Productivity is a trap

[rynling]

So, there's a dirty little secret in indie publishing a lot of people won't tell you, and if you aren't aware of it, self-publishing feels even scarier than it actually is.
https://thebibliosphere.tumblr.com/749033453163610112

A lot of these authors aren't being completely honest with you, though. They'll give you secrets for time management and plotting and outlining and marketing and what have you. But the way they're able to write, edit, and publish 10+ books a year, by and large, is that they're hiring ghostwriters.

They sure are, and it's painfully obvious. The take-away point of this post is something I wholly agree with:

If you are writing your books the old fashioned way and are trying to build a readerbase who cares about your work, you don't need to use AI to 'stay competitive,' because you're not competing with these people. You're playing an entirely different game.

That's exactly right, I think. There's no way a single artist can compete with a corporate studio even if they wanted to... but why would you want to?

I'm not saying that writers don't deserve support, of course. Positive feedback is good, as is money. Still, I think the point of this post and its commentary, namely, that it's good (based, even) to be weird and self-indulgent and unproductive, isn't necessarily a contradiction to the goal of establishing a sustainable creative practice.

Comments

[lassarina]

I've also seen a few comments, particularly in Romancelandia, that the "dirty secret" is that you simply go until you burn yourself out, which also seems distressingly plausible. :( Probably both can be true.

[rynling]

I want less content released less frequently and I’m not kidding. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

I understand that "leaving a mark on the genre" and "being relevant to the community" are both worthwhile goals, but I'm vaguely curious about how much money a romance writer earns every month to make the "three to five 200k-word books a year" publishing model worthwhile. Even if you're pulling in a gross of $2k a month, you still have to pay income tax + platform fees + whoever you contracted via Fiverr to proofread the manuscript, design the cover, read the audiobook, etc. And even then, making $2k a month (as opposed to maybe $1k total for one moderately successful book on Kindle Unlimited) sounds like a "top three percent" sort of figure.

I know a lot of these people just love writing for the sake of writing, but still. Even if we're all monkeys who can't help but become addicted to playing the "make numbers go up" game on online platforms, it can't be financially sustainable for the vast majority of writers. Aren't they afraid of getting burned out?

And aren't they afraid that their readers will get burned out too?

Sorry, just thinking out loud here. More than anything, I used to love digital indie publishing (especially romances!) and it's a shame to watch it become more of a monoculture with each passing year.

[lassarina]

Seriously, my pile of content to consume is SO MUCH.

I don't know. And it makes me sad because think of the amazing books we could have if there was more time to craft and people could make a living wage....