We’re Surrounded by Fantasy…

In the Chase - Image from the Music Video Complicated World by Oh No YoYo

Once upon a time…

Oh, yeah… I’ll read anything that begins this way. Books, newspapers, scripts, blogs, forum posts, a newsgroups… somehow, that’s where all of us would really like to be, especially when the world around us is changing faster than diapers on a set of octuplets.

Once upon a time people went to work for a company and knew that if they wanted it, they could have a job for life. With benefits, with a pension – company paid.

No, it was true once, really.

Once upon a time, a good writer, if he or she was persistent and talented, could eventually find a publisher who would joyfully publish the writer’s works. Many times, the writer/publisher relationship lasted a lifetime, with everybody involved making a halfway decent living.

Once upon a time, the men and women who ran publishing companies were people who could read something besides the Bloomberg ticker. Now, they call them media conglomerates, and they’re all owned by one of the LPC’s (Little PeePee Compensators) who are obsessed with the idea that a ten-figure net worth is woefully inadequate. This guys and gals have it so bad that The Supremes (the judges, not the talented ones) have said we have to be nice to them and treat their companies like real people.

Damn, real freakin’ life slaps us in the face again.

Once upon a time, said writer (see above) was considered to be a creative artist like Beethoven or Andy Warhol, and as such, was able to do business differently than those in the real world. Beethoven and his homies used to have patrons to foot the bills so they could just hang and do creative stuff. Warhol had the personality to attract a lot of strange people with way too much money.

It has all CHANGED. The writing business is like any other business now — once again for emphasis — the writing business is like any other business now.

• You have to build something that people want to buy.
• You have to build it better than your competitors do.
• You have to understand your target market.
• You have to go out and sell shit!

It’s not a question of if I write it they will buy. Selling stuff means a lot of things. Advertising, giveaways, business networking. You know the drill.

How do you think the roofing guy gets business? He hangs with builders, and lumberyards, and the Guy Who Creates Tornadoes… and oh, yeah… he uses Facebook and Twitter, and probably has a blog.

Browse Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Plaxo, et al ad nauseum. Everybody is doing it. Today’s small business people know that the only possible way you can survive is to get the word out. GET. THE. WORD. OUT.

Musicians (yeah the Hoarseman used to be one), have learned over the past few years that to survive they have to operate like a business. Have a website, give away songs, be good at what you do, and learn about business and marketing. The same goes for those in the visual arts.

Dang, doesn’t it suck to have a bottom line driving everything?

(I could ramble on this one forever but ya gotta watch for the TL;DR gremlin…)

Pax et Caritas
Ron