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You are a business, and your
books are the product.
If you want to make it in the writing game, you must see
yourself as others (namely, publishers) need to see you.
They need to see you as valuable. That’s the founda-
tion of any enterprise where money changes hands.
You will be published, and compensated, to the de-
gree a publisher sees you bringing value to their table.
Pretty simple calculation.
But most writers don’t like to think in these terms,
especially if they are disposed to consider anything they
write as sacred fi re from the divine muse.
And we all know that from the writer’s perspective,
calling what we do a “business” is a little like calling the
racetrack an “investment.”
As thriller writer Joe Moore puts it, “How many nor-
mal people do you know who would work eighty to one
hundred hours a week, seven days a week, with no benefi ts
for two paychecks a year, and not know the amount of the
checks until the publisher decides to send a statement?”
True that.
But to increase your odds of success you need to develop a
little bit of the dispassion of the business executive.
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