The Business of Writing

Last Sunday, March 14, I had a small quote in the "Personality Parade" column of Parade magazine. (See http://www.parade.com/celebrity/personality-parade/2010/03/jacqueline-kennedy-onassis.html.) For one day, I made the top 20 U.S. history bestseller list on amazon.com. During that Sunday, I was in the top 4,000 books sold, according to their rankings.On Monday, I was off the bestseller list and I had dropped to 42,000, and now.... Well, we won't go into that, but let's just say you can add a few more zeroes to my place on the sales charts.

There are a lot of books being written, and in spite of the proliferation of the written word - albeit in shortened form, such as texts and tweets (and blog posts) - book reading, in general, is down. Book publishing is not a profitable enterprise. Even the major publishing houses count on blockbusters to pay the bills for all of the other mid-list and less-than-mid-list books they publish. Every author who has a book published is expeced actively to promote his or her work.

This past week, I had the great honor to be on an author panel at the Virginia Festival of the Book. It is an opportunity afforded to only a small number of authors, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be a part of that select group. This was also the first time that I attended the event as an author - and a different perspective generates a different response to one's experiences.

Not only did I pay attention to what had motivated authors to pick their topics and what was involved in their research, but I especially noted that every single one of us is trying to sell our respective books. We are first selling ourselves, the writer as human being, and in that newly established rapport we seek to sell the prospective reader on the merits of reading our particular book. In the vast collection of potential reading material, we strive to convince a reader that ours is one of the books that merits attention.

Several years ago, I had the opportunity to serve as a consultant to a very artistic and business-savvy potter. I marveled at how he successfully operated out of both sides of his brain - the artistic side that created one-of-a-kind wares, and the business side - that understood what it took to sell those wares. I find myself, the MBA who writes history as a hobby, now in that same category - the writer who must also be business-savvy. If I'm going to do the work to research and write a book, then I want people to read what I have written. And if I want people to read what I have written, then I need to find every means possible to let them know about the book - and about me.

That, in short, is the business side of writing.