Act/React

Over at Holly Lisle's Pocket Full of Words, the author once again slams us with how difficult, nay, impossible it to succeed as a writer, and explains why this is so. If you'd like to be depressed and give up this writing gig all together, go and have a read of How to kill a career in three easy books.

I don't know whether this is a scare campaign or a reality check. I suspect both. It's a hard job we do, made worse by the amalgamation of the big publishing houses who care little for the struggles of an author's private existence, and more about the bottom line.

The thing is, eventually that line is going to break because the publishing houses did not nurture the up and coming writers and those writers are with small, independent publishers who do care.

The future may well be via online orders and print-on-demand. Agents may well shift their focus to POD. After all, there have been some spectacular disasters recently in the publishing world where those houses have lost buckets of money. I don't blame them for being shy about taking a chance on a new author, given the large advances waved around, but that's what you get when accountants run the show rather than those who actually read the manuscripts and are in touch with what's selling (as opposed to what we should be reading because the publishing houses say so).

If those large houses don't want to upgrade their writers stock, those authors determined enough will find an outlet: smaller printing presses who have a large presence on the Internet and through viral advertising. Let's not forget word of mouth - also courtesy of the Internet - that can boosts sales. There's a lot of free advertising out there, and it's growing.

Writers have always had to work hard to get their books out there and known, like JA Konrath's epic journey. But people, nothing has changed - we're simply more aware of the problems. We're creative writers, it's up to us to find creative solutions.

We will survive (yeah, yeah, a great name for a song); the public will always want their fiction, the difference may be the format in which we deliver it.

Now, then, enough ranting. Check this out and win yourself something for the Solstice, Christmas, End of The Year, whatever.