Christopher Wright
Sage
"I'm a Hyena" is also appropriate.
While you have a point, I don't agree that the article was an example of that. Despite the title, the first line of the article says that self-published stories are just published too soon.
"I'm a Hyena" is also appropriate.
The implication being "go through the formal publishing process." It's really no different from the advice another writer gave that the period of time when a big publisher DOESN'T accept you is the time you need to spend "getting better."
And then she quotes JOHN MEYER to support this. But here's the thing--that time of a musician's life that he's talking about, when the musician is struggling and unknown? The musician is STILL PLAYING LIVE SHOWS. It's not like the band says "we're not coming out of our garage/basement until we get signed by a label!" No, they're throwing themselves into the world, into the crowd, against the derison of drunk fratboys and bikers and scenesters and whoever else happens to be hanging out at whatever crappy little dive they're playing at. They're actually DOING IT and getting better as a result. And from this the author's advice is "never show anyone how bad you are!"
The first live show I ever played was a disaster. The sound guy didn't mic our electronic equipment correctly, so while he heard everything through his mixer monitors all the audience heard was one guitar and the microphones. It was a disaster and after the show all anyone could ever talk about was how badly we sucked. Life is like that. It won't kill you.
The first live show I ever played was a disaster. The sound guy didn't mic our electronic equipment correctly, so while he heard everything through his mixer monitors all the audience heard was one guitar and the microphones. It was a disaster and after the show all anyone could ever talk about was how badly we sucked. Life is like that. It won't kill you.
Brian, your philosophy can best be summed up as "don't do anything until it's perfect." Because you have a lot of talent, you can probably get away with that. Most of us can't. For most of us it's going to be try, fail, try, fail less, iteratively, until we hit the mark.
But the payment thing you're just going to have get over. You're going to spend the rest of your professional life watching people who don't deserve to get paid, getting paid. There's no getting around that. There isn't nearly as much correlation between who gets paid and who deserves to get paid as you might think, and this was true even before people started self publishing. Save yourself the trouble of an ulcer and make some sort of peace with that.
Though I agree with your point, I tend to deal with the world as I think it should be rather than the way that it is.
Article from Forbes: Don't Publish That Book! - Forbes
What can I say about it? The author is right. The plethora of bad self-published offerings bears her out.