The Author's motives
Immortality, egoboo and cash
I exhort you to buy the book. Why?
Immortality
people write because they want to be remembered forever. How they intend to enjoy their eternal fame frankly escapes me and I don’t think they still enjoy the fruits of their royalties. By accident or design lots of writers have gained that literal form of immortality so I often wonder who’ll still be read in the future. Not me, I’m thinking.
Anyway, on a more pressing timescale, increased book sales may help the story become an animated movie so please buy, do buy. And often.
Before the 2nd edition displaces the wonderfully rare 1st edition. Collector’s item for sure. Oops, too late.
Cash
It costs about $250,000 to successfully poke the innards of human cells to find out what makes them tick too much or tick too little.
Like most folk, I have a personal interest in seeing cancer research de-code the chemical mechanisms of cell reproduction and I'd like to chivvy it along with a big fat donation.
However, divide word count by income and most writers work for about a Planck dollar per word - that’s $1 x10-34, the smallest possible unit of currency so I don't think book sales will cut it. Perhaps making an animated film will.
(The exceptions to low-paid writers are copywriters and kidnappers. They used to say the only way to make more money than writing in the ad biz was writing ransom notes. Back in 80s, a “Seymour” - named after a famous copywriter famous for earning a lot of money - was a unit of salary in excess of 100,000 quid.)
Given that my story’s about domestic dirt, I take a mote of reassurance from the old Yorkshire saying “Where’s there’s muck, there’s brass.”
Egoboo
The pleasure received from the approbation of people whose work you admire. The dirty little secret of needy writers, meaning me. I have to admit I’d be tickled pink if JK Rowling or Philip Pullman liked my story.
Personal validation - that’d almost be better than money – but money can’t earn it, only good work and the approval of others can. It’d be grand not to be fraught by self-doubt for a minute or two. If it were a toss-up between cash or egoboo though, I’d take the money and call for my chauffeur.
I recall reading about Mandy Patinkin being reduced to tears when he first saw The Princess Bride. He was so surprised and pleased to 'have done something good.' There's a rare delight in producing something good and lasting, something you and the people you work with can be proud of. That's a good goal, maybe the only goal that really counts.
Fun
It’s a lot of fun to let your imagination off the leash but it’s an odd sort of fun. I used to tell my reluctant copywriting students that writing is the mental equivalent of hard physical labour.
