Going to Writing Seminars

After finishing my book and sending out a few letters to agents, I went to a few talks / seminars given by local writers to try and find out more about the business.

The first one that I went to was at a local book store and was about how to make money writing books. The author had a number of books and eBooks available, but he was basically telling us that he made almost all of his money by having Google ads on his web site about how to get published. The only pieces of useful information that I got from him concerning being an author was that to have people buy your book online, you needed around fifteen reviews, and that he found the best price to sell an eBook at was $3.99.

The next one that I went to was part of a writing series hosted at our library. We performed a couple of writing exercises, but there was very little instruction given and even less about what to make of what you had done. The author had been writing for years, but caught me completely by surprise when she told us that she had recently learned in a seminar that she had attended that antagonists in book often think that they are the good guys. I couldn’t believe that she could be a writer and had not realized that. The next piece of information that she provided was that she drove a broken down car and was not making much money as a writer.

At the third talk that I went to, the writing exercises were a little better, and the author told us that in addition to writing herself, she ran a number of writing workshops, but she even with those, was not making much money. She also talked about how difficult it was to get more than just a few people to buy your book, even if you have and agent and a publisher.

The last author that I heard speak was the most successful. He had an agent, had a publisher that produced his series of sci-fi books, and he sold thousands of copies of his books. But, writing was just a hobby (albeit a very large part of his life type of hobby). He made sure that we knew that only a few people actually make any real money as authors – he relied on his IT job to pay his bills. He told the crowd to write if it was a passion, if not, just give it up, because they were just going to get disappointment in return for their hard work. As a side note, when I talked to him after the session, he was surprised that I had finished writing my book – few of the people that attend his writing seminars actually get that far.

So, after listening to all of these authors, I was pretty disheartened. There was no chance of making any money, and there was very little chance that more than a few people would ever buy my book (and those probably limited to my friends). Realistically, I knew that very few people actually are successful in the entertainment industry, but it was depressing to hear it over and over again. So, I walked away from my finished novel for quite a while…