One of the writing groups I'm involved in for Sisters in Crime (Guppies) has a listserv type system where members can post and join conversations. And one of the subgroups for Guppies is specifically focused on marketing.
I ignore emails from this group easily 90% of the time because I either don't have time to join the conversation (hello, time-consuming day job and home renovations), or because I have nothing to add. When you're not yet published and are not on the self-publishing path, it's hard to get super invested in people discussing which book reviewers to reach out to or the best cover artists for self-published work.
The emails don't bother me. When I do have time, I'll sometimes read the threads to see what everyone else is experiencing. It's a fascinating window into the writing world and industry trends.
Lately, a few of those threads have revolved around the idea of money and class in the writing industry.
Earlier this month, one writer posted that they intended to use AI to translate their work. Their reasoning being that their audience wanted those translated books, and the writer didn't have the money to pay for a translator.
People had strong opinions on the ethics of this, with many of the respondents (myself included) being against the practice. The consensus was that if you can't pay to get translated copies, then you shouldn't have translated copies.
There have also been emails from writers leaving the marketing part of the group because they didn't find it helpful.
For example, self-published writers lamented that there weren't enough tips or discussions centered around marketing when your budget is $0. If they didn't make enough money writing to pay for marketing promotions, then they couldn't afford to promote on the frequently mentioned marketing platforms at all. The last one likened it to a class system in the writing world. And they were right.
That doesn't even touch on the fact that costs to successfully self-publish and promote a book average between $2k to $5k.
Between my website and memberships to writing organizations, I spend around $750 a year. Which was an unthinkably large amount of money to me when I was younger and struggling to afford a $300 apartment rent payment because my electricity bill was $50 higher than I'd expected.
Writing conferences, which increase networking and marketing opportunities, cost at least $1,000 if you factor in the registration fee, the hotel room, travel, and food. The better the conference in terms of programming, the more expensive it is to attend.
You want a comprehensive list of agents who publish in your genre? Well, you want to use something like Querytracker, which does have a free option with less features. If you need all the features, it'll cost $25 a year.
Publishers Marketplace, which is useful for research into what's selling and who represents writers in your genre, is a cool $25 a month.
In writing, there are haves, and there are have-nots. And the have-nots are often forgotten by the haves.
Reading those emails got me thinking about my own feelings regarding financial class in fiction and in the writing world.
It's an open secret that one of the key components to a writing career is having the financial security to pursue a career in the first place. The list of writers who’ve found success in publication while experiencing poverty is small enough that such a feat plays a huge part in marketing the book.
Look at J.K. Rowling. Though much of the news around her now centers on her being a TERF (and on the racism woven into her books), that wasn't always the case. When the first Harry Potter book hit the stands, there was news story after new story about how she’d written that book while living on welfare.
But there is a reason why there is such a short list of successful traditional, or self-, published authors who've written their best works while impoverished. After all, it's hard to spend so much time on a career with little guarantee of a return on your investment when you don't know where or when your next meal is coming, or where you're going to sleep at night.
I’ve made no secret of the fact that I grew up in poverty.
While we never lived on the streets, we did couch surf for several months when I was in the third grade.
We were frequently behind on bills and were kicked out of a couple of places for non-payment of rent.
One house we lived in was so infested with cockroaches that the heating system refused to turn on one day. It was in the middle of one of the ice storms that were such a frequent part of my childhood. I can remember getting out of bed that morning and seeing my breath clouding in the air in front of me. And I can remember the shame when my cousin and uncle came over to look at why the system wasn’t working and pulled off the thermostat cover to reveal hundreds of shiny-bodied roaches crowding around the wires. The heat from their bodies was enough to trick the thermostat into thinking our house was in the tropics.
One house was infested with rats. I learned not to sleep at night after once waking up with several of them crawling across my face and my chest.
A constant refrain from my teachers growing up was that I needed to try harder. They didn't understand that I was trying as hard as I could to succeed when I had no resources to do so.
We moved practically every year, so I was constantly behind or ahead of my classmates when it came to the curriculum (and when it came to math, always, always confused and behind).
When I was home, I made sure my siblings were cared for, did my best to make sure the bills were paid and that the house was livablely clean. Then, if there was time, I did my own homework.
Many nights I fell asleep from exhaustion before ever even opening my textbooks.
One of the most frequent jokes among writers is that we chose careers where we do homework every day. It’s funny because it’s true. We spend time researching past events for inspiration for stories, or to make sure our stories are as accurate as possible. We spend time reading the work of other authors to improve our craft. We research agents, we write cover letters, we spend time writing detailed outlines and synopsis of our novels.
And just like my homework from school, those things are almost insurmountably difficult to achieve if you’re so exhausted from existing that you can’t even put a pen to paper. Doubly so if you consider that no one is accepting handwritten manuscripts. If you don’t have a computer, you’d need to handwrite your novel and then go somewhere like a library to use their computers.
From a time vs monetary value perspective, writing simply doesn’t make sense. It can't ever compete with hours spent at work that will keep a roof over a head.
For some people, as little as $5 is the difference between getting enough gas to get to work and having to walk several miles. It's the difference between having a meal or going without one yet again.
If the margins are that thin, how on earth can we expect them to pay for memberships that could grow their career?
We need to think of the financial class problem in writing as something that might not be entirely solvable, but that we can make less stark.
We need more grants for memberships to professional organizations that have massive online resource archives (such as Sisters in Crime,) more online conferences with discounted (or free) classes for impoverished writers, more mentorships that teach editing and offer support rather than admonishment when the mentee doesn’t have time to finish their pieces due to life or work commitments.
If we continue to bury our heads in the sand, then we leave impoverished writers with fresh perspectives about life behind. And like evolutionary bottlenecks, not adding new DNA only weakens our bloodlines into disease and disorder.
The class problem in writing exists and will likely always exist to some extent. But if we’re willing to advocate for change, it doesn’t have to mean the end of chasing a dream for people who didn’t grow up with money. And in the coming new year, we should all strive to help other writers support their dream.
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