pile with her husband and 2.5 children. More power to her, I thought! Then I read a paragraph in the article that said that at the start of her writing career, her agent had asked her a very pertinent question: Do you want to be the kind of writer who sells 7000 books or 70,000 books? Her answer was the latter, of course! She then set about selling millions of copies of her books that were lapped up by avid readers and has obviously made a neat little living out of it.
Now, I have nothing against popular, bestselling novelists as two of my favourites Stephen King and JK Rowling belong on that list. However, my issue is with those who ‘tailor’ their writing to fit in with popular demand. For instance, when the 50 shades phenomenon happened, every second writer tried producing a bonkbuster to jump on the bandwagon of S&M love stories. Or, when the YA genre took off, there were so many copycat writers trying to tap into teenage angst that the market was saturated.
Any writer worth his/her salt knows that the most important thing in writing is honesty. Whether you write about ‘what you know’ or whether you create a completely fantastical world out of your imagination, it is important to have a voice and style that is entirely your own. Market trends should dictate fashion not authorship.
Which is why a question like the above bothers me. Yes, I understand that publishing houses need to make money, as do agents. But an agenda that hinges on book sales puts an unnecessary onus on creativity to be perforce marketable and consumer orientated.
On the flip side of the argument is the fact that bestselling authors in the times of yore wrote what their audiences wanted to read. A Shakespeare enjoyed royal patronage because his writing entertained, amused, saddened and delivered. A Charles Dickens serialised his novels so that he could earn good money and keep his audiences guessing from one issue to another. Were these writers commercial? Yes, they were. Were they successful? Wildly so. Hence, creativity and crass commercialism aren’t mutually exclusive. However, trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole purely on market dictates is a terrible injustice.
I have been asked why I chose to go down the route of Indie publishing? Why, I didn’t go knocking on doors, soliciting agents and publishers for my writing? Here’s the thing- I didn’t want someone else telling me your stories are too dark, change the characters’ unpronounceable names, short stories don’t sell, we aren’t digging your style etc etc. Luckily for me, I don’t need to make money out of my writing. I just need to express my tales, in my own way, in my own voice and in my own style.
There are an increasing number of authorpreneurs- (authors + entrepreneurs) who are thinking along the same lines. Creative people, choosing to express themselves, free from the constraints of what may or may not sell. Of course, like anything new, one has to work hard at separating the wheat from the chaff. However, by and large, I have come across some amazing writing from other fellow Indie writers who are going it alone, without the support or the limitations of the traditional publishing format.
So, the question that begs answering is what would I rather be doing? Selling 7000 or 70,000 copies of my book? Of course I’d rather it was the latter. But not for the reason you’re thinking. I don’t care to make millions out of my writing. If that was the case, I wouldn’t be giving it away for free on my blog. What I, or any writer wants, is to reach out to people. To hear that yes, my writing struck a chord, that my writing transported someone to a different place and time, that my writing helped them inhabit another body, just for a short while. Everything that good writing should and must do.
To tell you the truth, if that means selling only 700 copies or touching only 70 souls, then those numbers suit me fine too.
