Hens Lay Eggs
food for thought
Campaign madness
I generally don’t write on political topics—not because I don’t have opinions, but because no blog or meme or post anywhere is going to change anyone’s political opinion.
Last week during my regular morning perusal of LinkedIn, one of the many political posts in my news feed caught my eye. In it, the author alluded to a vote for the Republican candidate being indicative of the voter as being sexist or racist. The idea that someone might vote for the Republican candidate and not factor in the Democratic candidate’s gender and ethnicity into the voting decision apparently did not occur to this person.
I took issue with that and commented as such. The original poster then replied with a long comment linking several articles supporting her point that nearly three-quarters of people voting Republican were both sexist and racist. Since the sources she posted aren’t what I’d consider all that credible, I dropped out of the conversation rather than waste my time doing a bunch of research and debating with her.
This is one reason why I loathe posts such as hers and the many villifying the other party’s candidates. They demonstrate the polarization of our society and hold the other side in contempt without regard to those holding more moderate opinions that may align more or less with an opposing viewpoint.
For instance, my mother-in-law and mother, both of the generation preceding the Baby Boomers, are the least prejudiced people I have ever met. Neither of them subscribes to the concept of gender fluidity. Both favor prudent fiscal policies. Both take seriously their civic duty to exercise their right to vote.
I doubt either of them would deny a woman’s capability to serve as the president of the United States, although one wouldn’t vote for the Republican candidate and the other wouldn’t vote for the Democratic candidate, regardless of incentive.
There’s more to a person than his or her political leanings. A Democrat may be pragmatic and support business as much as a Republican may be idealistic and espouse peace on earth and goodwill toward all. In fact, what I have found is that those with the most extreme political affiliations are those who are the least tolerant of differing opinions.
I’ll be the first to admit that many people base business and personal decisions on politics, whether their own politics or someone else’s. This cannot be better demonstrated than the hit Budweiser took when they jumped on the woke bandwagon. This political positioning clashed with the values held by a large portion of their client base. The company is sufficiently diverse and robust to withstand the defection of those customers. Other companies, such as John Deere, have learned that painful lesson, too: don’t clash with your client base.
I have worked for clients whose politics opposed mine. It didn’t matter whether I agreed or disagreed with their opinions; what mattered to me was improving the quality of their content. When it comes to business, I’m agnostic. My focus isn’t on what you believe or don’t believe; my focus is on the project and helping the author make it as good as it can be while maintaining the author’s distinctive voice.
#henhousepublishing #editing #proofreading #bookdesign #ghostwriting
Using both sides of my brain
Math and the humanities don’t necessarily go hand in hand, but many potential clients seem to assume a writer can’t perform simple math.
I recently came across a solicitation from Above Story, an outfit that hires writer to produce fiction series. They produce “enchanting fantasies, mysterious paranormals, and compelling contemporary romances.”
That’s right up my alley! Where do I sign up?
I read the job description.
The job description looked pretty good. Producing a required 12,000 to 15,000 words a week would be a challenge. I honestly don’t know if I could sustain that kind of production. Perhaps a writer who doesn’t care about quality can crank out that much content per week, but that writer will spend a lot of unpaid time revising and rewriting after the editor goes through it.
- Freelance is good. Freelance is what I do. It’s what I like and prefer.
- Fiction projects in the named genres are a perfect match for me.
- Ten chapters (12,000 – 15,000 words) a week is rather demanding.
Then I read the next section of the advertisment. The red flags waved. Sirens blared.
I did the math. Because doing the math is part of business. (Yes, I am in business.)
- The $15 per chapter works out to $0.0125 to $0.01 per word.
- The average writer needs three hours and 20 minutes to draft, edit, revise, and polish 1,000 words of content.
- The total output of content (12,000 – 15,000 words) would require 39.6 to 49.5 hours of work per week. That’s full-time work.
- The total compensation to produce that content would be $150 per week.
Now let’s dig into the allure of making $2,000 to $3,000 per month.
At the stated rate of one cent per word, a writer would have to produce 200,000 words a month to earn $2,000. Delivering 200,000 words of polished content would require 6,600 hours. A 30-day month only has 720 hours. If you work eight hours a day every day, then producing 200,000 words would take you 825 days or 2.26 years. But let’s say you only work 40 hours a week. That same 200,000 words will take you 3.17 years to produce.
For $150 per week.
In no way, shape, or form is this opportunity feasible. It is exploitive to a grotesque degree.
Other platforms lure in unsuspecting writers, too, and often with worse terms. They post an unrealistic monthly salary that a writer could potentially earn, but doesn’t include the reality of what it takes to produce high quality content.
Here’s another consideration: None of these platforms compensate writers for the hours spent on editing and revising content after it’s been submitted to the client or the company.
When it comes to chasing down freelance creative writing opportunities, it behooves writers to do what doesn’t come naturally: the math.
If you’ve been thinking of hiring yourself out as a ghostwriter, it behooves you to consider the client’s demands. My skill and time are worth more than $150 a week for full-time work. Yours should be, too.
Every word counts.
Changing expectations
When my best friend and I attend events as vendors, we often find ourselves criticizing our failure to predict human behavior. At first we were, perhaps, too enthusiastic and hopeful. When a potential customer said he or she would return later, hope surged. We soon learned to disregard that polite rejection: they almost never return later.
We still find hope rising when a potential customer lingers over the books and/or paintings. We get lots of compliments on the paintings. When a potential customer expresses particular interest in one or two paintings, we become even more hopeful of a sale. Disappointment all too frequently ensues: “I thought for sure she/he was going to buy a painting.”
That statement is followed by “We gotta stop thinking. We’re obviously not good at it.”
I understand that carrying around a large canvas might be a bit cumbersome, but we provide shopping bags to make the carrying a lot more convenient. We also understand that our artwork might not be to everyone’s taste. That’s OK. We have attended other events where other artists showcase their work and decide that, no, we don’t particularly like this artist’s paintings or that artist’s sculptures.
Art is subjective.
Consider a recent article I came across about Hunt Slonem’s bunny series. Slonem is an internationally acclaimed artist whose leoprine paintings strike me as … childish. Not childlike, but childish. I look at those and think any five-year-old kid could do the same … with finger painting. I’m not impressed. But then, contemporary art really isn’t to my taste.
Artwork pops up in my Facebook newsfeed. Some of the posts are by artists whose work in colored pencils, oil pastels, and paint amaze me with their precision and exquisite, photorealistic detail. I will never be that skilled. My work is rather more along the lines of Impressionism. I like to call it channeling my inner Monet.
My expectations aren’t confined to selling paintings.
When it comes to books, I have expectations, too. Going to Oddmall’s Emporium of the Weird last year, I expected to sell more fantasy and science fiction romance than anything else. My titles in those genres did sell well to that audience. However, my best-selling title at events is Focus. (It certainly doesn’t sell online.) I’m not entirely sure why, beyond the fact that the book is not part of a series. A customer can try out my work without committing to reading a series. However, I have several other books that aren’t series-oriented and difficult to sell.
It must boil down to appeal. Books with more niche appeal don’t sell as well as those with broader appeal. Focus is what I call romantic suspense. It spans romance, mystery, and suspense. Another book I thought would do well and didn’t is Hogtied. It’s an “MC romance” (“MC” meaning motorcycle club). MC romances tend to be really gritty with lots of foul language, violence, crime, sex, and a hefty dose of misogyny. My story tones down the profanity, misogyny, and sex, but goes full-bore on the violence. However, MC romances are a niche product—a popular niche in which my story didn’t quite hit the mark.
When participating as a vendor at events, I am learning that different areas have different preferences. For instance, I have already participated at three of the Second Saturday street fairs in Urbana, Ohio this year. The third, which enjoyed beautiful weather, yielded the most disappointing sales. I was at the Urbana Fireworks Festival at Grimes Field last weekend … and left early. Not only were book sales disapppointing, but we didn’t sell a single painting. Despite Urbana being less than 20 miles north of Springfield, the population has proven to have distinctly different tastes in literature and art than the crowds who attend the Clifton Gorge Arts & Music Festival or the Tipp City Mum Festival, both within a 20-mile radius of Springfield. In Cincinnati, a city where we expected more cosmopolitan tastes and worldly attitudes, we did poorly there, too.
I haven’t yet figured out how to gauge the preferences of potential customers in different regions before expending the effort and expense to offer my wares for sale. This weekend, we’re heading to Art on the Hill in Mantua, Ohio. The festival gets good press as an event with lots of eclectic offerings and an open-minded crowd, but we’ll have to see if the event meets our expectations.
That being said, making a profit isn’t the sole purpose of these excursions, although it’s a main consideration in our decision whether to return. Some first-time experiences don’t meet our modest expectations for sales, but merit a return for other reasons. Others don’t merit a return regardless of sales. Regardless, we are constantly adjusting our expectations in an attempt to better judge the events that suit us best.
So, even though we indulge in self-deprecating humor that thinking isn’t our strong suit, we do a lot of thinking. Perhaps it isn’t thinking we do poorly, but prognostication.
Author
Hard boiled, scrambled, over easy, and sunny side up: eggs are the musings of Holly Bargo, the pseudonym for the author.
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Blog Swaps
Looking for a place to swap blogs? Holly Bargo at Hen House Publishing is happy to reciprocate Blog Swaps in 2019.
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