Being a Writer Means Learning to Survive Platform Collapse

Being a Writer Means Learning to Survive Platform Collapse

Late December is the time of year, I think, when people have the least interest in reading newsletters and I have the least time to write them, so let’s see out the year on a more personal note than usual.

 I’ve gained a lot of subscribers this year and most of you have no idea who I actually am since the only reason you signed up for this is because I said something on Substack that you liked, or you thought I had the right politics, or I dissed an internet personality you also hate. Substack makes it so easy to subscribe that you can damn near do it accidentally, and statistically a large number of you haven’t read this far through the post. You gave up halfway through that long sentence I just typed and moved onto something else, because my sentences are very long, which is something I defensively call a stylistic choice rather than editorial malpractice.

 Every week I churn out one of these and immediately lose ten subscribers who probably can’t remember subscribing and consider it an unexpected nuisance email.

 So for those of you who are still reading, thank you and welcome. Today I’ll talk a little about myself, but I think you’ll get something helpful out of the conversation as well. Particularly if you are a creative who relies on this platform, or any platform, to get eyes on your work.

Without resorting to this

Two years ago I started writing a novel. The plan at the time was that it would be finished by now but I’m still chugging away at it. Changing my mind, revising parts, and sometimes letting it sit untouched for months at a time. I’m okay with this because it’s not a Dead Book. It’s a pretty good idea for a book, I think, and I still feel good about the odds that I’ll finish it. The problem always was that I wouldn’t know what to do with the book once I did finish it. There are no publishers who will accept an unsolicited manuscript and there are no agents who will work with my genre. I didn’t want to self-publish so I was kind of stuck.

 I did find a small local publisher that was growing in size and reputation called Shawline. They took unsolicited manuscripts, they published genre fiction, and they’d even started opening their own chain of bookstores.

 I am a realist and I didn’t start planning my book tour or anything, but the existence a place like that, which just might give a shot to a guy like me, was a strong motivator. I bookmarked their website while I worked on my book and every so often I’d scroll through their catalogue and buy one of their releases. I knew it would take hard work but I was confident that Shawline, or something like it, would be there for me once I eventually cranked this thing out.

 So just the other day I clicked on that bookmark to see what the latest is on this promising little publishing house that I hoped would carry my book one day.

Website was down. Okay, so I hit Google to see if I could find anyth—

Oh.

Now, you can put a positive spin on this: If I hadn’t dragged my feet on this book then I would probably be in a fetal position right now. I never followed through with my plans to send them a manuscript and so I haven’t wasted the past couple of years putting together a book that I can’t sell because the rights to it are held by some liquidation company that might sit on it for years while they figure out if they can turn it back into money somehow.

 Shawline, it turns out, had been in a failing business tailspin for some time and was really good at hiding it. Its CEO was living and operating under a nom-de-plume to hide the fact that he had a string of failed businesses and a criminal history. This wasn’t just a start-up that came into hard times, it was already a time bomb from before I even discovered it some years ago.

 Still, since the beginning of this year some doubts had bubbled up from the subregions of my conscience about whether I actually would wind up approaching Shawline. It was, after all, a hybrid publisher. That means the author lays down some of the cost. I’m not a fool, I know that screams vanity press, but I also know that it’s not necessarily a scam. I’ve seen a lot of vanity presses and I know what to look out for. This was an exceedingly professional-looking operation that had been serving a number of authors quite well for years.

 There was still this tiny little voice whispering this company is going to collapse.


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