But, wait a second.  Don’t forget the rest of the story.  PR THERAPY has some critical messages that writers need to integrate into their writing consciousness this year:  Writers also write to make a living, promote a cause, or sell a product.  Your work entertains, informs, and is provocative. Whether you write novels or nonfiction, blogs or poetry, you express what others think, touch hearts, and help expand minds. 

That is your work.  So, why do writers find it so difficult to promote themselves?  How can writers reach a balance between artistic integrity and business acumen?  Who can writers turn to for encouragement, answers, and insight when the sheer act of writing is actually done alone in front of a computer? 

You can start here!   

 

Rebecca Forster

PR THERAPY welcomes Rebecca Forster and her new column Write Now.  She will help members of the writing community forge ahead in a wildly changing landscape during an exciting era of publishing transformation.  

Agents, editors, published and unpublished writers, bloggers, bookstore professionals and Rebecca Forster - a working author whose passion for both craft and promotion has not waned in over 20 years (and 22 published books) -  will offer insights about the changing life of today’s writer. 

So, keep an open mind. Figure out what strategies fit your personal style, what words lift your spirits, what thoughts inspire you. 

 Above all, relax….and enjoy the debut of Rebecca Forster’s column here on PRTherapy.com!

ARE YOU A WRITER?

“What do you do?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Are you published?”

There it is; the rock and the hard place.

All too often, people assume you are only a writer if you are published.  By a publisher they recognize, of course.  In book form, with pages and a cover.  Distributed in their local bookstores. Heck, even my own mother didn’t acknowledge I was a writer until she could physically buy a copy of my first book (never fear, I paid her back).

Even published writers can lose in this game of professional chutes and ladders. I’ve published over twenty books and, yet, when people find out my backlist is now only available for E-readers like Kindle, my previous success is somehow suspect. Instead of ‘show me the money’ the only way to prove you’re for real is  to ‘show them a book’.

So the question becomes, when do any of us become a legitimate writer? I believe it depends on the writer’s own vision of success and level of confidence. I have met people who have kept journals for years but have no desire to publish.  I have met some who have written for publication, never achieved their goals but continue to revise and refine their work. There are others who aspire to selling a screenplay or novel yet find success in magazine work, newsletter writing and advertising.

All of these are genuine writers. They share the critical professional virtues: dedication to  the craft, love of the written word and the determination to make their voices heard. Pretenders are those who do not work at writing. These are the people who sit with you at a dinner party and say:

“I have a wonderful story to tell.”

To which I respond:

“How exciting.  How far along is your work?”

And they assure me:

“Oh, I don’t want to write it. I thought I could tell you and you’d write it.”

And I laugh and refill my wine glass. I have my own stories. I work hard to write them, revise them, submit them. Sometimes they are published and sometimes they aren’t but I work every day. Like you, I am a real writer.

Yeah, money is a tough subject for nearly everybody.

You either have it, or you don’t. You either want it, or you don’t know what to do with it. You either think it holds great advantages or you suspect it’s the root of all evil. It helps to know that your personal worth and your bank account’s value are two very different legacies. Don’t confuse the two. Money is simply great, but Great is not simply money.

Money is one of three key resources in which good management is important. If you have money, you can make it work for you. If you don’t have money, you can leverage other resources that you do have to compensate for the lack of money you think you need.

What are two other resources you have to consider?

Time.  If you don’t have enough money to get what you need, you can usually find a way to trade time for what you want and must have. 

People.  It’s commonly said that it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. So start shaking some hands. Get to know who you need to know. Remember, people are the most important part of life. Everyone has a lesson to share with you. Everyone has a gift to offer. And don’t be a stingy gut…it’s not all about what you can get; it’s about what you can give, too.

Money. Time.  People.  All of your valuable resources require careful cultivation, development, and management. That means you need to make money and allocate money wisely. Spend time and invest time intelligently. Cultivate relationships sensibly.

The Good News? Things change when you recognize that money, time, and people are your assets…and do something about it. You can become more successful promotionally and on every other level when you fully understand the nature of your wealth.  It is often a startling relief to discover that by simply doing the basic fundamentals of good resource management, success not only grows…it flourishes.

 
Authors have complained forever about how they’re treated.

Humorist James Thurber had a problem with the publisher of one of his books that is as relevant today as it was fifty some odd years ago.  As described in the classic The Thurber Carnival, it seems that Thurber was a little irked when he noticed that Salvador Dali’s biography was selling for $6 when his own published history had been priced at $1.75.  A difference of $4.25.  But that was not THE problem. 

Like most authors, when it comes to creative work, you can throw the math and the money out the window. THE problem was Thurber’s book was priced only fifty cents higher than the asking price of a different book—a silly one called: “The Adventures of Horace the Hedgehog.” 

So, like any offended writer of seriously good work, forget the $4.25; the real problem was the 50 cents.   

Thurber claims that when he approached his publishers about the price of his book that the publishers adopted a guarded kind of double talk.  In fact, he was given an explanation in low muffled tones that many writers still hear today when they ask how their financials are figured.  Thurber was told that “the price was a closely approximated vertical, prefigured on the basis of profitable ceiling, which in turn was arrived at by taking into consideration the effect on diminishing returns of the horizontal factor.” 

In other words, like most authors today, he would never logically understand why any decision was made by his publisher…and he eventually seemed to come to the inescapable conclusion that most writers reach:  When it comes to publishing, you never know what’s going to happen or what already has.