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Midlist, Schmidlist

By Robert Swartwood on December 7, 2009

So there’s this essay that was published at Salon.com back in 2004 that has reemerged on the Internets. It first came to my attention on Facebook, but then I saw others retweeting it on Twitter. It’s definitely worth looking at if you’re serious about becoming a writer (and by that I mean a writer who dreams of one day quitting the day job and writing for a living). It is … eye-opening. Honestly, I’ve been hearing the same thing for years now that this particular writer’s story seems to be almost every writer’s story. It’s like American Idol — everyone dreams of making it big, but only a few actually get there (but because of those few, everyone thinks they can make it). And how does one do so? By talent? By determination? By luck? That, of course, is up for debate, and I’d like to use the comment section of this post for that very thing. So read the essay and tell me your thoughts. But don’t expect the essay to cheer you up. This excerpt gives you an idea what you’re getting into:

As Promised: The Unexpurgated, Possibly Unfinished History of One Midlist Author’s Life

Book 1: Contract signed 1994. Book published 1996. Advance: $150,000.

Book takes one year, no research, pure joy to write.

I love my editor; my editor loves me.

Several publishers vying to buy book means book sells at auction for big advance. Big advance means big publicity budget. Big publicity budget means promotion handled by publicity director, which means reviews in top newspapers, excerpts in top magazines, TV and radio appearances, four weeks on two bestseller lists, seven-city tour. Publisher (Mr. Big) sends handwritten note, thanking me for “writing the great book we all knew you had it in you to write.”

Question to agent: “Is there a downside to an unknown author getting such a big advance for a first book?”

Agent’s answer: “What are you gonna do, turn it down?”

Pitch line: “Welcome a fresh new voice!”

Sales: I don’t ask. No one seems to care. Final tally: Hardcover/paperback sales combined are 10,000 copies.

Current status: Out of print. Small but loyal cult following; 10 years later adoring fans still show up at readings, clutching well-worn copies, eager to tell me how book changed their lives.

Conclusion drawn then: Being an author, working with the best editor and the best publisher on earth is a dream come true.

Conclusion drawn now: There is a downside to getting a big advance for a first book.

Posted in | 4 Responses

  • http://charlesgramlich.blogspot.com Charles Gramlich

    It’s good to have even a few fans.

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  • http://gristleandsmoke.blogspot.com Jeremy D Brooks

    I’m kind of sorry I read that article last night (from @docbrite’s tweet), and am doubly sorry that I RT’d it. It’s depressing–it’s true and honest and is a reality-injecting cautionary tale, but there is little there of value for a writer who isn’t on the fence about writing for a living. It’s the writer’s equivalent of “I love cats but they keep dying every 15 years, woe is me”.

    I just ranted on this over at Aaron Polson’s blog this morning, so I’ll link instead of repeating. But the thesis is, essentially: regardless of what happens to the ivory towers in Manhattan, storytellers-as-capitalists have been working their craft since prehistory, and there isn’t anything short of armageddon that is going to stop it now. We’ll just have to learn to become better hunters instead of relying exclusively on trade for our bison haunches.

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  • Robert Swartwood

    It’s definitely a wake-up call for many writers who dream of being best-selling authors. And yeah, I think writers will keep on writing because that’s what they do … but getting paid well for it too is always nice. Or was always nice.

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  • http://www.scaryparent.blogspot.com joe

    Thanks for linking this, Rob. I hadn’t seen it before. I enjoyed it the way that I enjoy reading The Onion while drinking a seven dollar bottle of vodka on a Friday night. My favorite part might be where the author’s loyal fans still come up to her and tell her how her book changed her life. But really, you don’t need to get much past the author’s choice of pseudonyms to realize what you’re in for. “Jane Austen Doe”? Really? Why not just Joan of Arc? Surely there are better names for martyrs.

    Face it: when you start an essay talking about how your first book deal got a $150,000 advance and you end with “And I wait. And I wait,” you’re pretty much holding yourself up to a hailstorm of japery and rotten tomatoes. And deservedly so. Writers’ careers are full of ups and downs (ask Doug Clegg), years of disappointment and dashed hopes, because the marketplace is so wildly unpredictable and writing for a living is such a counterintuitive, unadvisable act of financial planning…by our own admission. Yes, it’s erratic. Yes, it’s full of smashed ambition and demolished expectation. Anybody who reads anything about the industry knows that. But I don’t buy completely buy this essay as a valuable reality check for aspiring writers (whoever they are), for a couple reasons. First, because it sounds too much like I’m on the receiving end of somebody’s therapy session, and second of all, even if it were nothing more than a simple recitation of diminishing returns, it’s one writer’s experience, designed to do what? Discourage other writers from trying a novel? Provide fodder for boring, depressing cocktail parties? Confirm our most paranoid fears about the Future of Literature?

    As you said, writers will keep on writing, and everybody else won’t. Some of us have even ghostwritten celebrity bios of our own. Who knows, maybe Jane Austen Doe and I both worked on the Jesse Ventura autobiography…

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