I just want to write, that’s all, I love to write. I have so many ideas for books yet to be written to go along with the almost twenty books I’ve already written that I hardly have time to breath let alone market them.

That’s not what a writer has to do though, nowadays in the current market, authors are expected to wear several hats, writer being just one of them. We are expected to market ourselves as a commodity, the by product of that being the books we write, we are also expected to market those books. Most book publishers today have a limited budget for marketing and this is left to the author. Some publishing houses won’t accept a submission unless the writer already has a following of over 100k.

All this makes our job that much more difficult. Working on a limited budget, it becomes more of a gamble to run marketing campaigns unless you have the years of experience in that type of work because unfortuneately nothing is guaranteed. Only huge names such as James Patterson, Stephen King and those authors who have already sold millions have this guarantee. I would think that any manuscript offered from them to any publishing house would be greeted with dollar signs in their eyes because they know any investment will produce a return. Others, like myself and millions like me do not have that luxury.

This might come across as a whining little child who isn’t getting what they think they deserve. I’m not, I know I don’t deserve to be read just because I have written a book, quality come first. I am a little fed up with people offering their services to help with marketing only to be told that it will cost more than I have. It’s always accompanied with the ‘can you afford not to take up this offer?’ slogan. I need marketing advice, I know that, but what I really need, what I would love is for someone to offer to take over my marketing requirements, social media content so that I can do what I love, to write.

I know this will probably never happen, no one works for free, which is strange because authors are the only professional who is expected to give their work away for free. Nowhere else do you see workers offering to, for example fix a washing mashine for free on the hope that next time you have a similar need you would go to them. Certainly if you wanted a wall built the bricklayer wouldn’t offer to build a section and if you like it he would then build the rest. Authors are constantly expected to give free chapters awaywith the hope that if it’s liked then the reader will buy the book.

I digress, I suppose what I’m really saying is that I don’t have the solution to this problem and at times I feel that the system is geared a little too much in favour of the reader and not enough towards the writer. It is a symbiotic realtionship between the two, without one the other cannot survive. You might argue that without a writer a reader can indeed survive but at what cost? How much less fulfilled would their llives be without the endless joy we writers give to them. We take them on journies they could never take, we visit other planets, other dimensions, take them on endless adventures where we explore not only the workings of the universe but those of the inner being. We delve into what it is to be human and without all of that, what is left, simply the mundane. Without an audience the writer may as well be standing alone on a mountain top shouting out his thoughts that would be heard by no one. I don’t want to be that writer, I want to be read but above all, I just want to write.