Without a Focus on Print

Thanks to Shelly Lieber, I ran across on article called Writers and the recession: Writers Digest's Jane Friedman talks about problems and solutions. It's a long title, but a worthwhile read.

In it, Jane Friedman, a publisher and editorial director at Writer's Digest, effectively says that everything is changing. The rules that we've worked to hard to understand and exploit (have a strong query, get an agent, get a publisher, wait, wait, wait, maybe catch lightning in a bottle) have changed. She says you need to create diverse products without a focus on print. That's where the opportunity lies.

The bad news is that publishers--cash strapped as they are--are looking for a sure thing. The good news is that it's never been easier to go around publishers and agents and get your work noticed. The Internet is changing the way we disseminate information and deal with intellectual property. This blog has already pointed out two instances in which people effectively gave away their work and made money anyway.

The writers, unlike musicians, can't use their writing as a loss leader, making up the difference in tour dates and other merchandise. I don't care how well you write, you'll probably never pack Raymond James Stadium with tens of thousands of adoring fans. And if you do, you'll do it to market your book. So you have to make money on your written word.

But how?

That's what's going to change over the coming years. What if you found a rivetting detective novel written on a blog? Wouldn't you go back to see the next chapter? What if you could download an MP3 of a story and listen to it on your iPod? What if your readers could interact with your story, posting comments and engaging you with questions and ideas?

All of these are opportunities for writers. And therein lies both the challenge and the potential for making yourself unique.

Someone's going to figure it out over the next three years or so, and that person will make an enormous amount of money breaking through a new barrier. At the end of the day--and the end of this economic downturn--the writing world will be different than it is now. The challenge is figuring out how and applying your writing and marketing skills to the new world that emerges.