Yes, Michael–I think focusing on getting very good is a key component, and yes, Gretchen–I think working through the ever-growing channels that connect us directly to our audiences is also key. In fact, these can be mutually supportive, as we hone our skills in public. (I wrote a blog about that some time back.) I am going to be looking at some of these new and not-so-new ways of putting ourselves out there, building a platform, hustling . . . Thanks for your thoughtful comments!

If you cultivate an audience from readings or workshops or through serializing your stories on a blog…you can start countering their conventional wisdom with your own data. (Some of them seem to be really into data.)

I will run up against that with my book in some circles. There is a common belief that “baseball books sell, football books don’t.”

Well, I do have some decent responses to that. (Books, like mine, that go beyond just a football story sometimes do sell, like “Friday Night Lights” a more universal story told through the specifics of a town’s football team)

But I plan to go to groups and reading excerpts of the book in progress to start building an audience. There can be a surprising number of avenues for doing that, I’ve found.

The market isn’t perfect, but it has a degree of wisdom beyond its individual participants. And while bad writing can gather a market, just like any other bad product that is cynically produced and cynically packaged, all else being equal the cream will rise.

This is a good reminder to me to keep working on the “all else being equal” part and not to hide any lights under bushels.

@Amy–Thanks for your kind words. I am thrilled to hear you are excited about the next NaNoWriMo cycle. I am thinking of doing two months of prep/ planning, then NaNo plus a couple more weeks (folks dragged a bit there but it did lend itself to getting further along), and then a longer revision class. So gear up!

@Gretchen–Well put!!

The problem is that the market, at any given point, has blind spots and limitations. Something I’ve experienced many times this year, in submitting fiction for grown-ups and for children, is that editors may praise a book for its characters, its “classic” prose, its beautiful writing, its emotion, and yet the editors can’t get the book past their marketing people. I can’t, in this, sense, respect the market’s “choices.”

On the other hand, what am I doing, but forging on, trying to write a new novel that will be able to slip past this market Cerberus? I’m choosing to write about Degas in New Orleans, because this is a subject that has an immediate “hook,” and a readership a publisher might feel they can count on. Yet I am still very distressed about not being able to sell my other work, and I’m still very cynical about the market; the writing I haven’t been able to sell is not navel-gazing work at all; it’s very much written TO someone out there.

Yet I think your approach is wonderful, because it’s a “come on, let’s do this thing!” kind of approach, and in this economy, that’s incredibly valuable. I can’t think of a better alternative. My hat is off to you, my friend!

I’m not fond of writers who believe they someone else (or many someones) owes them a livelihood because they think what they are writing is good/important/whatever.

It is the obligation of the writer to build that relationship with readers, to think about what they want to know, what answers, or questions, they are seeking, and to think about how to make our books speak to people in ways they can relate to.

That doesn’t mean writing down to, patronizing readers, it means acknowledging that the relationship is a two-way street.