I'm a popular fanfic writer in my fandom, and I also work in publishing (which means I make very little money in a part of the U.S. with a very high cost of living). There's nothing more frustrating than well-meaning friends essentially telling me I'm choosing to stay low-income because I haven't tried to publish an original novel—because of course anyone who writes a sufficiently good story is going to become rich and famous overnight. They even assure me that I can get a grant to take a year off and write said novel!
Publishing is much more finite and much less meritocratic than most people think. Selling a novel is like embarking on any other job hunt in this economy. You will be competing against hundreds if not thousands of other people every bit as talented as you are for one of a set number of slots based on what a publisher can afford to print and advertise each year. Amateur writing may make you a stronger writer, but it no more makes you a stronger candidate than ten years of babysitting experience and a brand new teaching degree makes you a stronger candidate for a teaching position than someone with the same degree and one year of experience in a school.
That's not even touching the subject of marketability and the author as a product, because while the publishing industry is holding onto a lot of prescriptivist ideas of what will sell, the portion of the population who would pay good money to see more fannish-type writing in print is, as you say, very small.
And that's okay with me, personally. My writing may have a small audience, but I make that audience happy, and I make myself happy by writing what I want to write. That's why I'm content to keep my writing a hobby until the day I'm driven to write something that I think is made for a big audience and worth the massive work of getting it out there.
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Date: 2011-12-04 06:34 pm (UTC)I'm a popular fanfic writer in my fandom, and I also work in publishing (which means I make very little money in a part of the U.S. with a very high cost of living). There's nothing more frustrating than well-meaning friends essentially telling me I'm choosing to stay low-income because I haven't tried to publish an original novel—because of course anyone who writes a sufficiently good story is going to become rich and famous overnight. They even assure me that I can get a grant to take a year off and write said novel!
Publishing is much more finite and much less meritocratic than most people think. Selling a novel is like embarking on any other job hunt in this economy. You will be competing against hundreds if not thousands of other people every bit as talented as you are for one of a set number of slots based on what a publisher can afford to print and advertise each year. Amateur writing may make you a stronger writer, but it no more makes you a stronger candidate than ten years of babysitting experience and a brand new teaching degree makes you a stronger candidate for a teaching position than someone with the same degree and one year of experience in a school.
That's not even touching the subject of marketability and the author as a product, because while the publishing industry is holding onto a lot of prescriptivist ideas of what will sell, the portion of the population who would pay good money to see more fannish-type writing in print is, as you say, very small.
And that's okay with me, personally. My writing may have a small audience, but I make that audience happy, and I make myself happy by writing what I want to write. That's why I'm content to keep my writing a hobby until the day I'm driven to write something that I think is made for a big audience and worth the massive work of getting it out there.