101 Reasons to Stop Writing

It’s always good to see the writers of unread books focusing on the important things in life. Since such scams as authors putting in orders for unreturnable books with fake names and credit card numbers don’t have quite the success they allegedly had (and I say “allegedly”, because ordering a book and then refusing to pick it up in order to increase sales figures has about all the aplomb and craft as protecting one’s copyright by mailing copies of an unreadable story to oneself), enthusiasts of POD mills such as PublishAmerica have struck back at the real enemy keeping them down.

Are they trying to augment or overhaul the existing book distribution system? Are they trying to find audiences for the nearly 300,000 books published every year? Are they trying to prepare for the nearly inevitable collapse of Borders Books and Music chain by constructing alternatives to the ever-decreasing number of Frumpy Fiftysomething’s Used Books and Quiet Desperation Emporium franchises? (And has anyone noticed that the same people who bitch up a storm about how terrible it is that the big chain bookstores have driven Frumpy Fiftysomething’s to near-extinction are the same ones who’d set fire to a bus full of paraplegic nuns for the opportunity to have their books carried by those same chain stores?) Could they be focusing how bookselling is a business and not a workfare program for otherwise unemployable English and journalism majors, and that small publishers and bookstores alike might want to stop waiting for angel investors to swoop in and save them from their fiscal and promotional incompetence?

Naah. The real concern is that Amazon.com won’t allow POD publishers print their books through any printer other than Booksurge. And since PublishAmerica and other such vaunted and highly respected publishers of high-quality reading material want to maximize their return by printing the books bought by these writers by the long ton for “promotional purposes,” it’s not in the vanity publishers’ interests to give Amazon their business. Oh, woe, the whole of the publishing world is about to collapse!

To take a quote from one of the champions of the POD industry and put it very slightly out of context, “Authors slap books up on Amazon.com all the time, don’t market them, and sell zero copies.” Yet somehow they look surprised when someone at Amazon decided to take the POD money sink (in server space, in moderation of comment boards, and responding to the paranoiacs who are certain that Amazon is keeping their works of genius from bestseller status) and find the only way to turn it into a source of revenue, however small. A word to the wise: if your book sells so poorly that the lack of a “Buy” button on an Amazon.com page makes that much of an impact upon your sales, you might want to consider your place in the publishing food chain and stop writing.

– Paul Riddell has advocated stopping writing for the last six years, and tries his best to practice what he preaches. This is why his blog is shutting down in June.