I’ve seen people talk about actors and artists that had a terrible time.
My own would be Anne Rice. She wrote Interview with the Vampire after her young daughter died of Leukemia. Then her husband suddenly died of a brain hemorrhage. I suspect her Christian, anti-fanfic phase was a result of mental illness and manipulation from the publishers, although I don’t think she ever apologized.
This past weekend I was at the Miami Dade Book Fair that happens once a year in Miami. And on two of those days, they have a street fair with booths/tents. Some of them are just generic venders and publishing companies. But another fair amount are actual authors that are trying promote their book.
And although I would love to stop and talk to each one, it’s almost impossible, and also impossible to really buy everyone’s book. The one that really broke my heart was this mother and a child, about 8 years old. As I was walking by their booth and looking at their book, she says “welcome, come meet the star of the book” :/
So I would say I feel bad for new authors that are still trying to get a book out.
I wish I had a book fair like that near me, I would always go. Although, I live in London, it’s a big place, there probably is one and I’ve just never heard of it. I’ll have to look.
Working in a bookstore we see stuff like this a lot. It’s hard not to feel bad for authors who are throwing so much of themselves into their work and seeing how brutal the industry is. I sincerely wish that I could say “yes let’s get it on the shelf” to every author that asks, but realistically you can’t. Some aren’t polished enough, others there just isn’t a local market for them, and most simply aren’t sold in a format that we can order from (self published via small/vanity presses or Amazon). Something I love about our modern self-pub industry is how easy it can be which has opened the gates for so many authors who might’ve been overlooked by big publishers and how it’s given a voice to some traditionally voiceless communities. Something that I hate about our modern self-pub industry is how easy it can be which has created a massive “I can do it too” mentality, mixed with hustle culture and predatory vanity presses. It’s flooded the market with everything and everyone and for every success story there are easily 100x as many people who will never sell more than 5 copies. I’ve had to explain to so many people that a publisher offering to “get your book in stores” for a couple thousand dollars is lying to you. It’s a double edged sword of our modern industry, sadly.
Omg, there’s an Amazon published … I don’t even know what to call her, not a writer that’s for sure, who’s children’s book is absolutely riddled with typos, spelling errors and grammatical errors, and all the reviews from actual ppl who’ve bought it were wanting refunds due to the quality.
Just… an absolute saturated market of often very, very poorly written and edited “books”…
While a lot of gatekeeping for competitive, creative industries like publishing, acting, music etc. can sometimes feel brutally arbitrary and unfair, the hard truth of the matter is that there’s absolutely a reason why those gates exist, and yes they ARE necessary. There are too many people clamoring to enter these industries who fundamentally don’t understand JUST how much time, talent, and effort goes into producing a polished final product, how many pieces of the puzzle are required for a good outcome, nor how much behind-the-scenes work and training the few successful artists actually do in order to make it at the level that they do. I’ve worked with creative people who are absolutely convinced that their pet projects are “just as good” as the professional stuff and they completely lack the ability (either through ignorance, denial, or just plain lack of intelligence) to see the glaringly obvious gaps in quality between what they’ve made and what they’re comparing it to - and yet they’ll insist that there are none, they don’t need to do anything to improve, and the industry is the problem because it “just won’t give them a chance”. Dunning-Kruger is real and widespread and that’s why yeah, you DO actually need that agent, that editor, that producer, that publisher, that distributor, etc. if you really want your work to stand out and be successful. The more professionals and experts that have their eyes on it and their hand in helping you make it, the much better it is going to be. Bypass that at your own peril.
When my husband was in the military I would often see little, old retired military guys selling a book they had written at a booth at the PX. I made it a point to talk to each one and buy their books.