UNPUBLISHEDNOTDEAD!

During my stint at the writer’s conference, I learned a great many things about literary fiction. First off, these conferences, classes, and the like ARE the market for literary fiction. There is no other market, and trust me those kids at Powell Book store aren’t buying your quality novel, they’re hanging out drinking coffee and reading it there. I kept hearing over and over at every turn how there was a makeshift bookstore for Squaw Valley Writer Conference alum somewhere (I never went, I love Amazon so that’s where I buy my books. I hate to be asked to join a club, and I hate small talk. I don’t want to comment on my book choices, and I don’t want to be asked if I want to save ten percent by joining a fucking club. I’m pretty sure the fourth sign of the apocalypse is that there are more marketing people than people who manufacture the things they are marketing. I have quit going to stores because every time I do, I get asked “do you want to join our club, you will get 10 percent off … do you want to open a credit card, you’ll get 10 percent off, do you want to take this survey, do you want out fucking stupid insurance that doesn’t cover anything but if I sell it to you I get points towards being the fucking employee of the month and I get a better parking spot so I don’t have to work out this last inch of my lazy ass?” They’re off the charts. I also hate it when people comment on the things I buy … you buy some ground turkey, some sour cream, and some tostadas, and the checker says “hmmmmm, you’re making tacos … that sounds good!”) So needless to say I never made it into the Writer’s Conference bookstore.

I have some advice to you if you are a writer and want to be published.

First: Screw this agent and publishing thing. You don’t need to kiss anyone’s ass to get published. What you need to do is go out and get an amazing job, make lots of money, save it, write your little book, hire one of the millions of marketing people who are out there creating surveys for Jack in the Box, then hire one of those millions of editors who are sitting around trying to be writers but have no business doing so and SELF PUBLISH! Come on folks this is America where you can do anything. You don’t need some snooty agent, or some asshole publisher doing you a favor, when in reality what they really want to be doing is publishing Paris Hilton’s Guide to Being a Skinny Dumbass Bitch, Lindsey Lohan’s How To Gain Popularity by Tongue Piercing, or Donald Trump’s new book, You’re Fired!

Second: Are you the next J.D. Salinger, or Ernest Hemingway? Probably shouldn’t be because most people in America aren’t looking for substance and style, they’re looking for story and intrigue. They’re looking for a movie in a book; something to grab on their way to Paris to read before the Ambien kicks in … and finish while they’re pretending to be at the Louvre. They want Dan Brown, and John Grisham … they want a story and they don’t care if it’s literary or not. Harry Potter is not a great work of literature, but it’s fun to read. You need to tell a great story, not be great storyteller.

Third: Many of the agents at the conference were quick to say that one of the most popular books they sold that year was about Human Resources, so if you truly want to write you need to figure out a market, and you need to write to that market. Believe it or not, people want to relate to the people they’re reading about. It’s the reason that Reality Shows do so well on TV these days. It’s also the reason that these small cable networks do so well, it’s all about demographics. Now if you’re a writer you should look up what that word means, because knowing your demographics makes your life so much easier. MTV does so well not because they have the best programming, but because they know that most of their audience is going to be between 18-25 year old males … think about that when you’re trying to sell maybe … condoms, or video games, or movies … you’ve got a fairly captive audience.

Fourth: Don’t write crap. If you write for yourself, then fine, but if you’re writing for a reader, then take your time and do it right.