Thursday, June 19, 2008

Books and Money, Part 2

So much of the discussion about how writers will make money from their books seems to be based on the (unstated) assumption that people write books primarily to make money. I'm not sure that's a good assumption. Sure, writers would *like* to make money from their books, but that's not the only (or even the primary) reason to write.

I'm not saying books aren't legitimate vehicles of economic activity, nor that authors aren't legitimate recipients of said activity. It's good when a writer makes some money from a book. I'm just saying that most of the time, writers don't do what they do just for the money.

So, answering the question "Why did I write my books?" is a bit like writing "Why I had this kind of fun." Because each time I wrote a book, it was a blast.

It was also exhausting, frustrating, difficult, challenging, and did I mention frustrating? But I totally enjoyed both the process and the final product of each of my writing projects.

More on that tomorrow...

2 comments:

Mark said...

Of course, this completely excludes the "Extending My 15 Minutes of Fame Pseudocelebrity Book Deal" genre, which is *all* about the payday. Those are probably mostly ghost-written, anyway.

Unknown said...

Too true, too true!