The newsletter OM Says:
What many don’t realize is that today’s always-on economy has an entirely new dynamic that involves an always-on, anywhere customer, unpredictable demand, and — most importantly — the limited attention span of customers. Add fierce competition to the mix, and what you have is an unpredictable and highly chaotic marketplace. And what that means is that today’s company – regardless of their business focus — has to have a much higher metabolic rate. It grows faster, and fails even faster. Against such a backdrop, one needs to break down one’s business into many small chunks.
What does that mean for writers? I think it means that writing is getting even more like going to Las Vegas and placing your bets. We have to pay much closer attention to what is happening in our sector of the marketplace—fiction, non-fiction, scripts, or whatever your speciality happens to be (the flexibility to move between formats also has greater value these days).
Yes, there are people who actually come away from Vegas with more money than they started with. I met someone like that last year. He didn’t fit the image of a professional gambler, but he has worked out where the odds are better (this varies from casino to casino, and game to game—here’s a little tip: if you play the slot machines, choose those on the ends of aisles; they have a better return rate because the casinos like to have winners be visible to passing foot traffic). He also has figured out how to get the maximum number of perks the casinos give to gamblers. Putting this knowledge to work he makes a six-figure income every year. He calls himself The Gambling Ninja.
The changes are coming fast—note how quickly e-book sales overtook the sales of traditional books. Success for failure is determined more quickly. No longer do publishers cultivate writers on the basis that they’ll be successful after writing a half dozen books. And I think book stores will speed up their turnover of books even more.
This is not happy news for a lot of writers, but that’s immaterial. It is what it is, and we can moan about it, or we can try to figure out how to turn it to our advantage. Regarding exactly how to do that, I’m as in the dark as everybody else but I’m paying attention—and maybe someday I can be the Writing Ninja!
(For guidance on writing and marketing your writing, get "Your Writing Coach" from Amazon or your local bookshop.)
