I Care A Lot

There was a song back in the day by Faith No More, titled, “We Care A Lot.”

I often hear that playing in my head, which is one of the reasons I’ve taken to wearing a tinfoil hat, along with trying to stop the messages ordering me to kill being from broadcast through my fillings. Don’t get me started about that.

But back to the song. Specifically, I hear it when I am foolish enough to offer advice to one of the very few author friends I have. It seems like everyone wants to know how to sell a gazillion books, but few actually want to hear how to write a decent offering. I mean, when I go onto the forums, there are countless, “Please give me honest feedback” posts, but then when someone chimes in with the painful truth (which is usually that the work sucks, is barely readable, the cover looks horrible, the blurb pathetic), they get lambasted by the legions of feel-good fellow authors who believe everyone should get an A for effort, even if they put no effort into their work.

I suppose you can intuit by now where I land in that curve. As an author who is constantly striving to improve my game, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for those who slap out a few words, photoshop a cover that looks like a second grade art project, then put it up to cash in on some of that easy self-publishing money. So I’m not the most sympathetic ear. My internal dialogue is mostly what could best be described as relentless tough love. I’m very hard on my own work, and it’s hard to switch that off. God knows I try. Mostly with tequila, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

I recently had the opportunity to offer my thoughts on a manuscript that, at the most charitable, sucked a big bag of goat dicks. And not in a good way. I tried to temper my input (WTF are you thinking? Did you even read this crap before you sent it to me? Keerist!!!) and be nice, but it didn’t quite come out the way I had hoped. Sort of like the Freudian slip where the wife asks, “Honey, do you want coffee?” and the husband replies, “You miserable bitch, you ruined my life!” I mean, we’ve all been there.

Anyhow, I wasn’t particularly glowing in my praise, and I suppose it might have offended the author. I know it did. The death threats being a fair metric to gauge that sort of thing by.

At one point I suggested reading my epic parody of all writing and self-help books, “How To Sell A Gazillion eBooks In No Time (even if drunk, high or incarcerated)” – because within the pages of that worthy tome, couched in vitriol and black humor, is a lot of decent advice on what not to do. Unfortunately, writers are a busy lot who usually are far too busy to actually read anything, so that book sells fewer than any of my catalog, which is a shame, because it should be required reading for those just starting out. I wrote it about a month into my journey, disgusted by all the self-help guides that purported to advise would-be authors how to sell tons of books, or how to write hits. I thought those were all a load of BS then, and now that I’m actually selling tens of thousands of books a month, I know for a fact they were. As is much of the advice we are bombarded with. The only one I read that actually proved at all inspiring or grounded in an appreciation of craft was Scott Nicholson’s, and I’m not just saying that to suck up. Or mostly not. Unless I think it will buy me something.

What’s my point? Well, I think there’s been a kind of gold rush mentality to this whole process that’s now crashing in on many who are discovering that the best approach to anything is to do it because you love it, and because you want to expand your horizons, and not because you saw that movie with Johnny Depp about being a writer (even though I do look a lot like him, which gets annoying at bars when the ladies get grabby, but what can you do?) or because you read about how some talentless clod sold a bunch of books to equally undiscerning readers. Although God knows I’d like a piece of that action. So undiscerning readers, check out my books – you’re gonna LOVE them, even if many of the words are unfamiliar or make your head hurt like enraged hornets are stinging your brain, which is a great visual but wouldn’t actually hurt because your brain doesn’t have pain receptors, but that’s not the point.

I think those who are finding reward in their work are those who are pragmatic, understand the marketing side of this and can separate it from the craft side, but really, really love to write and tell stories and invent. My firm belief is that money will eventually come to those who pursue excellence, unless they’re unlucky or God hates them or they deserve nothing but misery. Seriously, though, even if the cash doesn’t come rolling in, there’s a pride of craftsmanship that I think drives most good writers to improve, which is why it’s a great vocation for someone like me – it never gets boring, because there’s always something new to learn and a better way to turn a phrase.

What’s the takeaway here? Obviously, that you should rush out and buy my Gazillions book, because otherwise you’ll fail miserably and be mocked by your enemies as they dance on your cold, lonely pauper’s grave. I hope you were able to read between the lines and got that part of my message, because the tequila’s not going to buy itself, and Pappy gets a little parched after writing all those words.

For those playing along at home (and wagering, I’m sure, even though I advise against it), the launch of Blood of the Assassin went well, with nearly a thousand sold in a matter of 72 hours. I personally like the book a lot, so if you’re looking for somewhere to start with my writing, you could do worse. If you’re too cheap to buy it, I completely understand, but you’re going to have to wait till hell freezes over to see it free – I’m not going to be doing any more freebie promotions on books that aren’t the first in a series or a standalone I want to give a boost. I’ve come to the conclusion that free is counterproductive and a generally bad idea for any but authors who can place in the top 20 – for us, it’s still great, but for the other 30,000 poor slobs who can’t on any given day, it’s worthless or worse. So I’m pulling back from that as a marketing strategy, even as some of my esteemed peers seem to be just discovering it and waxing enthusiastic about their results. I’ve given away probably close to a million books by now, which means that maybe fifty thousand of them might get read at some point. Which is fine. But I don’t see the value of continuing to give em away – that is so 2012.

That’s all I have for now, but if I think of anything else, as always, I’ll post it. I’m taking three weeks off and going walkabout, trying to catch up on some reading and recharging my batteries. JET V should launch around the end of the month, so stay tuned for that. April, I’ll start work on my new series, and we’ll see where that goes. In the meantime, be nice to each other, and don’t offer to help anyone with their writing – they likely don’t want to hear what you’ll tell them, unless you can be more political than I. Which, come to think of it, wouldn’t be all that hard.

Never mind. Carry on. And go buy a bunch of my crap. As always.