More Bad News for Writers?

Having got you all enthused yesterday by my rallying cry to writers to get on and finish writing their books on their first step to getting published, I’m afraid I’ve come across more bad news for writers - which picks up the themes I blogged about in my post last week on Bimbo Publishing.

You don’t have to be an actual bona fide "bimbo" (ie celebrity) to get a fab book deal with lots of zeroes on the end of the cheque. You can hit the jackpot just by being related to one. The Yorkshire Post (22 May 2006) reports that the following hangers-on of celebrities have now got book deals - Wayne Rooney’s fiancee; Tom Parker Bowles (son of Camilla) and the mums of Boy George and Peter Doherty. Read the whole article here - http://www.yorkshiretoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=105&ArticleID=1517295.

And the next generation of would-be readers are no longer reading, according to The Scotsman. Only 25% of 12-13 year olds say they enjoy reading after school compared to 45% 10 years ago. The article is here - http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=763312006. Kids these days prefer to go online or play computer games.

It all makes sense, though, in that freakonomics sort of way. Fewer people read "proper" books so there are going to be fewer "proper" books
and as the last of the dinosaurs (ie. people like me who grew up with pen and paper and books and dial telephones and spent our childhood without mobile phones - yes, kids, it is possible to not have mobile phones and survive…) die off and the new humanoids grow up, books might one day become those quaint things they put in museums in a glass case like the Rosetta Stone.

But there is hope for writers who truly love writing. Don’t blame the internet, embrace it. Writing a novel is hugely isolating and it takes years to get any feedback at all and your readers are just statistics on your royalty sheet - X thousand copies sold. I’m having great fun doing this blog and getting almost immediate feedback via comments, emails and other people mentioning my posts in their blogs. I enjoy the dialogue with my readers via this space and learning something about their writing or reading experiences and the things that are going on in their lives. I wanted to be a writer because I enjoy communicating and the internet has been a great medium for it. It has also kickstarted my creativity and writing again so I am working on my next books on the side. To nourish this, being a part of the new media revolution is vital for me -  writing blogs, sharing ideas, building reading and writing virtual communities: for me, it’s all part of the bigger picture of being a communicator and not just a writer.

pic from flickr by jamieca; non-commercial use only