Indie Author Ego Check

An English professor started a writing workshop series here in our little Blue Ridge community (the unincorporated town of Todd: five rebel flags, three churches, and an old general store), and the first guest of the series was a poet friend of the professor's. I told my wife I was thinking of popping in to support it, and she was like, "Okay, Mr. Kindle Big Shot, maybe they don't need your charity. They're doing just fine on their own."

I think she was partly right. My intention was colored by "Hey, I'm a pro" thinking, although no one there would know it. Like maybe going to a poetry reading would be slumming, and I'd be sitting their smirking while plotting to earn my Kindle millions. But part of it was curiosity, and, to be honest, a need to get an infusion of passion for words. Sitting here consuming author blogs and publishing threads is a sure way to go bonkers. "Oh my God, my Kindle rank slipped, the bubble has burst!"

And so much of the current conversation, of which I am a willing participant, is about the state of the publishing industry, marketing, pricing, how often to tweet, who is signing a deal with whom, that I am not even enjoying it that much, even when I am on the verge of the biggest success of my life.

And here comes Joseph P. Wood, driving 11 hours, leaving his family in Tuscaloosa, AL while they are closing on a new house, to read his poetry to an audience of half a dozen. He apologized beforehand, pledged not to take too long, and then proceeded to rock the house with tremulous passion and great literary gift. He exposed himself through his words and cadence, fit words together into dangerous and exciting new imagery, crucified himself and then rolled away the stone.

At the end, he wasn't pushing his Twitter handle or Facebook page. Although he works as a professor, he doesn't need to publish his poetry, and he still does it the old-fashioned way, by querying small presses. The word "Kindle" never came up. There were handmade broadsheets for sale, and he sheepishly admitted he only had five copies of his collection I & We that the publisher had given him. He didn't care if he sold them, but he'd take whatever we wanted to pay.

He spent his own money and days of his life to come share his words, with no hope of compensation or audience building. And he brilliantly said, while obliquely sidestepping the need for "meaning" in poetry, "When I write it, it's mine, but once I share it, it's the reader that possesses it."

He didn't rant about his blog (where you can read how "stoked" he is to be coming to the reading) or direct us to his Amazon "Buy" Page, or even mention his website. He didn't reel in social-media followers. He didn't say traditional publishing was doomed or that paper was dead or that all agents are leeches. ("I’ll save the fancy talk–it’s about why do we believe things in poems.")

Here I was thinking about which character I needed to kill off to gain audience sympathy, which book to write next to reinforce my brand, how to move around my price points to maximize income, how to raise my marketing profile. And I wasn't even sure if I believed in a damn thing I wrote anymore.

Afterward, he said reading always embarrassed him, because he got so passionate and put it all on the line and expected everybody to run away. Me, all I wanted to do was get more product out. Joseph, you rock. It's me who is embarrassed.

Today I just want to write one good sentence.
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Loving the Hate

I've been a pretty casual sports fan most of my life, though NFL football is my main sports passion now. I got drawn back into the NBA this playoff season for the first time since the Jordan-Bird-Magic days primarily because of the drama surrounding LeBron James and his arrogant, oblivious treatment of fans and my feeling that he was a symbol of all that was wrong with sports and our modern culture.

It's hard to believe now, but when I went back to college to get my degree in the mid-1990s, my goal was to enter sportscasting or a sports-related media field. But the advent of ESPN, the cancerous me-firstism of idiots like Chris Berman, and the adoration of announcer hair gel and blustery opinion over what was actually happening on the court or field quickly repelled me.

Now here I was driven back into a "love of the game" solely because of hate. I hated LeBron James, and I cheered for his Miami Heat to lose. His life of pampered ease, his lack of loyalty, his attempting to take the easy way to a championship instead of shouldering the burden to lift a lesser team to the trophy all seemed reasons to root against him. After his team's failure in the championship series, and his poor, gutless performance, he sat in his post-game conference and chided all of us haters because we had to get up on Monday and go back to our regular, mundane lives while he went to his mansion and a summer of jet-setting celebrity ease.

And my hatred turned to sorrow. Because I realized my hate was just another form of what he was engaging in--a lack of humility and a certainty of what the universe should look like. I didn't want him to win the easy way. Now it will be hard. If he can win now, it will be because he took a deep examination of his life and the sycophants he surrounded himself with, the buffers from the reality we "normal" people face every day. Yet we all know of failure, and overcoming tough odds, and how victory is sweeter when it's tempered on the forge of hardship and sacrifice. If he can do that, I'd love to watch, and even cheer for him.

Sports may not have a lot to do with writing, but today I am incredibly grateful for my own blessings. A hillbilly nerd sitting at his keyboard can live out his dream--but failure was pretty common for many years. Rejection, bad decisions, and pure bad timing and luck all kept a goal out of my reach, even though I had enough ego and hubris to sustain me when success was elusive--there was always someone else to blame. But I never doubted. At least, never enough to stop writing. I somehow figured it would all work out, and either way, I wouldn't know what else to do.

Failure is not only always an option, it's the default setting. Today I celebrate faith, love, and possibility, so why not rise above wishing failure on someone else? Winning inside your own heart is better than winning any championship, trophy, or prize.
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Currencies of the Ego

The indie movement has launched a new measure of "success"--the number of downloads. It doesn't matter whether they are free, 99 cents, or $4.99, and it works like this:

"Gee, I had 1,700 downloads last month!" You don't see Stephen King going around bragging about his numbers. But it also doesn't mean much without context. If you gave away 1,700 copies, that has almost zero value right now, unless it's the Gateway Drug to other purchases. If you sell 10,000 downloads at 99 cents, you made less than the person who sold 1,700 downloads at $2.99. So who's "bigger and better"?

If it's a newer writer, I can understand the exuberance, because the ebook era seems like a miracle after years and years of carefully controlled distribution, when your sales numbers were set in stone the moment an agent said hello to an editor. But it's also easy to sound like you are either bragging or insecure. I shared some end-of-year numbers and I shared on Konrath blog once, more to support the point that people can make a living at this, and now I regret having done it, because it feeds the whole notion of "How much I earn is how good of a writer I am."

"Units moved" has become the new currency of ego that used to be "I GOT AN AGENT!" And money is another currency of ego. I'm guilty of it myself. When I see somebody's raw numbers, I instinctively compare mine, even though consciously all I care about is how I'm doing, not how well I'm doing in relation to other people. In fact, the less I pay attention to other writers' performance, the generally happier I am, because all that matters are my readers and the work in progress.

Maybe that's human nature, and this "Currency of the ego" is an idea I'm exploring in my spiritual philosophy, so hopefully I'll revisit the topic. In the meantime, feed my ego and buy my books. And, by the way, the 3/15 Tweet for gift certificate is for The Skull Ring. All you have to do is RT the book link and you will be entered for a $10 gift certificate:
#mystery The Skull Ring by Scott Nicholson for #kindle http://amzn.to/9Ii8kC and #nook http://bit.ly/hzGa5Y $2.99 #books
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