Are my books salvageable?

I think you'd do better to pay for a short online course in writing, rather than pay for editing. Also, unless you read some quality novels, which would include some classics e.g. The Old Man and the Sea, you will never be able to appreciate the difference between good and trashy works...

 

I think just reading your competition is a great way to know where your quality needs to be. That way the genre-specific book cover will more or less match the writing, so the readers get what they expect.

 

it always feels weird to me when someone describes the published work of other writers as their competition.

 

Is there not scarcity of readers' funds and time?

 

that's not how this works, lol

in sff publishing, the people who are also writing sff books are not your competition. they are your peers and colleagues. if someone buys a book by author A, and they decide that they want to follow author A by following a social media account or subscribing to their newsletter, sooner or later they're going to hear author A talking about author B, who writes books author A likes. so that reader is now exposed to author B, and they're inclined to check it out. or they go to a zoom event with author A and a bunch of other authors and so they get to know author C, D, and E. and they're brilliant and smart and thoughtful (or they make a bad impression, that happens too.)

other authors in my genre make up a web of support, whether it's promoting another author's book or social media presence, or offering their experience in craft or business, or making introductions to other writers, editors, literary agents, foreign rights agents, film and tv agents, publicists, trade reviewers, librarians, personal assistants, accountants, financial advisors, and entertainment lawyers. they will warn you about bad operators or people who are a headache to work with or who don't pay on time-or at all.

but here's the catch. they have to like you. and seeing them as competition kinda puts a damper on that!

 

Well, for the record I have never seen competition and cooperation as mutually exclusive things. I think when people hear 'competition' they think sabotage, fowl play, aggressive tactics etc... I tihnk of competition as a tit-tat driven elevation of service.

Also for the record I largely agree with you. I suspect the issue is I'm being too semantic.

Author A has to discover Author B in the first place. And when he does, B's work needs to meet A's standards and have traits that will appeal to certain kinds of people, because there's also Author d, e, f, x, y, z.... Author A only has so much time/money, and there is only so much storefront that he will see. Those scarcities make his options finite and so the purchases invite his scrunity. He will only read so many books before he dies. I think scarcity will always be a driving part of most markets. Where there is scarcity, there is competition.

I guess people have more money than I thought. Though even a book a week wouldn't keep pace with the amount of content that is published and being published, and it isn't 100% of the content that's being regulary read. I don't know the numbers, but I hazard a Pareto distribution.

Edit: Since I obviously need to be put in my place, this might need its own thread.

 

Well again, I wasn't advocating against cooperation. Cooperation and competition interlace in healthy markets, and the literary world is a great example of that, at least IMO.

So, instead of competition (post #28), I should have said peers? I dig that.

 

untrue.

like sure i do promotional events put on by my publishers that are populated by other writers who are published by the same imprint, that does happen. however! it’s just as likely that i’m going to be part of an event where everyone is from a different house. these events are usually put on by bookstores, libraries, conventions/conferences, and review sites but they come to me through my publicist at my publisher just as often as other means. i routinely get books and blurb requests from editors whose house i’ve never worked with.

 

but they do.

 

one of my publishers has a newsletter and a blog that talks about other people's books all the time. the contributor contract does not breathe a word about work having to focus on authors they publish, and routinely reviews books that were published outside.

when I have been approached by a bookstore or library group to do an event, publicists at both my publishers have suggested sharing the event with other writers who are *not* published by their respective companies, and they did all the legwork involved in getting those people included and invited, and this has been more common as time goes on. I felt like I said that already but maybe the connections weren't clear.

 

yes. well, I guess they're big four, now.