Dina Fleet Berry

I noticed that there seems to be a bit of talk on the Internet about how a writer of fiction is trained for the business end of the industry. There has also been a lot of talk about where the elite of the market wind up: control, points, quantity of books released a year. I’ve been thinking about it myself because it’s not easy writing alone in a room.

Agents don’t want to talk to first timers unless the manuscript is complete. I agree that’s a good point to start but I think there might be a better way to get there.

First I propose a team of writers, much like a T.V. show. This has a lot of benefits such as:

• the team can include all levels of writing as well as several genres
• the team can sustain a change in personnel of the team (except for the creator)
• the team can grew a new series or deepen a series in other mediums (T.V., movie, Comic book, etc)

Second, the team is held by a single pub house, much like a Studio holds a television series. The benefits are:

• the creator/studio model is mature and can be usurped for the publisher/writing relationship
• who gets paid and how much is already established – most writers would be salaried staff positions, not points

Third, the publishing industry is struggling to find its place, now would be good time to find a new way to increase quality content over low sales, high cost single title paper publishing. The ebook is just the beginning. Why not start a new pub house of ebooks with content teams. Move to print if the market demands it.

Fourth, it’s a great industry to collapse most overhead and telecommute. Given a strong leader and a strong plan, it wouldn’t be hard.

Since most writers have day jobs anyway, why not trade one day job for the other? It’s a proving ground and training on the job.

But this isn’t ghosting or co-author credit. This is something else entirely. This would be a way the publisher could grow their content creators while establishing control, direction, and value. The pub industry already has this on the editorial side, why not use it on the other side of the wall.

Would the agents loose out on this deal? They would probably think so but even writers in Hollywood have agents so there would be a place for everyone but it would shift and feel uncomfortable for a while.

Tags: Author, Writing