Reply #62: Well, art isn't everything (though it is important!)

[Spike89]

I do write both fiction and non-fiction and I agree with you 100% about art driven writing--it can't be about the money, but the money will come if you write for the art. However, my day job is as a service journalist. Basically, without false modesty or overblown self agrandizing, I work to dissemminate information to make the world better in some small way.

The reality and what I've learned to accept in my career is that most writing is not "art". It isn't fun. It is utilitarian, nitty gritty facts presented not for entertainment or even enlightenment, but simply ink put to paper because it is a step in the process. Sure, there is a stark art in every job, but editing peer-reviewed journals and books for a niche market is not creative. My market, teachers and school of education professors mostly, need the materials. They need the materials in the most useable and clear format. They need deep trust in the materials, trust that the editing and presentation is clear, even elegant. They need to know that these materials fit within the framework (factual and ideological) that they understand and expect from us.

My group advocates for the effective use of technology in education. We dissemminate both the results of academic study and research as well as books showing how to implement new teaching strategies and styles. Very little of what we publish would be readable by someone without a teaching degree, some is dense enough to stop any but the most jargon-savvy edcational theorist.

Quick frankly, a "good" selling book for us is a few thousand copies. To simply break even, we need to sell these books for a list price of $30+. We don't make a profit, we don't even try to pay prevailing wages. We publish because we believe teachers need tools and information to better teach our students and we believe it is important that that information come from teachers and others in education and not only from commercial vendors and publishers.

We are not unique, as I mentioned, most publishing in this country and the world is some form of service journalism. We may be able to edit, write, design, market, catalog, etc. without getting rich, but we do need to be paid or the work will not be done. Pirates kill that.