{"id":2336,"date":"2012-05-12T22:10:36","date_gmt":"2012-05-13T02:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2012-05-13T09:36:44","modified_gmt":"2012-05-13T13:36:44","slug":"feeding-the-ma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/12\/feeding-the-ma\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeding The Maw"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just read an interesting article in the New York Times entitled:\u00a0 Writer's Cramp: In the E-Reader Era, A Book A Year Is Slacking<\/a>.\u00a0 It says that authors are now pulling the literary equivalent of a double shift, putting out short stories or novellas or even an extra full-length book every year.\u00a0Best-selling thriller author Lisa Scottoline says that\u00a0one book a year used to \"saturate the market.\"\u00a0 She notes that in the e-reader era, \"the culture is\u00a0a great big hungry maw, and you have to feed it.\"\u00a0 Ms. Scottoline now turns out 2,000 words a day <\/a>by starting at 9 am and writing until Colbert.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lee Child has increased production too.\u00a0 The author of the \"Jack Reacher\" novels now puts out digital only short stories to supplement his one book a year.\u00a0 For the love of all ducks in the universe - even JOHN GRISHAM has ramped up production, now turning out a YA \"Theodore Boone\" novel once a year and one of his (usually) amazing legal thrillers once a year.<\/p>\n

The once a year system was created by\u00a0publishers who reasoned that the public would never be \"overwhelmed by content\" at that rate.\u00a0 However, in the e-age \"today's readers seem incapable of being overwhelmed.\"\u00a0<\/p>\n

At least one mega-author makes\u00a0two books a year seem like really slacking.\u00a0 Best-selling author James Patterson is his own cottage industry, turning out 12 books last year.\u00a0 He says he'll do 13 this year.\u00a0 How?\u00a0 Did he clone himself?\u00a0 No - it turns out he has \"co-writers\" on some of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What does all of this mean to writers like me who are still trying to turn writing into a full time career?\u00a0 I'm hampered by -- *gasp* -- a day job.\u00a0 I'm a lawyer, but I'm a \"scrivener.\"\u00a0\u00a0Guess what that means I do all day?\u00a0 Yep, you got it -- I write.\u00a0 I'm an associate in an office with a talented trial lawyer and we've found that his gift of\u00a0gab and my gift of BS make for an excellent legal team.\u00a0\u00a0 It's not the writing I want to do.\u00a0 That I get to do at night and on weekends -- until I manage to produce enough content to sell enough books each month to support my family.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I adore the growing appetite for\u00a0books and think that it's proof positive that technology hasn't killed the book - it's\u00a0speeding the growth of writing by leaps and bounds.\u00a0 I'd love nothing better than to make a living \u00a0feeding the \"big hungry maw.\"\u00a0 But, there's only one way I'm gonna be able to do it - bionic fingers.<\/p>\n

Do they sell those on E-Bay?\u00a0 How about Craigslist?\u00a0 Well, all I know is, if they're not out there now, once Walmart and Amazon figure out there's a market - -they'll be clawing each other to be king.\u00a0 You know, if I could get\u00a0a percent or two of the new bionic fingers market, I might get my chance to write full time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just read an interesting article in the New York Times entitled:\u00a0 Writer's Cramp: In the E-Reader Era, A Book A Year Is Slacking.\u00a0 It says that authors are now pulling the literary equivalent of a double shift, putting out short stories or novellas or even an extra full-length book every year.\u00a0Best-selling thriller author Lisa ...continue reading \"Feeding The Maw\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2338,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions\/2338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}