33 Observations About 33 Years of Publishing Books

essay

---

1. Bestselling writers want to win more critical acclaim and awards while critically-acclaimed and award-winning writers want to sell more copies.

2. There are critically-acclaimed and award-winning writers who also sell many books. We all want to be them.

3. Writers aren’t gatekeepers. That’s a myth propogated by writers who yearn to become gatekeepers.

4. Literary agents are the most active gatekeepers while independent bookstore owners and booksellers are the second-most active.

5. Good and great formal poetry is almost always better than good and great free verse poetry.

6. Fiction writers are kinder than poets.

7. The writers of biographies reveal far more about themselves than they would if they wrote autobiographies.

8. Writers of young adult novels are the meanest people in the business. It would seem that high school has never ended for them.

9. Those book blurbs on the covers of books? That’s the most corrupted and corrupting process in publishing.

10. Over the years, a few bigger name writers have sent me scathing emails that chastised me for not blurbing their books. I won’t name them because we all get hungry for validation.

11. I’d estimate that at least 1/3rd of all blurbs are written by people who haven’t read the book that they’re blurbing.

12. Over the years, I have encountered more and more writers who’ve only read books published in their lifetimes.

13. Books published before 1979 are far better than books being published today. That’s true about rock music and movies, as well.

14. In the Native American book world, at least 75% of successfully-publishing Native writers didn’t grow up in tribal communities. It might be closer to 90%. Many of those writers are second-generation college graduates who grew up middle-class. As a group, Native writers are far more elite than the typical reservation resident.

15. Approximately 20% of all the writers who identify as Native American are barely Native or aren’t Native at all. There’s a good chance that your favorite Native writer isn’t any more Native than you are.

16. “Indigenous” is a term often used by American writers who have very distant indigenous ancestors in other countries. In the United States, “indigenous” used to mean “Native American” or “Indian.” Now it’s a line item on an author bio and/or curriculum vitae.

17. White Americans have European ancestors who were indigenous to their lands. Technically speaking, European American writers can also call themselves indigenous.

18. I became a relatively famous and wealthy writer by a publishing and promotion system that no longer exists. In the 1990s, I would sometimes guest on local morning talk shows between cooking and weather segments. I once did a 48-city book tour. Well, it was a 44-city book tour because I started sobbing in the Atlanta Airport and caught a flight back home to Seattle instead of flying to Miami.

19. Therefore, I can offer you no effective advice about how to get published or become a successful writer,

20. You don’t have to be mentally ill to be a writer but the percentage of mentally ill people is higher in publishing than in the general population.

21. When my career started in the early 1990s, the small press world included many blue collar writers and white collar writers who worked outside of academia. These days, the MFA writer-professors hold a monopoly in small press publishing. All monopolies are bad for us.

22. I read two or three books a week. That’s probably the primary reason why I’m a good writer.

23. I’m simultaneously an overrated and underrated writer.

24. You haven’t been baptized as a writer until you’ve received a negative review in a publication that’ll be read by thousands of people.

25. Writing is a job. I love my job.

26. Becoming a national bestseller is more rare than becoming a professional player in the National Basketball Association. Adjust your ambitions accordingly.

27. I’d rather read a good murder mystery than any other kind of book.

28. Don’t be a snob about reading. Be a snob about writing.

29. You’re not as good a writer as you think you are.

30. There are some completely awesome people in the book world. They’re often very difficult, too.

31. There are some utterly terrible people in the book world. Be careful. They wear inclusivity as camouflage.

32. Stop saying “problematic” as a negative. Writers are supposed to be problematic.

33. I’ll be writing poems on my deathbed.