If you are a booklover who didn’t die before 1997, I would wager you have difficulty finding a decent story among the piles of…muck. In the past twenty years, authors—henceforth known as the Infected—have emerged, plague-ridden, with what we will collectively call the writing bug. While I try to remain optimistic, I cannot say this spreading sickness has been for the better.
The Contagion
In 2002, Joseph Epstein wrote an article, Do You Think You Have a Book In You?, which every online blogger for the past fifteen years has quoted to highlight the snowballing number of new writers. Epstein’s critique claimed 81% of Americans wanted to write a book, and he urgently discouraged any wannabe writers from adding to the sludge pile. At the time, only about 80,000 books were published a year in the United States. Unfortunately, his attempt at warning the masses was futile and somehow had a reverse psychological impact on the American people, which suddenly mass-triggered a book-writing frenzy. Today, well over a million books are published a year. Yes, everyone and their father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate is writing and publishing a book.
The Outbreak
In 2009, Bowker [the official ISBN agency and the world’s leading provider of bibliographic information] shared that with the million books published, more than two-thirds of those were self-published, reprints of public domain works, or some other form of print-on-demand books. And recently, in 2016—despite books reportedly becoming more difficult to sell—Bowker stated that 725,000 self-published works were registered for publication, showing a steady churn out of independent works. [Check out their 2010-2015 Self-Publishing Report.] The Infected are spreading.
Now, to be fair, writers have been self-publishing since before cuneiform. But the real explosion came in 1997 when Lightning Source, one of the largest print-on-demand (POD) companies, was birthed, soon followed by Createspace and Lulu. Then, a couple years later, blogs like WordPress, Blogger, and LiveJournal came into existence. And now, twenty years later, indie books have collectively surpassed the sales of the Big Five, using crowdfunding websites like IndieGogo and Kickstarter, and easy-access, distribution websites like Smashwords and Bookbaby.
Please note: I said collectively surpassed the sales. Currently, the average, self-published author is lucky to sell 500 books. Ever.
This should speak volumes to the number of Infected. The pestilence has swept across the web, spamming your inboxes and your social media with their stories; and sadly, let’s be honest, most of them suck.
My claim that most stories suck is not isolated in its summation, nor personal in its delivery. In fact, to be perfectly clear, I am not patronizing the independent author community any more than I would large publishing houses. Great writers exist among indies, many of which—in my opinion—are better than conventional authors. Seriously, we all know the pink elephant in the room, and her name is E.L. James.
I digress.
The Hard Truth
I have repeatedly, and publicly, announced, ‘You must be willing to suck at writing for a long time before getting good.’ I stand by this statement. Sure, I understand most of us want to be brilliant now; but not counting the prodigies, most writers take about ten years to become decent at their craft. I am not saying a writer should wait ten years before publishing their first book, but they should not be publishing that dusty manuscript they wrote in high school.
Seriously, throw that thing away and start over!
Great reasons exist to self-publish your work: 1) controlling your story and platform, 2) following your own publishing timeline, or 3) higher royalties and selling your own rights. But being inept, or incapable of getting traditionally published, is NOT a reason to publish the book yourself.
Writing is a craft. Developing a good story takes time and practice. Lots of practice. Real writers are not looking for a get rich quick scheme; they are willing to rework their story to near-perfection, because writers, no matter the genre, understand their social responsibility to add to the scaffold of English literature, while enhancing the minds and hearts of readers. They have a story inside them, AND they want to tell it in complete sentences.
For the past two decades, we have watched professionals debate over the regression of English literature standards, and the unchanging literacy rates of the populace [see the How Nations Ranked in Overall Literacy chart]. Approximately 32 million adults in America are illiterate, meaning 14% of the adult population cannot read. And around 30 million adults cannot comprehend texts appropriate for 10-year-olds. These concerns are rampant in the Western Hemisphere. Sure, you can point the finger at poor education, a failing school curriculum, or several other equally valid issues. But a writer should not lower their quality of writing.
The Remedy
If you have the dreaded writing bug, and you simply cannot quit, take the time to learn the craft of writing. If you choose to join a long-history of wordsmiths, then be willing to learn the rules of writing. Hemingway is famous for saying, ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.’ I call horse-hockey. Hemingway wrote for his school newspaper, traveled the world, fought in a war, wrote nearly a hundred articles for the Toronto Star, and met famous writers like James Joyce, who mentored him, before he ever published his first collection of stories. He did a lot more than simply sit down and start writing.
So, you may have access to publish a book in the modern world with the click of a button, but consider its impact on the literary world and our culture. Knowing how to use a pen does not make you a writer any more than knowing how to use a wrench makes you a mechanic.
