Today’s Post by Joe Farace
When you are consumed by thoughts, write. When you are uninspired, read.—Stephen King
*There are three reasons why I wrote the 37 books that have been published so far. I once told the editors of one of my most recent books what the three reasons were and she asked, “what said that?” I told her: “I did.”—Joe Farace
So what are the reasons people write books? My thoughts on this subject are related to photographic and photo how-to books because that’s the genre I’m most familiar with as a writer. I expect Stephen King writes books because he has to. I believe he’s an idea machine and when he gets a story idea, he has to write it to get it out of his head. I know I feel the same way many times, albeit on a much smaller scale. These ideas when I get an dea, it’s usually about a blog post or maybe a photography project. In the old days when there were such things as printed photography magazines, it was for an article idea but I digress…
Anyway here are the reasons, I think anyway, that people write photography and photo how-to books:
- To Make Money. Unless you’re an Internet star or influencer chances are you won’t get rich selling photography books. My average book advance was the same as what Stephen King received for writing Carrie—in 1974. But that was just for the hardcover version. He later sold the paperback rights for $400,000 and that doesn’t count the sales of the film rights for two movies. But Mr. King aside I thing there are literally only a handful of writers—five or less—who actually make real money from selling photo books. You know who they are.
- To Become Famous. Everybody wants to be famous these days, whether you’re a photographer or a food blogger, it seems that everybody and their cousin’s friend wants to be the next PewDiePie and rake in $40 million dollars a year like he does, which kind of overlaps reason #1.
- To Help People. There are those altruistic souls, and I’m one of them, but I suspect we make up the vast majority of photo book writers, who genuinely want to help people by sharing the knowledge they’ve acquired over the years. For them. the money and fame are not as big part of the deal. Nevertheless, it’s nice to be paid for your work whether you’re selling a family portrait, a landscape image or words and pictures for a photo book.
I suspect that most photo book writer’s reasons include a varying percentage of all three. But for me, it’s mostly reason number three.
To be continued in two weeks in “Chapter 3″…
Book Club Pick of the Week: Murder Under Her Skin by Stephen Spotswood
Many of the books that I read fall into the category of “mysteries” and as I’ve gotten older I seem to favor the “cozy” style that’s best exemplified by Agatha Christie over the former hard-boiled style of authors like Mickey Spillane, although I still enjoy a good Mike Hammer mystery.
Stephen Spotswood seems an unlikely guy to write this kind of story; He’s a former journalist who worked in war zones but, on the other hand maybe that’s why he writes these books. Murder Under Her Skin is a follow up to his Fortune Favors the Dead a period mystery novel set in 1942 that introduces Lillian Pentecost and her assistant Will Parker as the female version of Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin or maybe even Holmes and Watson, since the book’s narrator is Ms. Parker relating it as something that happened in the past. But the style is not Doyle’s and is somewhat reminiscent of the late Robert Campbell’s creation Jimmy Flannery, And if you haven’t read that series by Campbell I urge you try your library and Amazon. They are delightful.
In the first book it was explained that Ms. Parker worked in a circus before becoming Pentecost’s assistant and started investigating crime. In this second book in the series the two women investigate the murder of a veritable “Tattooed Lady” and in the process opens the box containing everything you wanted to know about Will’s past that initially got your attention in Fortune Favors the Dead. The new book also introduces you to a wide range of circus characters and one or two of them may remind you of some of the people who appeared the late HBO series Carnivàle, but thankfully without all its weirdness.
In the first book, the author spends time introducing you to the main characters yet seems to still have space and time to include a good yarn. In Murder Under Her Skin Spotswood turns his writing intensity up to eleven and I’m not sure what that means: Was he over-edited in the first book or is he hitting his stride with these characters because there is not just a depth of feeling that leaps from these pages but also the style and language of his writing here makes reading this book a joy. I recommend that you start with Fortune Favors the Dead but then jump in with both feet into Murder Under Her Skin. You will love then and, like me, anxiously look forward to reading Book 3.
If you enjoyed today’s blog post and would like to buy Joe a cup of Earl Grey tea ($3.50), click here.