Which is better:

Which is better:
>Write a literary novel you can be proud of. In success you might be kinda famous and earn an ordinary living from writing. In failure, you have to watch in shame as your book sells ten copies per year on amazon, earn your living as a wageslave, and MAYBE, if you're lucky, you'll be famous decades after your death (extremely unlikely, though), and you won't know about it. You will die believing you failed as an author.
OR
>Use the skills acquired in pursuit of literary greatness to write genre trash for the normie masses. In success, you gain worldwide celebrity and hundreds of millions of dollars as your ten-book-long spaceship ninja series gets adapted into video games and Hollywood films, but nobody whose opinion you respect will ever consider your work to be "literary." In failure, you could probably barely eke out a living selling a few thousand copies of your books, making a patreon page, attending nerd culture conventions, etc. but at least you would be a professional writer, and at least some people would actually read what you write.

What do you think about this conundrum for an aspiring writer? Which one should you aim for?

Attached: library-books-education-literature-wallpaper.jpg (5616x3744, 3.24M)

>writing for money
cringe. you're already defeated by even considering this.

Do both?

But the reality is 99% of writers cannot produce marketable books no matter what.

Bold take. How do you pay the rent while also taking your writing seriously though?

Obviously the hypothetical assumes that the author is at least good enough to write a book worth reading, otherwise it doesn't really matter what they're trying to accomplish.

You said two things and neither was an answer to the question.

Making money by doing something on the side while not compromising my artistic integrity. Fucking Americans, I swear. Everything is about money for them.

I respect that.

Both are bad. Change the former into me perpetually writing new novels without profit motive. True happiness is not a single checkmark. It is a perpetual march toward an ideal. The to do list never ends.

this. make money from other source(s) so you can do whatever you want with your writing. many writers did this in the beginning, actually.

Admirable. I guess I'm only concerned with the financial aspect because I don't have a real job, have never had a real job, and would love to be able to actually earn a living without having to leave my house to do so.

You're probably right. Didn't Joyce teach English in a foreign country?

yea, I think he was an English teacher in Italy.

That sucks. How many people who were recognized as the greatest composers or painters of their time had to take a regular 9-5 job to pay the bills?

I think writing to market is much harder than people who have never done anything think it is. These two things aren't mutually exclusive. Having business acumen is a necessary skill when all production is commodified in late stage capitalism. Having ideals can motivate one to make specific choices, but we have to come to terms with reality in order to put food upon the table and a roof over our heads. Write your masterpiece under your name, write smut under a pen name, write mystery scifi romance under another pen name. Creating output is the easy part if you like writing. We all write shit here instead of actually forcing ourselves to sit down and write. The urge to write people talk about is simply the urge to express yourself when restricted only to putting pen to paper. Create something and then come back and we can figure out how to sell it. Simple as that.

You seem to be the only person in the thread who thinks about it that way. Everyone else just says write what you want and who cares if anyone ever reads it.

Write what you want to write.

I mean, a hobby is a hobby, and that's fine to have. But in many threads like this people dream of the writers life. The bohemian style written about so dearly. It would be wonderful if my writing could pay my rent, transportation, insurance, food, etc. Even if I were to live a small life in a small apartment, being paid enough to live off my output as a writer would be awesome. But this dream is only achievable in the modern day if you put the work into producing and marketing, otherwise you are left with writing being a hobby after your 9-5. No one on Yea Forums is going to write a one hit wonder in this day and age. Even if you were, that hit would then just become another commodity and you'd need to write the sequel to continue having a roof over your head. It's either write or work. Neither one really wants to do, but if you prefer writing to answer phones or being on your feet all day, it seems like one is the obvious choice.

We live in the age where you can write anything and throw it up on amazon in a matter of minutes. People spend money on the kindle store. People pay you by page on amazon. There is money to be made and it's begging for you. All you need to do is write something and market it a little. Get a little traction. There's never been a better time to be a writer. The market is open, there aren't any gatekeepers anymore if you really want to put something out there. SEO some blog posts, get a following and throw your content out there.

Patronage of the arts is sort of a thing of the past. People only spend money on people that are already well-established.

These are good thoughts, but I also think it's easier said than done.

It's impossible to write consistently when you work a 9-5 + commute unless you have an iron will

This is good advice. Personally, I (OP) am a fan of literary fiction and also a fan of all the nerdy genre trash like Star Wars, etc. Both literary paths seem like viable options to me.

Damn shame.

Read all of Vonnegut if you like Sci-fi, he's the only hard-boiled Sci-fi author I can respect

That conundrum is exactly what motivated me to start the thread.

Indeed. I like Vonnegut too.

>write story
>edit story
>open photoshop
>find appropriate images and font
>make cover
>download kindle create
>convert document
>make KDP account
>upload cover and file
>include long strings of probable search terms after researching your genre
>make email list, put link at end of document
>find ARC readers and give them copies before release
>make author website with blog posts about whatever
>release book
>repeat entire process depending on length of writing style

Unless you have a family, you can find at least an hour a day to write. The problem is with people like you, me, and OP is we actually don't want to write. We just fall in love with the idea of being artists and then never do anything. If you truly want something, you'll take it, we just don't give a fuck about anything.

Too much truth in this post.

I also think the community you put yourself in motivates you to do things you wouldn't otherwise do. All the books Yea Forums has written are collaborative in nature and it pushes the other anons to continue writing to show other people. I've noticed when I have written something I continue to write when I show it to other people who also write. I stop writing that thing when I show it to people who don't like to write, their input just doesn't push me. I think there are in person and online communities out there that encourage writing in a positive way but because this is Yea Forums we would make fun of them no matter how legitimate they were.

Did you take this from a wikihow article or something? It proves my point, though. It is easy to throw something up on the internet, but hard to earn a living as a writer. And, for me, hard to even decide what kind of writer I want to be.

No. I was playing around with some smut I wrote after a thread on here. Spent a few hours writing and making a cover and going through the motions on how to do it. It was a good learning experience and I made 10 bucks or so without really knowing what I was doing. I gave up though because other life responsibilities took over.

Was it a full length novel?

Nah. It was 3 5k word stories. Good practice on just pumping something complete out. But the erotica field is different about pumping content out because you can't actually directly advertise, and it's all about busting a figurative nut. The real money is in romance, but I'm not sure I want to spend that much time writing 60k words in a genre I've never read or studied that may flop.

Good info thanks.

The other thing I'd like to note is that the content is up on amazon for a long foreseeable time. It's almost like a return on investment. I may only get a few 3 dollar sales every month, but that's for one story over the next few years. The more content I put out and put reference to my other content may get people to continue to spend or read with KU. Just like how youtube recomends the next hour lecture over and over. People want content to consume.

That's something I've been thinking about a lot. How to build a readership.

I'd look up the top 100 in whatever genre you write and then check out the authors info. Do some google searching to see what they do to build relationships with their readership.

Making your book accesible doesn't make it 'normie trash'. I hope you sell 10 copies so it humbles you

Good advice.

Thanks for the contribution.