Winning, Losing, and playing the Game

There are always going to be more readers than writers.

Hear, O fellow authors, and consider this. Writing is not a competition. There is not a scarcity of readers, and although there has been for lo, these many years an artificial scarcity of of reading material, that drought is coming to an end with the Age of Indie. So why do we hear fearsome cries from certain throats, proclaiming that those who are elders in the field should step aside and let them in?

The young person who has been most noticed for this recently (although it is not a new lament), has apologized. “Shepherd apologised for upsetting writers and readers alike, explaining that she had "only ever meant to raise the issue of how hard it is for new writers to get noticed and how publishing is much more of a zero sum game than people often think” However, it remains that she thinks publishing is a zero sum game… Read the rest at Mad Genius Club In other interesting links, Sarah Hoyt's post on professionalism is a great read. It is something I have talked about and seen over and over again. We are not primarily artists, we are businesspeople, and ought to comport ourselves as such. I'm looking at both my industries when I say this… Kristine Kathryn Rusch, whose blog I read often and who is a wise woman, has another in her ongoing series (Don't worry, you can start with one, but don't have to immediately read all of them. You will eventually, though) on marketing and discoverability. I love how she ends it. "Trust your readers. Be kind to your fans. Have a social media presence only if you like interacting that way." Trust and kindness. We need more of that in this world.