In Praise of Time
By Holly Miller • • 1 min read
In a discussion with a successful indie writer this week, one of the subjects that came up was time. Successful publishing takes time, we agreed – something which isn’t always recognised or valued by new writers. We weren’t talking about the book craft, about editing, design or the attention to detail needed to take a book to market. No, we agreed: just as important was the time it takes to think about how you publish, where you find readers, how you sustain a dialogue with them, and what channel strategy you have.
Let’s acknowledge what publishers can do here. If you sign a book deal, in addition to being blessed with an advance against future royalties you will be given time by experienced, often highly creative people who know how to do this stuff. And in my experience that time does not directly equate to the level of the advance or budgeted revenue targets. Lots of time is spent on books that editors, marketers or sales departments simply love and want to succeed. And they will give those books the precious, unstructured time that falls in between meetings or out of office hours.
But when I asked this successful indie writer if she would ever be tempted to take a large advance from a traditional publisher, the answer was no. And the reason she gave was…time. No publisher would or could put the amount of time or on-going commitment into her work as she could, or guarantee her the level of control she sought. Which makes sense. For some people, no amount of personal investment from a publishing house will be enough to outweigh the drive and self-motivation they can bring to their own projects.
We are a young company experimenting with a number of different models. We are trying to work out if there is a commercially viable place to exist where we can support writers and content owners by giving them access to really good people who will help them to become more successful. But how we work out quantifying the value of creative time is a hard one. As far as I know, no algorithm exists for that.
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