The Struggles of Being a Professional Writer in the 21st Century

It doesn't seem all that long ago that being a professional writer was not all that difficult. Yes, it was still a difficult field to break into, but once you did, you were pretty much a part of publishing's bigger picture. I kind of grew up a bit too late to be part of the Maltese Falconish era of writing with the Sam Spades and gumshoe detective novels, but I put forth a lot of effort during this period and was starting to make a name for myself.

That was about 20 years ago. Then I just kind of went into a retrospin and stopped writing. Well, I didn't stop writing exactly. I just stopped trying to be published.

The funny thing is: I almost made it 20 years ago. I was highly published, and even editors recognized my name when I sent in my stuff. Fast-forward twenty years, and I'm an unknown just like every other wannabe writer under the sun.

Something happened during the last twenty years that has completely changed writing, and it's actually made being a professional writer almost impossible. Back in the early days, it was kind of cute when someone told you he or she was going to be a writer, because the majority of them never followed through, and you knew there was always this belief that someone who was intelligent also thought of himself/herself as a potential writer. I dated a woman some years ago who because of her education was convinced she would make a great writer, but she had never written anything, so we kind of know how that ends up. But back to the point, something has changed.

What changed was that becoming a writer has become much easier. In the old days, companies used to prey on potential writers by trying to sell them into vanity presses (which were pretend publishing houses that would charge you to publish your book and then pretend like you "made it" even though all you did was pay for a bunch of books to be published and then have no way to sell them). Other companies came along that did something similar, but instead of charge you to publish your book, they would publish your book for free, but they would only print as many as were sold, effectively setting up that same thing the vanity presses did because the only market for your book was YOU, and they expected you to pay for copies of your own book. It was vanity without the vanity name.

What this has done is make any potential writer automatically claim to be a professional writer, even though that's not what they are. The old model used to filter them out of the picture because the process took so much work and effort that a lazy writer was never going to go through the work. Now, everyone can be a writer, and because there's no longer any work (they'll publish anything), more and more crappy books are being published, making it that much more difficult for dedicated writers.

This has brought about another thread in the writing market that is even more dubious. For the longest time, writers could supplement their income by writing articles. You didn't make a lot of money doing it, but you made enough money that you could survive quite comfortably. The idea was quality work of select titles, not volume of crappy work. Now, a bunch of for profit schemes have appeared on the scene and have practically destroyed the freelance writing market by pushing it out to the common demoninator writers and those who are willing to bargain their way to a writing career. Some examples:

1. Guru.com. This organization has appeared and turned the normal writing market into something of a joke. In the old days, someone wanting their memoirs written would have to shop for a quality writer, often finding someone who had some experience in the memoir market. Guru serves a really bizarre function for this market in that it now offers a place for people who want writing done, but the writers all try to low bid each other for the assignment. The job no longer goes to the best writer; the job goes to the one who offered to do an assignment for the lowest price. Talk about a business destroying mechanism.

2. Demand studios (demandstudios.com). This organization gets people to write articles for $7.50 to $15.00 an assignment. Yes, you can probably survive by using this process to write, but it is completely serving to destroy the freelance writer market because people used to get paid $200-500 for a writing assignment. Why pay them $300 when you can pay them $15.00? Yet, many writers seem willing to do this in order to get both income and a byline. I've been kind of hovering on the edge of this organization for a while because I'm torn between the fact that I hate what they're doing, and I realize that I need to survive in order to consider myself a professional writer. My personal jury is still out on this one, even though it's not all that happy about it.

The problem with writing today is that everyone can be a writer because there are so many ways to get your writing published. But there's still no way to get anyone to read what you write. To do that, you still need to break through with the big publishing companies, but it's getting harder and harder to do it because there is so much trash out there that is competing with the serious writing as well. Publishing companies are going with safe products, like already famous authors or celebrities who pretend to write books. A book by a controversial figure like Sarah Palin can guarantee sales, but a book by a serious author may never even get published, unless that author chooses to become published through an almost vanity publishing house.

It makes the whole field very depressing. I'd leave it completely and focus on something more useful, like fishing in Azeroth (World of Warcraft) if I wasn't addicted to writing. I'm one of those "need to write" people, and that makes it even worse. I was born to do this as my calling, yet I can't seem to get anywhere with what I was born to do.

It's depressing. Almost enough to write a book about it. Maybe I can get Sarah Palin to pen it. I hear she has a really strong writing career these days.

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