Being an author today means more than writing the book

On Sept.16, I had the pleasure of participating in the Local Author Festival at the Kawartha Lakes Public Library in Lindsay. I was there with a wonderful group of local writers, including Katherine Ward, Cathy Hamill-Hill and Sharon Overend, and I came away from the afternoon thinking about something I don’t believe we talk about very often: just how much it takes to be an author today.

First, I want to give credit to the Kawartha Lakes Public Library for creating an event specifically to showcase local authors. Libraries have always connected readers with books, but events like this do something more. They connect readers with the people who write them, while giving writers an opportunity to meet one another, talk about our work and learn from each other.

Writing is, by its nature, a solitary activity. We spend an extraordinary amount of time alone with our thoughts, our research and our words. Even when we are writing about people, relationships or the world around us, the actual work of turning an idea into a book usually happens quietly and privately.

That can make events like the Local Author Festival surprisingly important for writers themselves.

I was the lone nonfiction writer among the authors gathered at the festival, so I had an opportunity to hear about a very different world of writing from my own. I saw the professionally laid out tables of my peers and learned about how they publish their books, find readers and approach the business side of being a writer. I have been writing and publishing for many years, and I still came away having learned things from my fellow authors.

Perhaps that is because being an author has changed so much.

We don’t normally think of writing as an entrepreneurial profession. There is still a romantic image of an author writing a manuscript, handing it to an agent or publisher and then going back to work on the next book while someone else takes care of everything required to get it into readers’ hands.

For most writers today, that simply isn’t the reality.

Whether you are traditionally published, independently published or somewhere in between, authors increasingly have to understand the business of books as well as the writing of them. You need a website, or at the very least a good webpage where readers can find you and your work. If you self-publish, you may find yourself learning platforms such as Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, making decisions about formats, pricing and distribution that once belonged almost entirely to publishers.

And then there is marketing.

For many writers, this may be one of the biggest stretches of all. You need to understand social media well enough to let people know your books exists. You need to cultivate a following, have a presence on BookBub and other author sites. And then, after spending months or years quietly creating something and suddenly you have to stand behind a table, talk to strangers, explain why you wrote it and put yourself and your work out there.

That takes confidence. It also takes persistence, because there are now more ways than ever to publish a book and, as a result, an enormous number of books competing for readers’ attention.

What I would love to see is local author events becoming the kind of community outing that art shows and craft fairs already are. We think nothing of wandering through a local market, talking with an artist about a painting, asking a potter how something was made or discovering a craftsperson whose work we have never seen before. There is something wonderfully personal about meeting the person behind what has been created.

Author events offer the same kind of experience.

You can wander from table to table, discover books you might never encounter online or in a large bookstore, and have a conversation with the person who actually wrote them. Sometimes the story behind the book is every bit as interesting as the book itself, as I found out myself yesterday.

That was one of the things I enjoyed most about the Local Author Festival. I went there to share my own books, but I also came home knowing more about the writers in my community and the work they are creating.

I hope events like this continue to grow, and that more people begin to see them as another way to spend an afternoon enjoying and discovering local talent. For writers, who spend so much of our working lives alone with the page, having people show up to meet us and take an interest in what we have created makes the experience of being an author feel a little less solitary.