Consider The Source

A little while ago I got an e-mail from someone who was feeling completely discouraged because some asshat as work told her to give up her writing dream because it was never going to happen. His reasoning? Not any comment on her talent, her discipline, her process. No. His reasoning was that it took too much money to get published and upon learning that what she wrote was erotic romance remarked in all his wisdom that no one was going to buy 'that stuff'

(blinks)

Say what?

I swear, my entire body seized up with rage. I get VERY pissy when even other more successful authors put down newbie authors (which thankfully does NOT happen that often in the romance industry. We're a pretty supportive bunch!) but to have your dreams shattered by an utter ignoramus? If I had turned my webcam on, I'm sure you would have seen the steam coming out of my ears.

So as I made it VERY clear to her, let me make it clear to you. We'll hit the 'nobody's gonna buy that 'stuff' aka: erotic romance. Tell that to best selling erotic romance authors like Jaid Black, Jaci Burton, Lora Leigh, Bertrice Small, just a few of the MANY erotic romance authors who are making a living from that 'stuff' that apparently no one is buying. To say nothing of less known as of yet authors like myself who are making a nice chunk of change selling this 'stuff'.

Erotic romance makes up half of the entire romance novel industry who's sales figures are in the billions.

Yes. That's a B, not an M.

As for the second idiotic statement: It costs too much money to publish a book. Does this moron actually think that when he goes into a bookstore, the authors have all PAID to create the books in there? Yes. Apparently he does.

And he is wrong. YOU do NOT pay to have your book published. You GET paid when your book is published by a publisher who takes your baby and sells it, then you get a percentage of the sale from each book.

Not one book you see in a book store is the result of an author writing a check to a publisher so they could have their book published. If a publisher asks you for ANY money, run in the opposite direction.

I will add an exception to this rule: Self Publishers, Vanity and/or Subsidy Presses. These are companies that will publish your book for a rather exorbitant fee, or if you have the technical know how, you can format and self publish your book. I'll get more into that in another post but for the purpose of this post, I'll just say that book stores will not stock your book on their shelf if it's self published or vanity published and while the stigma (owing to belief for many that the quality won't be as polished, content won't be as good etc) So you can pretty much bet your life that all those books on the shelves were submitted to reputable publishers and polished within an inch of it's life, put through many publish-y hoops and finally stocked on the shelf.

So please do not give up on your writing dreams, especially not because someone who has no knowledge of the industry tells you so, and EVEN if someone who does tells you so.

Yes, getting your book published is damn hard the traditional way and even if you go with smaller presses and epublishers where there are more opportunities but it IS possible. All you have to do is write the book of your heart and write it the absolute best way you can.

Unless you're Snookie.

I have no explanation for that one. Sorry.