I Think My Model is Breaking Down
By John Vorhaus | July 28, 2011 |
I’m not sure I should even be writing this column.
Years ago, with the first advent of such blogging tools as Blogspot and WordPress, I told myself that I would never write a blog, or even write any free content for the internet, because I was a professional writer, and I didn’t by gum believe in giving away my product for free. For awhile, I held to that model, and never posted any free content except to my own websites. The model worked pretty well, for I was and am a poker writer, and found many online avenues for exploiting both new poker content and my massive back-catalog. Even if I was only licensing columns for $30 per year per pop, it was revenue; a revenue stream. And when anyone approached me with the proposal of swapping, say, content for exposure or content for advertising, I told them that I had a “policy”: no free content.
The first self-inflicted chink in my armor came when I went to Romania to develop TV shows, and thought it was time to start a blog, just for the sake of telling the folks back home what I was up to. It didn’t take much time, and it didn’t cut into any of my markets, so I thought that was fine. But it was, in a sense, the start of a slippery slope.
The slope got much steeper and much slicker when my novel, The California Roll, came out, and my publishers’ publicists encouraged me to jump all over social media. Soon I was caught up in the “promotion” paradigm, and in the name of serving that paradigm, I started reaching out to websites far and wide with the promise of interviews, how-tos, guest-posts, and other forms of online content. This wasn’t the old magazine model of “25 cents a word.” This was – is – all free content, and I was persuaded – have been persuaded – that such outreach is a necessary evil for anyone who wants to sell words in the post-modern world. As are my Twitter and Facebook efforts, which don’t take much time, but do take some creativity (I try to make every tweet @TrueFactBarFact shine like a tiny diamond.)
So where my old business model was, “No free content ever,” my new model is “All free content all the time in the name of building my brand.”
I think my model is breaking down.
I think I’ve become more involved with building my brand than with selling my words. I have come to obsess over how many Twitter followers I have, how many Facebook friends, because I’ve been persuaded that all these people are going to be looking over my shoulder at my life, and that this will somehow translate into book sales. Maybe I’m just in a cranky mood this morning, but now I’m not sure I buy it. The more my writing days become diluted with free-content writing and other promotional efforts, the less “real” writing I get done, and the less writing, needless to say, I get paid for.
But Kindle’s going to save me, right? I’m going to make all my new works direct-to-market digital, and I’m going to get rich two bucks at a time, right? Right?
Sure, yeah, if people find those books. But how will they find them if I don’t promote them? And how can I promote them without providing free content? And if I’m providing free content to people who are interested in my words, is not the “free” me in direct competition with the “pay-for-me” me? Am I not undercutting, devaluing and even ultimately destroying my own business model?
Like I said, maybe I’m just in a cranky mood.
The trouble is, by that logic (or let’s not call it logic, let’s just call it ranty syllogising), I shouldn’t even be writing this column. It’s free content. It’s me competing against me. And unless it actually drives sales of my works (or at least measurable awareness of my work) then it’s me competing against me not just for my words but also for my productivity and my time. But here’s the thing – the ultimate rub – I actually like writing this column. No, I love it. Though it started as a promotional effort for a novel, in the year or so that I’ve been doing it, it has come to mean much more. It has, in fact, come to be a drug. Once a month I post to WriterUnboxed and once a month my inbox is filled with positive comments – validating comments – about my thoughts. Direct feedback, writer to writer or reader to writer, lets me know I’m doing a good job, that in terms of doing a writer’s ultimate job – communicating thought and heart – my model is not breaking down. In my daily efforts to cut through the clutter, WriterUnboxed remains worth doing because it pays me something other than money: satisfaction; psychic income.
But it can’t go on forever. Not for me, not for you, not for any of us. All the free content we provide hurts us two ways. First, it erodes the time we could be spending writing words we actually get paid for. Second, it puts us in competition with ourselves and undercuts the general notion that writers should be paid, and paid well, for our words. As long as we’re in competition with ourselves, individually and collectively, we’re kind of in a jam.
I don’t know the way out of this trap. I can’t stop marketing myself or I’ll have no market. But if I continue marketing myself in this manner, the product I bring to market will continue to be worth less and less.
And suddenly I feel like the schoolgirl whose mother cautioned her against going around too loosely with boys because, “Why buy the cow when milk is cheap?”
I have become the cow. And my milk is cheap.
Or maybe I’m just in a cranky mood.
Image by Erin Gilad.
John Vorhaus has written seven novels, including Lucy in the Sky, The California Roll, The Albuquerque Turkey and The Texas Twist, plus the Killer Poker series and (with Annie Duke) Decide to Play Great Poker. His books on writing include The Comic Toolbox, How to Write Good and Creativity Rules!
John, You’ve described a quandary many, if not all, writers currently find themselves in. I wish I had the answer.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to write my blog posts for next week, check my Twitter and Facebook, and see who’s added me to their circle on Google+.
Then maybe I can get some real writing done. Or not.
Yes. It seems you do have a case of mad (cranky) cow disease. We all do. Sometimes the pressure of “connecting” with our readers is life-saving; other times, it is just an angry-making time-suck. Thanks for posting . . . empathy, even from a cranky cow, is priceless.
The passion for writing blinds us to the fact that it is also our profession. I think that blogging (even though I don’t have a blog) is a great marketing tool for our writing. I love reading your blog, so it can’t be worth less. Now I will go write something I will likely never get paid for.
It’s definitely an interesting dilemma. I would venture to say that, social media or not, most readers do read your work for free before buying it, whether that be the “look inside” that amazon offers or standing in the aisle of a book store, reading a few pages to see if you like it before you buy it.
My issue with social media is the blending of the creator with the product. There have been several celebrity types that I’ve stopped following on twitter or reading their websites because, quite frankly, they were ruining their product for me. I found their tweets annoying, shameless, and self-aggrandizing. I hated the typos and usage errors in their blogs. I had to save myself from the “real” them because it was destroying my ability to enjoy the products they create which I had previously loved.
So I wonder about that with social media more than anything else. However, I will conclude this comment by typing in my twitter handle. There you have it.
It is such a quandry; no question. I guess I’m still thinking it’s worth it because I’m developing not just a following of readers but a community of writers. Still, I’m not as far along as you are in the process — that is, I have not yet been published — so I’m not sure how I’ll feel if/when that happens. Right now my biggest quandry is that I’m having trouble balancing the social networking with the writing: I’m barely getting any writing done (except my blog), and I really miss writing but don’t seem very motivated to do it…
“Direct feedback, writer to writer or reader to writer, lets me know I’m doing a good job, that in terms of doing a writer’s ultimate job – communicating thought and heart – my model is not breaking down. ”
Precisely. That is why I blog, tweet, etc., and that’s why I find that it fuels me, not breaks me down. Of course, the time/energy issue is still a factor, and we all have to learn to find the right balance. But maybe I’m just not… business-minded enough, because I really railed against a lot of what you were saying. It’s not that I disagree, but that I don’t *feel* the same way.
I know the point you were making, and it’s a valid one, but I just have a hard time thinking of things in terms of dollars and cents. To me that’s not what matters. Even when I’m facing my credit card bills every month, or worrying about keeping up with my boyfriend (who has a successful career in a “normal” job), I can’t bring myself to think of this “side stuff” as a burden. It’s too much fun, too rewarding (in non-monetary ways).
If it weren’t, though, then I’d probably set a strict quota (of time, or # of posts, or something) and just do the minimum I thought was necessary to stay visible. I think many authors DO do that, and that’s great. We all have to do what works for us, we have to find what feels right.
Amen. I’ve had a book out for a whopping week and I already feel like I’ve fallen down some bad, time sucking rabbit hole. Between networking, reading other writer’s blogs and panicking about my “brand,” I’m losing valuable writing time.
Which all makes me a bit like you, cranky.
I will not, however, stoop to calling myself a cow. At least not yet.
I know so many authors who are going through this same period of frustration, anger and ache! Especially when there seems to be a billion things to “join” and do to promote your work.
You’re talking about “marketing” writing competing, and even undercutting, your “product” writing. But what if you weren’t marketing? What if you were just connecting?
If you’re a speaker at a conference, you’re not going to sit at your table, eat your chicken and steadfastly avoid talking to people because they’re not paying you for your gems of wisdom, right?
All social media needs to be is social. And ultimately, it’s about the reader. I believe that if we discover who the best fit is for our work, we’ll be able to connect with them. That’s how our work gets discovered. It won’t be selling, anymore than saying hi to friends of your friends at a barbecue is selling. And I think that they’ll support authors that aren’t “promoting” at them, but who are simply part of the community.
Maybe my Berkeley’s showing; maybe I haven’t had my coffee. But I feel very passionately about this. Thanks for the gift of your posts. :)
Ahh… the timeless division between grotto writers who seek anonymity and the rock-stars that choose to live large.
Beatrix Potter vs Lord Byron anyone?
The problem is, we live in a society that wants ALL famous people to be rock-stars.
Quandary!
All we can do is seek the balance.
The buzz lately seems to be how overloaded people are getting with social networking. I think it helps if you decide what your purpose is in each case, and make sure it’s realistic.
I didn’t start a blog for a long time, because I didn’t know what I had to offer that wasn’t already being done. Finally I focused on the fact that I teach a lot of writing workshops and have written dozens of articles on writing. I developed my blog as a writing teacher, giving lots of specific tips. This means a) I have a narrow focus that people easily understand, and they get something specific from the blog, b) I’m able to recycle much of my material from my workshops and articles, c) I pick up new blog followers at workshops, and finally d) I’m promoting my critique services and now my new book, Advanced Plotting.
I doubt I’ve sold many of my fiction books because of the blog, but I know that I’ve picked up a couple of critique clients at several hundred dollars for a novel critique. I’ll have to see how it works to promote Advanced Plotting, since I’m not starting to talk about that until tomorrow, but it seems like I have a reasonable chance of selling a book about the craft of writing to people who are following a blog about the craft of writing.
Next on my list, I finally signed up for Twitter, because I finally figured out a way it might be valuable. We’ll see….
https://chriseboch.blogspot.com/
Yep, that’s definitely the situation we’re in. I envy those established writers who say they don’t do any social marketing – they don’t have to – at least, not for now. But the rest of us, especially if we’re published digitally? I think we do. I’m not sure what value blogging has other than I really do enjoy it, but I sometimes feel like I’m giving myself away for free. Words have become cheap because they’re everywhere. I wonder what the future will bring but hoping for a change to turn it around for the good of writers.
Never say Never – or my version. Never be afraid to change your mind.
I drove myself crazy trying to keep up with all the social media an blogging. Then I realized it wasn’t giving me enough benefit and it was stealing my writing time – and you can market up a storm, but if you don’t have enough books out there you’ll never sell a lot.
So, I stopped.
Then I got writing and found a bit of a rhythm so now I am back on social media. I don’t have a schedule, or a goal to blog regularly, or to tweet X number of times a day. I just do what seems interesting (after all isn’t that the way we do real social contact?).
And cranky cows are fine. I sometimes get great inspiration when I’m having a mental rant.
I’m still at the very beginning of my writing career and this is a dilemma I see many, many writers having. Even if your free content weren’t competing against your content readers can buy, you’re competing against yourself for time. Time is going to be the biggest issue for me, rather than revenue, because it’s stretched thin enough as is. In the end, it will all come down to balance, but as worn-out as some of these social media demands are becoming, they’re still too new for a lot of people to have found that balance yet. It’s an interesting time, for sure.
Your point is valid, John, but if you blog to connect with readers, WriterUnboxed is not the place and you probably are wasting your time here. My observation is that it is for that ‘community of writers’ to which you referred. And, that’s what I value about WU. Love it, in fact.
When you want to buildup a brand as a professional writer and ‘market’ your ‘products’, willingly or unwillingly you are forced to enter in to that inevitable ‘promotion’ paradigm. In that ‘promotion’ environment you are supposed to offer everything free. Most probably through social media. After all ‘Social Media’ means readers, your fans and ‘would be’ your fans. Ultimately (as you have said) “writer’s ultimate job – communicating thought and heart… it pays ‘you’ something other than money: satisfaction; psychic income”
feel better now?
I think you have described selling “in” as opposed to selling out.
thanks for blessing us with a freebie =) I enjoyed reading it!
Great phrase – “selling in, not selling out.”
Wasn’t there a recent case involving the Huffington Post and this topic?
What’s more insane is the sheer amount of ‘free posts’. John states he’s obsessed with Twitter followers and facebook friends, but so are thousands of other people.
In the past, editors and business execs decided what we read, listened to or watched on TV. Now blogs and youtube decide, and I”m not willing to pay for an average Joe’s two cents.
I have bought books, CDs, and movie rentals based on interest in an artist’s article. So overall I think it’s a blessing as it allows artists who might not otherwise have a platform to shine.
Great article. It’s a massive problem. On the blogs I see some people commenting on almost every blog I look at and I wonder how much time they spend writing.
I think we need to start experimenting. Lay off posting for a couple of week and see how it affects sales. Do the same with facebook, blogging tweeting etc. Only by abstinence will we find out how useful some of this stuff is to us. I have tried myself and I have got mixed results.
I detect a fear of not tweeting, blogging, facebooking etc., as if all the hard earned sales and followers are going to disappear overnight. There must be a name for it. How about hermitphobia – the fear of not social networking?
Realistically, is there any kind of job where the person works 100% of the time on tasks that make money? When I was a doctor, I’d estimate I spent 50% or less of my time on the specific, tangible acts that assisted people to wellness. The rest of the time was spent on building relationships, returning phone calls, justifying my existence with paperwork, etc. (Incidentally, many of these non-remunerative activities both fed into the remuneration, and fed me at a non-monetary level.)
I think we all have to figure out what we can do from a genuine place and say “no”, without guilt, to the things we don’t want to do. But didn’t we all choose this?
I happen to like being a cow. I’m hoping to become an excellent moo-er. ;)
Fantastic column, John. Hey, would you like to write some free content for my blog? (*kidding*)
Seriously, though, I struggle with this too. My own “no free content” policy has been eroded by inches, and I resent it more each day. We’re training a marketplace to pay us in 5 second increments of attention span and training an audience to believe that 99 cents is a fair price for a book. Dangerous to writers and other living things.
This summer I’m launching ebook editions of my backlist books as an indie, setting the stage for indie pub of my next three novels. I truly believe the way forward for midlisters is a hybrid of indie and traditional publishing. My new policy: as God is my witness, I will never sell a chunk of my soul for less than $2.99!
It seems there is blogging as marketing/platform building and blogging as community, at least for writers. I truly value blogging as community. I learn so much from other writers. I appreciate the exchange of ideas that is blogging at its best, much like the exchange of ideas in a good writing conference, workshop or critique group. As for blogging as marketing? It makes me uncomfortable and resentful.
I’m lucky you did the guest post on Pasadena Daily Photo, John. The point was for the post to serve us both–for you to find new readers and students, and for me to gain credibility as a writer in my community. I’m being honest here.
If we achieved that, it was worth it. If not, was it a waste of your time? I certainly hope not, but I sympathize and I understand. I plunged into blogging with a commitment to do a daily blog and now I’ve got over 500 followers. That’s great–it’s a lot of followers for a small blog. But now I can’t exactly let them down. And will that translate into book sales someday? Even so, is 500 books worth it? And must I tweet and use Facebook on top of that? And oh, for the love of pete, I cannot tell you how sorely I took the news about Google+. I still haven’t joined up, dammit, I might hold out until I’m forced at gunpoint.
What an interesting day of comments. I want to say that this was the most enlightening group of comments I’ve gotten to any of my posts so far. I really learned a lot, and gained a bunch of new insight into how all of you view social networking. You had a number of insights and perspectives that hadn’t crossed my mind before, and for that I really thank you. I think I can be less of a cranky cow now. See youse next month. -jv
Words may be cheap when you give them away, but we all know good writing when we see it… and with excellent posts like this, we also feel like we get to know you the writer, rather than just your writing. So keep on blogging! It will lead to more sales… I hope…
In this past week I have read so many blogs about this issue that it SCREAMS at me to pay attention! I don’t know the answer to this question either, but I do know that the writing should come first and social medium should be balanced with our writing and not suck the life out of us. We cannot tweet and FB and read blogs all day long (which I have done so much in the last months that I’m hyperventilating trying to keep up with it). When we notice that writing isn’t getting done or isn’t getting done REALLY WELL, then we have to shift the balance – less social media and more BIC HOK – booty in chair, hands on keys.
Patti
John, I’m glad you wrote this post, because it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot lately, too. Kath and I have never made a virtual cent on Writer Unboxed. Though we did set up Amazon and Indiebound affiliate accounts, not even those have brought us a penny. That doesn’t mean WU doesn’t drain our pockets, though — expenses for hosting, for malware removal, for redesigns, for mailing packages to contest winners, for contest prizes, etc…
Every once in a while, we toss around the idea of advertising. If we had ads here at WU, we could make some bucks. Maybe enough to cover our expenses. Maybe more, who knows? But at least for me, the thought of ads on WU seems…wrong.
So WU is a time and money drain, and I couldn’t begin to guess how many free words I’ve thrown at this site. So why the hell do *we* do it?
It’s the community. It’s provided us with countless friends and light-bulb-lighting conversations. It feeds all of us, I think, by validating and supporting us. Pricetag: priceless. Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t love for someone to come along and cut me a giant check…
Write on.
It’s all about the balance. I’ve not found a complete balance yet, but I’m working on it. I like blogging and tweeting because I feel connected to a larger writing community.
I have to agree with Julia and Therese — the community, and the inspiration and strength that come from the community, are the “payoff”. I can spend hours and hours, for days and days, reworking chapter 23. At some point, chapter 23 threatens to hightail it with my sanity, leaving my husband and kids with a quivery mass of insecure jello. Chapter 23 and I are alone in here.
Then, I click over to WU or Julia’s fab https://www.wordsxo.com/ or Sarah Callender’s side-splitting “inside-out underpants” (https://sarahrcallender.wordpress.com/) and Chapter 23 doesn’t seem quite as menacing. Preserving my sanity, then, is part of the social media deal. If what I do on my blog, and other blogs, and twitter allows me to be a better writer, then it’s worth it, even on the days when I am a cranky-cow raging against the time suck (and saints help my husband when I’m a cranky-time-suck-cow AND crazy over Chapter 23. Is there a blog for spouses of writers?)
Good post. The free vs. paid writing dilemma is something I have thought a lot about, too. I started out as a journalist in the late 80s, and I was paid – from the beginning. No unpaid internship or “pay per clicks” deal. Now it seems like the business model has been turned upside down. It’s getting harder and harder to find markets that pay what I could have earned 20 years ago.
My current rule is that I will write for free for something I believe in – especially if I know the site or business is being operated by volunteers (such as Writers Unboxed, it looks like?). But I have a problem with sites where the executives are doing very well (ex: Huff Post) and most of the writers are being paid nothing.
First, thanks for the article. It was fun to read the thoughts going through the mind of a professional writer struggling with promotional writing VS. money getting. As a fiction newbie, and someone who’s launched a blog to promote themself, it was a great look inside. Doesn’t seem like you’ve found a solution to the problem you’ve posed – “psychic income” notwithstanding. A glimpse of your cranky, early morning, mind, however, was worth the read. I assume that was really the point.
Second, I haven’t read all the comments made, so maybe someone’s said it (and I’m sure you’re aware of it), but promotion seems to be a very ethereal thing. Direct connections between a tweet, or a blog column, and book sales are probably almost impossible to make. I know about you now, but that probably won’t mean a direct sale today. I would think though, that if you stopped giving away words online that your actual revenue would be negatively affected. This column makes you feel good, but I also don’t think you’re taking away anything from your pockets.
It’s late afternoon where I am (South Korea) so maybe I’ll change my mind in the morning.
Excellent post and obviously we all can relate. I like Jan’s point though: “Realistically, is there any kind of job where the person works 100% of the time on tasks that make money?” Does that provide any solace? It does for me.
I love being left alone when I am creating, just as much as the next writer, but I would never want to go back to the days when I was like Paul Sheldon in “Misery” . . . isolation where fans truly find you. Better to let everyone know where you are, and avoid the “Misery”.
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