Publishing: The Age of Unpredictability

Last week, I encountered someone who wants to be a writer, and asked me for advice.

I used to be better at these interactions. I would explain that the publishing industry changes quickly, and the path I took to becoming an author wouldn’t be repeatable today. Then I would point the developing writer (I hate the term “aspiring.” If you write, you’re a writer.) to some resources I consider valuable and suggest a couple of strategies. I might gently suggest that they don’t quit their job anytime soon, but I would usually try to emphasize that the world will always need stories, and the more voices, the better.

This time, I kind of choked. I’m pretty sure my face fell when they asked me for advic. Actually, it might have fallen the moment they said, “I want to be a writer.”

As you probably already know, the last five years has been a tough time in the publishing industry. I'm not just talking about me, specifically–nearly everyone is struggling. Publishing has never been exactly what you'd call "predictable," but it used to have a little consistency.

In the past, if you broke into the industry with, say, a mystery novel, you would probably keep writing more mystery novels, either in a series or standalone. The royalties from the first book would help pay your expenses to write the second book, and the royalties from the first two books would enable you to write the third, and so on. To grow your audience, you'd attend mystery conventions, interact with mystery fans, make friends with other mystery authors and editors. Now and then, you might have a dud – a book that just doesn't find its audience, or isn't up to your usual standards for whatever reason. If that happened, you put your head down and tried to make the next book better. If you had a long string of duds, and didn't figure out a way to course-correct, you might make a serious pivot (moving to a new genre for good, for example, or starting over with a new pen name) or choose a different career.

In this model, writers would typically stay in one lane. The idea was that every writer had a "brand" or persona for their writing, and you shouldn't dilute your brand by bouncing around too much. You might occasionally dip a toe into another genre (John Sandford has written a YA novel, believe it or not), but for the most part you would stick to what you're good at/ known for.

This model had many flaws– the elaborate gatekeeping system meant the first step of breaking into publishing was statistically almost impossible, for example, and many writers got restless doing the same thing, yet couldn't find success in other genres. But that small amount of consistency made it at least possible for many writers to have relatively stable careers.

Career stability is a lot more important than it sounds.

A stable career, even one with some unpredictability built in, meant you could also have plans. Can I accept this invitation to my friend’s wedding? Can I fix the broken air-conditioning in my car? Will I be able to get my child the orthodontia she needs? Can I save enough money to pay for a crown before my back molar rots off? Back then, it was much easier to make these decisions, because you could at least guesstimate how much money you might make in the near future.

There are still a few writers who are able to sustain this career model, but they’re mostly the people who were particularly successful beforethe pandemic. For the rest of us, everything has changed. As publishers grapple with technological advances, piracy, a recession, and declining attention for reading, we are essentially living in the Age of Unpredictability. Nobody knows anything. Nobody can guesstimate their income. More and more writers are quitting or cutting back to take additional jobs (yes, plural). If, like me, another job isn’t possible because you have a disability or are a caretaker, you might be SOL.

No one tells you this when you’re querying that first novel, but people who make royalties can’t usually go on disability, or even declare bankruptcy. (Ask me how I know.)

To support yourself as a writer in the Age of Unpredictability, I’m seeing most of my once-established peers take an approach I’m calling Everything Everywhere All at Once. Instead of focusing hard on one book at a time, we’re juggling different projects and pitches in multiple genres—hell, in multiple formats (hello, comics!). We’re looking for freelance work, but so is every other writer, so the competition is insane and demoralizing.

I have never known such existential dread as when I realized that one of the only available jobs for writers these days is training AI to replace us.

In an effort to survive, we also have to add a million things that aren’t writing books to our job descriptions. Everything Everywhere All At Once means a lot of time now goes to project management instead of projects, and that’s before you get to the problem of marketing. We’re stretching ourselves thin trying to promote our work on Bluesky, Patreon, Substack, newsletters, our websites. To promote our work and/or make a few extra dollars, we have to learn how to do Kickstarter, TikTok, Discord, Ko-Fi, YouTube.

Since this is the Age of Unpredictability, we don’t know if any of these extracurriculars will catch on or even help, or if it’s all just a big time suck that takes us away from putting a story into words.

This is uncertainty is, by the way, particularly excruciating on a day-to-day basis, when you try to decide how to spend your time. If you account for emails, meals, childcare, and personal hygiene, on a regular school day I have between 4-5 hours of serious work time. In 2019, I would divide that time between promoting a book that was coming out (using about three different social media platforms) and working on the next book. At certain times of year I might need to coordinate travel to conventions, but that was about it.

Now, every single day I have to decide which of five potential projects is the most likely to make me money the soonest. Of course, the comics industry and the fiction industry run at different speeds, with different trends and players, so maybe I try to work on TWO projects. If I haven’t worked on either of them for a bit, I have to read through a bunch of old stuff to remember what I’m doing.

Because of all the unpredictability, I have to keep an eye on the future at all times, so I also spend additional time hustling new work, searching for jobs, working one of my side gigs, networking, pitching. I always have to figure out the thing after the next thing, even though I don’t know which thing the next thing will be.I think many, if not most, of my writer friends are in a similar situation.

The factors that determine whether a book will sell are largely out of my control, so working more does not necessarily equal more success—however, it’s the only thing I can control, so I feel compelled at all times to work harder, do more, write more, branch out more. Grow, grow, grow, because that back molar isn’t going to fix itself and quarterly taxes are due in a month.

I will never know whether I was right about these choices, or whether my time would have been spent better elsewhere.

The hardest thing about this isn’t the work itself, by the way. It’s the atmosphere of permanent anxiety you have to live in while you do it. The mental/emotional strain is enormous, especially at the same time so many things are falling apart in a global/political sense. (I’ve spent all this time teaching my kids to survive in a neurotypical world, but maybe I should have been teaching them how to survive the end of the world?)

It is, and I cannot emphasize this strongly enough, exhausting.

By now, you’re probably wondering if I said all this to that developing writer. Did I warn them away? Did I tell them to take up pickleball or watercolors while they begin preparing a bomb shelter for the apocalypse?

I did not. Maybe I should have? But I couldn’t do it. I think I just babbled awkwardly for a while about writing strategies.

Writing, and a creative career in general, shouldn’t be something you warn people against—because it won’t work, not for long. So many of us couldn’t stop if we tried.

The best explanation of a creative career I have ever encountered is still Lenny Bruce's explanation from the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel pilot.

I feel exhausted and disheartened by working in a professional landscape that grows bleaker all the time. I’m worried about my rent, my family, my fucking tooth. I feel guilty about every moment I’m not working. But I still believe we need stories, and I still believe more voices are better. Paradigms don’t shift if everyone just trudges along with the status quo.

I might be too exhausted by all this to change anything myself, but I maybe I can hold the way open for the person who can.