All the Unknown Authors’ Money!

We’ve been very much used to lament ‘all the taxpayers’ money’ whenever we come across some embezzlement of public funds or plain acts of bribery and corruption. In this piece we’ve decided to confront a new but emerging phenomenon as should be clear from the title given. That day during a writer-authors’ conference one author made a disturbing observation on or perhaps lamented that ‘nowadays the number of authors has exceeded the number of readers’! That observation instantly found a sympathetic supporter in none other than this writer; because I’d dwelt on this post-modern phenomenon quite often and I’d even extended this realization to ‘there are more singers than listeners nowadays’ and of that kind. However, I don’t intend to analyze the nitty-gritty of such phenomena here apart from just saying that such brazenly emerging facts of life have been owed entirely to the social media and all digital formats that convinced a huge chunk of the users that they could indeed write and can be veritable authors, and due to which there’s been a tremendous boost in the recent decade in the self-publishing sector, indie sector, training agencies about how to write a book, formation of more and more award-giving organizations and in the advertising/marketing-of-books sector.

*I think this above mention is more than enough to indicate the kind of money the authors, unknown obviously, have been made to shell out in their dream of becoming successful authors. First, if they are not fully convinced by their skills embedded in social media posts they spend money on learning how to write a book in both fiction and non-fiction genres or how to write a novel or how to write a children’s book or whatever.

*Second, they spend a sizeable amount on their hard-earned money or in the case of the fortunate ones surplus money on publishing their books through the self-publishing or independently or hybrid publishing companies. Now, even though books should be considered as the genuine assets of any publishing company by promoting which they only stand to gain the maximum, such publishers put the onus on the authors on every possible opportunity of squeezing more and more money out of the hapless authors: like asking the authors to buy authors’ copes after dishing out the miserly complimentary copies or none at all; promote their books through marketing at their expense; asking for more money on the authors’ intention to change the cover page design or the blurbs or anything; asking for additional funds for reviews and press publicity; asking for astronomical amounts just to include their books in the international book fairs; and so on.

*Third, the authors, unknown mind you, are always vulnerable because after publishing their books they’d naturally want those to be read by as many as possible and to get some feedback, and therefore they easily fall into the ‘squeezing traps’ mentioned above. The publishers concerned understand this craving and so they keep on organizing interactive author events for which, again, they ask the authors to shell out more money just to attend and much more if they want to interact or launch their books or give self-promotion speeches cum display or participate in panel discussions.

*Fourth, the unknown authors never give up hope even after being handed out no-sales reports for months/years, and they naturally crave for some official recognition at least. Therefore, they give in to the lure of the award-giving companies some of whom sell the awards directly while others disguise it as taking the money for nomination/registration/participation fees, with some of them, again, are cruelly brazen enough to charge the authors even for nominating their books without a guarantee to win the awards. In the good old days authors, both known and unknown, used to get nominated for awards and get good prize money on winning the awards; but now one has to nominate oneself and that too after parting with a good sum of money.

*And not the least, although a few lucky writers, unknown of course, do get published by the traditional publishing houses who don’t charge money for the favor, these traditional publishing houses know very well that these guys are unknown entities or rather nonentities and so they do nothing to promote such books imposing the burden of the same plus innumerable ‘paid self-promotion drives’ on the already heavily-taxed authors.

 

While there’s no escape from the squeezing entrapment for which I cannot give any cure simply for the fact that every author has the right to aspire for attention or fame or recognition everything is not as bleak as seemingly suggested here. There are now several international digital self-publishing platforms like the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) where an unknown writer/author can publish their books absolutely free of charge and in the case of KDP they get both e-book and paperbacks published with a free e-book enrollment in KindleUnlimited. Of course, the authors, as usual, crave for their books to be read and generate regular sales, and for that that they go on spending on advertising and marketing. The good thing is that on such marketing exercises one need not go for huge budgets and on account of the low-cost ads they can very well earn well through sales or being read on KNEP through nominal spending.

 

One must remember that even otherwise, meaning without having to go to make oneself an author by oneself only, every author or every book cannot expect to make it big; the tag of bestsellers is more of a magic than a thumping reality even for the celebrity authors. To not give up and keep on writing against all odds must have two basic considerations: that you are a writer by profession or passion or both, possibly making a living out of it, and it’s not just a hobby or pastime or ego; and that whether you are rich or not you must maintain a strict tab on your spends and expected earnings, preventing yourself from going over the top to finally succumb miserably to the luring offers from the publishers/trainers/marketers/reviewers/award-givers and so on. To end more positively, there's now no shame in self-publishing or indie publishing or anything of that kind; a good book can be a success irrespective of the platforms used. 

[Disclaimer: All the celebrity authors and all the authors that have made it big irrespective of the platforms chosen are respectfully excluded from this rather weird preview. And above all, this is not at all about complaining, it’s only about a fact of life in post-modern digital age.]