I have a friend who is a self-published author. I was talking to him today about the effort he goes to and the money he spends on getting his books sold. It seemed to me the figures didn't add up! The amount he spends on travel, business cards and tables at fairs etc must be huge. It seems pretty tough starting out being an author, I don't think I could do it, seems really hard to break into, yet in a lot of ways it's like being a designer or any the creative job. You put your own work out there and everyone judges it. I read recently "if nobody hates your book not enough people are reading you" And I guess that's true of my work. No one can please everyone with their designs. If nobody thinks my work is bad, not enough people are looking at it!
I am hoping to start going round with this author friend to book fairs and hand out my new, shiny, business cards and have other self-publishing authors take up my book design services. But I wonder if I'll have the stamina he does. I think I can stand there for a day with the possibility of getting no work, but how many of those tables could I man? Waiting for people to come in, hoping they don't already have someone creating layouts for them, hoping they have the money to pay somebody to do it, hoping that somebody could be me.
He's been doing it for a few years now I think. Would I have the passion to keep designing if I was doing barely more than covering costs?
Worryingly. Yes. Probably. I couldn't help it!
Maybe it wouldn't be my job but I've always designed, before I even knew that's what I was doing - layout drawings for dollhouses, making tiny books for the dolls, drawing outfits and making fake catalogues with them. Then as I got older designing badges that my mum would make up on her home machine, making signs for my dads supermarket, making business cards… older still … laying out my author friends books, making bookmarks and posters for societies I've been in. All unpaid. All because I couldn't NOT do it. I couldn't bear for it not to be done by me, to my standard. Did I do any of it for praise? No. Did I think "this will look good in my portfolio?". No. I see things badly designed or badly printed and I get angry! I want things to be as perfect as possible. I need to help if I can. Maybe I'm just a control freak!
There are things now coming back to me that I haven't seen for years, had completely forgotten I'd done and now it's all coming together - this is what I do. I guess I've just realised how lucky I am that I can get paid to do it!
So the answer to my question seems to be, if you're a certain kind of person like I am, - because we can't not.
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