Harsh Publishing Realities I've Faced

hello everyone Alexa done here and today I want to talk about some of the harshest kind of realities of the publishing industry that I have had to face as an author of course I've talked plenty on this channel about kind of harsh truths for writers and I thought it'd be good to just kind of turn more inward and share with you kind of a little bit more intimately some of the things that I have had to face particularly over the last like here year and a half two years since I got my traditional publishing book deal and my book came out not all of this is new I've covered this in some other videos but I wanted to just kind of personally have reflect on the things that I've wrestled with that I encountered that both surprised and didn't surprise me but really some of the things that gave me feelings with a capital F that I think are important to know if you are pursuing this to professionally as a career whether you're traditionally published or self-published you'll face some of these things in self-publishing as well these are good things to know to kind of prepare yourself for so the first one is just the depressing reality that success isn't always about quality of a work I have seen so many good books such as good books but great books just not yet they're due essentially and it's really painful it sucks when it's you it's but it's actually easier to observe what it's someone else especially when it's your friend and it's more painful almost when it's your friends but when you know that there's a book and it's great it's just it has beautifully drawn characters it makes you feel things it's a page-turner etc and you see it land with a thunk oh when it comes out with a thunk if it sucks at all some books don't make any noise whatsoever and it's just so unfortunate because that's someone who worked really really hard on something who pulled it off who did the thing who wrote amazing book and people believed in it and it was published and then through no fault of their own things completely out of their control it just didn't really land and there's it's just really tough to see it's tough when it's you it's tough when you are pretty sure you wrote a decent book and it just doesn't find its footing or it doesn't do what you want it to do and to be fair part of this is I'm convinced that none of us were ever fully satisfied in publishing we're always going to have bigger kind of hopes and aspirations for things then can ever possibly be met by reality with a few extreme examples like obviously there are people who blow up mega mega huge and I'm fairly certain most of their expectations are met but trust me there's still things that I'm sure that they're not happy about but specifically when it comes to like quality so much of the metric of what works in publishing what finds an audience etc so much of it is luck and timing and so this is actually the other thing that I've really had to grapple with in combination with thee good doesn't always equal successful luck and timing play a bigger role in what works than anyone would like except for the people who benefit from luck and timing of course but it is so far outside of your control and it is at its core just deeply unfair how much luck and timing play into something that for example someone could simply just get their first on a concept on an idea on on something and because they got their first they get all the things and it can shut other books out or even if your book does get published because someone else got their first and you're too similar you're bad luck is that you will always be compared to that person or you'll be called like that you're ripping them off or just it's diminishing returns most of the time whoever gets there first does get kind of the the most readership the most buzz the most sales etc and it's just it's so much of being in publishing publishing at all any area publishing is accepting that ultimately those sorts of things are out of your control the market so to speak is for the most part just out of your control and that's what the other harsh realities I've always been aware of but dealing with it and muddling through it is a totally different thing and that is the market so much of this is the market the market being what people will buy what people actually are willing to pay money for and how much money they're willing to pay to read something and kind of the way that things shift and on the traditional side so much of it is trying to align what you love what you love to write and what you want to write and once you're good at writing with what people are actually willing to pay money for to read and it has meant pouring years into books that just didn't go anywhere it has meant choosing one idea over another and I am kind of an optimist in the sense that I think it's possible to find joy and whatever you end up doing and I don't like dwelling kind of on the what-ifs so much so you find joy in all projects but it does mean picking one over another because of the way the market is moving and it can be rougher on some people than than others honestly one of the things I'm very grateful for is that as a reader and writer that I do have a broad range of genre interest I'm thankful that that is something that I naturally gravitate toward because again what I've observed in friends and it just it it sucks is that some writers just all their heart and soul is in one area one type of book one drawn rrah and they're really good at it their books are great but they don't necessarily land the thing that they love that they're really good at suddenly goes out of favor and it's completely out of their control and I see them stalling and I don't know what to do and there's nothing I can do like you can't give the advice to change yourself to change what you love to change who you are as a writer I mean you can't give that advice but it's way easier said than done and so so often just the tides shift the wind shifts and things change and it's just not your fault and it's out of your control and I think the show tend to be bigger and traditional publishing meaning I think that the winds shift more strongly in traditional publishing for a variety of reasons but I think this happens in self-publishing - I think it's self-publishing there's probably a lot of saturation that happens like it can become more and more difficult to break out so even if the market is still healthy for something breaking into it because there are big stalwarts of that market can be much harder so I think that there are challenges on the market side no matter where you're publishing but it really sucks honestly just knowing that ultimately so much is out of your control because it is a business and then ultimately it's not just about writing we write it because we love it but we all want to be read readership is so important like reaching readers and telling stories is so important and so often it's just so easy to be disappointed honestly to not have our stories get to where we want them to get and it's something that you just have to grapple with and another thing this all feeds into it that I'm gonna do it a rough ship to talk about my next set of harsh realities I've had to face in publishing but really at the end of the day you can work really really really hard and still fail putting fail in quotation marks because what it's so far out of your control and it's not your fault so to speak like meaning you can put in the work but not get out of the work what you want to get out of the work out of the work what you should to get out of the work like I said good books don't do well all the time and it just sucks there is not a direct correlation between how hard you work and how hard you want something and what you get out of publishing that's just not how it works and it sucks so the next harsh reality I want to talk about that this one I've been realizing and processing more and more lately and that is this kind of ties into the it doesn't matter how hard you work or like how good something is there's conditions beyond your control market conditions and that is this this one is very specific to traditional publishing and ye in particular and that is the excessive and incredibly narrow focus on debuts debut culture buzz culture I covered a bit of this in my post pub letdown video which I'll link to you down below but I've had even more time to process it now and I am now watching my friends debuting in 2019 go through the same things and this is a harsh reality of current day traditional way of publishing that has been particularly difficult and I've also seen people talking about it more and more twitter which i think is really good though no one has solutions and it's really just how so in the one hand it's how intently publishing focuses on the next big thing they're really into it and this is a marketing tactic it's really easy to like take something fresh and new with no receipts behind it there's no bad sales there's no baggage and basically try to set it up as the next hot thing and it's like throwing spaghetti at a wall and that is what I feel debut culture is right now in publishing it is publishing throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks and the problem is most of us don't stick and once the spaghetti slides down the wall and lands in a sloppy mess on the counter no one cares and so you end up left after your debut year kind of flailing if you're lucky you got a two book deal or more and you actually have a next thing to focus on but then of course most often publishers ignore you when you have book 2 if you didn't break out on book 1 or even if you did pretty good on book 1 they're going to ignore you on book 2 because they're their destructed by the next big shiny thing they're focusing on the next crop of debuts this is the cycle that tsamina many of us are locked into and if you didn't have a book to contract you are basically now struggling to sell another book you have a sales history it might not be a good sales history you're not shiny and new they can't use that marketing angle and so the pressure really mounts on you as a writer you with your agent end with your editor and with your career in general to like what's the next sale you're only as good as your next sale your next book do you get a next book so there's harsh reality one of realizing you almost become invisible in a lot of ways after your debut year people care a lot less except the people who do care which is awesome the people who do care are great but it's diminishing returns I think that we allow ourselves and we all buy into it because we want to buy into it cuz it's fun we allow ourselves to get sucked into the debut machine we contribute to the debut machine as readers as well but we get sucked in because it's a great feeling it's really great feeling like Cinderella for a year or so we're like everyone is paying attention to you and there's so many debut buzz lists and you get to go to events if you're lucky and readers get excited about debuts and publishers really push those arcs did you know that a lot of book tunes don't even get arcs they only do them for the first book for the debut book I am very fortunate I get an arc for book two and also there are exceptions to this my publisher hasn't forsaken me I'm getting support for book two but I'm speaking we're kind of generally the average experience I've seen reflected in the experiences of my friends is that their publisher mostly ignores their second book if they have one so the flip of kind of like we feed into it and we enjoy it while it lasts but then the harsh reality of once you come through it that you're old news that's the harsh reality once you debut once you release your first book you become old news and publishing and we allow it to be like this we just pay less attention to people once they've debut because we're chasing the next shiny thing so the next harsh reality then I'm still processing and I'm processing it mostly in a there's like this nice sense of existential dread weighing on all of our shoulders and I feel pretty well-equipped on this harsh reality i I expected it and I'm forging forward but it's still hard to see and and deal with partly because it it's the reminder that you're only as good as your next book that this might not last forever that there are cycles and that freedom move forward very often someone else has to be left behind and that is most debuts won't make it okay this harsh reality is really hard because especially it's a matter of perspective I'm sitting here on the other side where I was fortunate enough to get an agent and to sell my book I got a book deal a two-book deal which is amazing I'm gonna have at least two books published it's the dream and I'm incredibly grateful for everything like leaked legit but the fight the struggle doesn't end when you get a book deal and that's really the harsh reality because once you get your foot in the door it's really hard staying in the door it's like you're in the alcove but there's like rushing water it's gonna it's trying to push you back out into this vast sea of despair of publishing and if that struggle is valid and that struggle is hard but it's always tough talking about that because yeah you just sound kind of ungrateful to be honest if like but you made it you did what so many people never get to do and it's true and you should be happy but the harsh reality is most people who publish a book debut with a novel they might publish too but getting two three four five books five years on ten years on most people simply don't make it because the industry is very I won't say cutthroat I really don't think of it as cut through it's competitive though it is very competitive the market is competitive is what it is it's a complex ever-changing thing and you're only as good as your next book you're only as good as your next book and you have to weigh how good your next book is with the anchor the baggage of your sails on the previous titles on the your relationship your working relationships with your editor your publicist and it's also the luck of like well let's say you had a great working relationship with your publishing team did they stay at the publisher there's a lot of turnover and publishing what if they move houses and you those relationships go with it and you're just constantly kind of juggling all of these aspects it's hard and it's definitely a harsh reality that again I was aware but actually doing it is harder than anyone can anticipate because you you're competing with yourself always you're competing with your last book your next big idea can you do it can you pivot can you try different things are you savvy enough to battle all the luck and the timing in the market and make all the right moves it's a lot um and I mean really the solution to it is do your best try um but not - I think my my thing here is to when you move forward and publishing is never to rest on your laurels I think that's the thing where it's never assumed that once you have something that you're gonna have it forever always keep working hard don't become complacent because the industry it is like a fast it's like a river rapids with a fast-moving river and it's it's really tough and then this brings me to a few more harsh realities that kind of play into all of this it's just the the complexity of the industry and all the stuff that you have to grapple with is that the emotions that you're dealing with the comparison game all of the difficult elements that make it hard to kind of forge forward and make it through so I talked about how lay good books don't always find their footing and then it's not fair cuz meaning a success isn't always a metric of quality is what I mean to say or hardwork the other thing the harsh reality opposing you to deal with as part of this is oh my gosh you'll find that the worst human beings are the most successful well well wonder I've been here and this I'm not naming names but I mean frankly we've all seen this where you see just certain individuals who just aren't very nice not that it's all about being nice but you see people treat their publishing teams like garbage like you hear things and you're like I can't believe someone who shits on their editor like that continues to get massive book deals but they do because I mean ultimately the mass-market readership doesn't care whether you're a nice person if they like your books they like your books and they're gonna buy them and you'll just find the longer here that it isn't a meritocracy in the sense that it isn't about necessarily how great your book is they should always strive to write great books I think the day that you let striving for quality die is a bad day indeed and people who are big ass'll succeed all the time like it should be about who is kind and courteous and professional and not always about like I'm not like saying you have to be Susie sunshine all the time but it's just being respectful and professional but you'd be amazed how many people aren't professional at all who do very very well and it's just it's a harsh reality to face of like it's not fair you're gonna see people who reap all sorts of benefits and rewards you know they're garbage humans and which kind of brings me to another harsh reality that feeds into this I want to talk about social politics in publishing this first reality this one was really hard for me um and I think it was hard for me because publishing makes you feel like you're back in school well just maybe why we all right way cuz we can really tap into the those feelings of extreme cost and social anxiety because there are a lot of social politics in publishing it it makes sense there's just a ton of people in it and what to make things even more interesting writers so many writers are introverts so many of us are anxious so many of us desperately want to be liked but we're awkward but there are cliques and there are hierarchies and just social politics in publishing the same way that there was when we were all in school and probably the biggest lesson like takeaway here that I've had to learn and I'm so much happier having processed these these thoughts and feelings to things this is one of the other harsh realities your heroes will almost always disappoint you or not almost always but you will almost always end up in a situation where a hero of yours a rioting hero idol will disappoint you the first time it happens it is like a gut punch it honestly sucks because we feel like we we've arrived and it's the weird feeling that wait is this person my peer are they your peer cuz I mean you both write books and you're both being published but humans are humans and we have all sorts of complex things going on and like you never know if like the day that you approach your writing hero at a writing conference they're having a bad day and they're rude to you and it like it's like a gut punch but these things can happen or it's like you know your literary hero you're writing hero the person who inspired you to write doesn't blurb your books like can't even make time to blurb it or even worse if they like you know they read it and didn't like it all sorts of things can happen where all of a sudden you're thrust into this this universe this publishing universe with your idols your inspirations and they're only human and you're limited by your kind of reader view of them or your your aspiring writer view of them and it's entirely possible that they're gonna let you down and it's not their fault that you feel let down and it's not your fault you feel let down but it happens all the time and it's it's something I I didn't quite expect and it hurts every time but you there's going to be kind of a shift in your relationships with writers once you make it quote-unquote but you're thrust into these social hierarchies of publishing and it's a lot to deal with like there's it's complex it's kind of who's friends with who it's just who gets along with who like generally you're not gonna be friends with everyone but it can be hard to kind of accept that because you want to be friends with everyone you need to deal with your own social shortcomings like it's literally high school all over again you think you've burned up and become an adult and then you're at a party and you are an awkward panda and you're incapable of speaking human intelligible sentences to that big author over there I just avoid them to be honest makes me feel so much better not to even try but like these things happen and you're gonna come away from so many situations and publishing feeling like an idiot I'm feeling really disappointed in yourself and just like you know your teenager again um but you just have to deal with it do your best it's kind of accepting your hers would disappoint you don't put too many eggs in that basket you're gonna embarrass yourself at one point or another you're gonna want to be friends with someone and she's just not gonna work out there are so many stubs that go on just the social politics of who gets invited to writing retreats isn't intense I mean who gets invited to conferences who what dinners you get invited to if you get invited to dinners your meals or parties at different places there's so much that goes on and it's a lot and the key thing is to basically find some good friends usually you come up together through publishing so like you're starting off as a spring readers like find those good friends who are all the same level as you who you trust and stick by them I mean generally I should probably do a whole video just on social politics and publishing because don't leave your friends behind because you get some big deal and you think you're like super fancy because not everything last spring um there's nothing more valuable than a genuine and good friend in publishing so yeah so speaking of social politics I want to talk about jealousy jealousy and money so these are two other kind of harsh realities of publishing that hit you in the face so first money I have a ton of videos on money on this channel which I will link to down below I've forewarned you of many of the harsh realities I expected the harsh realities but it still sucks every time the harsh reality in publishing you realize the money is never enough I mean unless you are one of the unicorns who gets the massive massive deals when you think about the man-hours we put into this endeavor the the time and energy that you put into writing the book in the first place and editing the book and then all the marketing you have to do and just all of this brain bandwidth and time and energy if you break it down on like a per hour level authors are not paid properly for their time and you never will be in the harsh realities that lead the money is never enough except when the money's too much because then there's the minefield of oh well your advance was yay you really didn't sell enough copies and now you're a disappointment the money is never fair the money is never good except when it is another thing that the money is like it gets so complicated and friendship circles like when you know that your friend got paid way more money than you so they're more financially secure or when you know that you got more money than your friend and it doesn't make your book any better than theirs it's just like the weirdness of the market or your agent is a ballbuster or the hair agent is a ballbuster or whatever it is and so there's always these kind of unspoken sore spots money is really tricky money is really really tricky which leads me to also the harsh reality generally of being jealous of your friends I have a whole video on this as well but I wanted to dig in specifically to a harsh reality of publishing that I was not prepared for whatsoever and I still struggle way of the rangoli and that is when I went into all this I was super practical I remain pretty practical and pragmatic about money and the security of the job and I have a day job I like my day job it you know pays my rent and I have health benefits and I like the security that it gives me and I don't plan on quitting my job and I never did and yet I was not prepared for the 80 feelings of being jealous of people who get to write full-time I feel it all the time and there really is a legitimate and huge divide in the writing community between the people who get to write full-time because it is a privilege to be able to write full-time and everyone else who has to juggle writing novels with a day job something to support them a day job full-time or part-time or they got to raise their kids like whatever it is it's like to happen have-nots and usually most writers I know who have the privilege of being able to write full-time are very humble and grateful and they know that it was a convergence of ideal chances that enabled them to do it and they're lovely and they don't rub it in your face and but even then there's an aching and a yearn hangman you're like oh my friends who get to like right whenever they want and like they're their full-time job as writer and they have room for all of the things I wish I had room for or it's like they gets right full time because they are being paid a ton of money or they get to write full time just simply because they have a really supportive partner a spouse and and there's stuff in there where it's like oh if only I could marry rich you think I'm joking but no I mean these all of these things come up where it where it is the aching yearning of like oh it'd be so cool to say to be able to say I am a full-time author and it's not always a reality that we can achieve because honestly writing is diminishing returns it has been diminishing returns for a really long time and even an indie publishing as as much as people can make money in self-publishing it really depends on the genre and it really depends on timing and luck and the market and it's a lot of work to the ones who are really making good money also publishing our machines I am in awe of how much they have to write to do that and some meaning it's like the grass isn't greener on the other side it's it there you know Conan outliers and all areas people who make big ass bucks off books and then the rest of us don't I mean by and large and most people can't make a full-time living off of writing books and that is just freaking depressing and so that's something that I've definitely struggled with just kind of it's the warring between my logic and my pragmatism in my emotions in my heart the logic of pragmatism of you like your day job it provides you with the emotional security to write what you want when you want to write it because you know you're not gonna starve or be evicted that's great that's emotional security and bandwidth that enables you to write novels that's great but the other part of me is like oh how I would restructure my life my professional life if I was a full-time writer and I was being paid enough to write full-time and have all the things I need in my life you know covering my rent and health insurance and all that stuff like what a life that would be what more I could do with my youtube-channel I could maybe triple my novel output maybe I could write enough to self-publish and sustain a decent financial level it's kind of like a feedback if only if only but ultimately I have to get over it you're only as good as your next book the market is unpredictable the industry is unpredictable and the key thing and I've said this over and over again and I know it sounds Susie sunshine and I'm but I'm still gonna say it anyway because I firmly believe it it's about not giving up it's about always pushing forward and continuing to write because you love it because ultimately you're not gonna get paid enough and you're not gonna get all the things that you want to get out of it and even when you have readership and readers are great it can't be this little reason that you're writing you can't solely write for validation essentially and you have to keep going and you have to be flexible and you have to pivot just for as much as there are all sorts of unfair things that are out of your control that make publishing harsh lots of harsh realities there's also the fact that a lot of people allow themselves to be bowled over by these harsh realities and they give up and when they give up that's when it all ends so I just remind myself that the key is to not give up and also to be flexible enough to know that if it's not working in one area that I might have to pivot a different category different genre different publishing Avenue I think everyone should always leave their options open so yeah you have to be stubborn enough to put up with all of this stuff and just be pragmatic about it and deal with it manage your emotions but not so stubborn that you dig your heels and refuse to try anything else refuse to fight the fight the way it needs to be fought because honestly you got a fight on their terms not yours sometimes in traditional publishing that can mean yeah maybe you have to write the book that it's gonna work best in the market or same thing that's love publishing like it's it's it's the readerships terms it's the consumer terms like you do have to write faster if you want to produce the volume and and you got a hack it or not there's always you know kind of compromises that you're gonna have to make and it's it's the balance between sticking to your guns and Bigfoot's all with your guns so yeah those are some of the harsh realities I've had to face in publishing that I thought would be fun to share and kind of talk about some of those experiences and feelings cuz what else am I here if not for like real talk about what it's actually like and talking about it actually helps me process my feelings which helps me develop the wherewithal to do with all of this crazy craziness so like you're you're helping me and hopefully I'm helping you but the thing is no matter how much you prepare and this has been my biggest lesson actually no matter how much you prepare you're not prepared for what it's actually like and the rollercoaster of feelings and also just the specific dynamics of whatever your publishing experience ends up being so much is out of your control and I know that's terrifying and I know I've talked about that before in the channel everything's out of your control is like a fun little clique baby video but it's out of your control no matter which avenue you follow because ultimately creative business is messy because you have the creative side which is all about your heart and your soul and things that you love and then you have the commercial business side and really any commercial endeavor anything that's about kind of the market and what people want and what they're willing to pay for is brutal and so the tricky thing to do is to develop a thick skin but keep all your insides nice and gooey and mushy so that you you don't lose sight of the thing that you love so always struggling to strike that balance and I hope you found this interesting I hope you feel prepared but not prepared for how it all is and I'm prepared but not prepared for all the other stuff ahead of me because if anything I've learned there's always something there's always going to be another nook but there's always gonna be another great thing too and the key is not to give up give this video a thumbs up if you liked it I can do more like chatty soul-searching discussion II things about publishing like I said it helps me process my feelings if you're not arts subscribe to the channel go ahead and do that I post new videos two to three times a week thank you so much for watching and as always guys happy writing and good luck and publishing just grin and bear it

Channel: Alexa Donne

Views: 32,846

Rating: 4.9480839 out of 5

Keywords: alexa donne, author tube, writing advice, how to write a book, publishing advice, harsh publishing realities, publishing real talk, publishing truths, publishing tea, jealousy in publishing, money in publishing, publishing worst case scenario

Id: lDzmycEqS1E

Length: 33min 33sec (2013 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 15 2019