Being a Writer in the Internet Age

             

One of the biggest dreams any writer has is to be published and have their work read by the masses. It’s a beautiful dream, but one that often is not realized because of how difficult it is to be discovered. On top of that, publishers are so picky when it comes to what they will and will not put their faith in. Going through the process of finding an editor, putting your soul into the pages you have written, only to be turned down by every publishing company you contact? It can be devastating.

Being a writer in the modern age has advantages as well as disadvantages. It is making getting our foot in the door easier, helping new talent be discovered, and helping to broaden our horizons by showing us the other great talents that are out there. Thanks to the internet we can be the writers, publishers and agents of what we choose to create. Bloggers for example have all that they could ever want. They write what they enjoy, publish it, and their followers read it. Publishing a book is much more difficult, whether online, paperback, or both, but thanks to online writing forums, young writers are being noticed faster than they once were.

                The greatest disadvantage to living in a world where writing is now online is the fact that people really are not buying books as much as they used to. People have begun to torrent books, just like they would with a movie or a CD. People do not stop to think about the impact this has on a writer, especially one that is new to the published world. It is a harsh place, and a writer will not make money if their product does not sell. A writer can be known world-wide and still be starving if their book is only being stolen and not bought.

                If the authors are not making money, then the publishers are also not making money. If publishers are not making money, their desire to publish us will eventually disappear, and then where will we be? We could be right back where we started, or perhaps worse off than before. Perhaps nothing will be published in the future, because there is no market for it. Piracy has moved from music, to movies, and now it is attacking publishers, our starving artists.

                The only chance young writers have of making it big is if everyone continues to give their full support to the writing community by buying books and continuing to pursue their dreams of making it big. 

Sean Michaels in a Creative Writing classroom

Sean Michaels doesn’t carry himself like A Great Writer. I doubt he ever will, despite a writing life earmarked by incrementally greater achievements.

            One Friday in January of 2015, he generously explained to students of Creative Writing Strategies the process that resulted in Us Conductors, his first published novel and the 2014 Scotiabank-Giller prize winner. From a life choc-a-bloc with familiar opportunities and idiocies, he picked out key choices – most deliberate, but others that just happened along – which helped transform his public self from high-school lit-geek, through renowned blogger, to literary superhero. It was a typical list, told with atypical panache, and included:

• starting the music blog “Said the Gramophone” with friends while he was still in his teens.
• after a degree from McGill, deciding to work as a legal assistant, as a job that paid all right, but that he could leave behind at the office each day. A portable job; he worked in Edinburgh for a while.
• six years writing a novel.
• his blog getting the attention of editors at The Guardian; they hired him to do tiny, daily blurbs about the North American music scene. He quit the legal-clerical trade.
• finding the right agent – not too new, not too successful – by combing through the listings on Publishers’ Marketplace. 
•  re-editing the MS with her.
• her Sisyphean efforts to find that book a home, over months and months – the big US presses, the little ones, the big Canadian presses, the little ones.
• putting that MS in a drawer.
• watershed moment: deciding to start the next book, even though he’d just shelved an MS that represented seven-years’ labour without return.
• writing the next MS.
• sending it to his agent. This time they started in Canada, and several big presses were interested.
• negotiating a largish advance, for the current Canadian market. (Still,  it broke down to something just over $5000 per annum for the years that he wrote it, not including the time spent learning his craft with the first MS.)
• editing, again, some more. With his agent, with his workshop group, with the big Canadian press, and with the little American one. At one point there were six people giving him feedback on the MS.
• publication!
• and now, the Scotiabank-Giller. When we saw him, he was on his third week of not having to write for The Guardian.

It doesn’t make sense, does it? It’s a tale of luck and exploitation of luck, and hard work and no reasonable expectation of return. But it put Us Conductors in our hands.