If you write a book and self-publish it, but no one buys it, are you considered a real author?
This is analogous to the “if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make any noise?” questions, but a little different. The forest is subject to physical laws.
Say a person writes a book, publishes it himself (or a publisher prints it). No one buys it. No one reviews it. It just sits there untouched like a turd on the tarmac.
Is that person an author? Does someone have to read your stuff in order to make you an author? Where is the line between a ‘writer’ and an ‘author’?
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12 Answers
The person is an author albeit an unsuccessful one.
They wrote the book so they are an author and a writer. There isn’t a line there. However, there is a line line around their success from a commercial perspective and possibly around the quality of their work.
If the book has limited readership, then they are not a successful author or writer from a commercial perspective. However, that might be a lack of marketing rather than an indication of their lack of skill as a writer. They might be a quality writer who hasn’t managed the marketing of their book.
Finally, the work may have been marketed but the writing was poor. So they are a writer with limited talent.
@marinelife, I would say the person is an author but an unpublished one. I believe a writer achieves success by writing anything, let alone a novel whether published or not. He or she may not make money on it but the act of having written it is worth something more important… self esteem.
E-books would be an option to self-publish, Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Lulu would be a paper option.
Could I say I know an author? Just saying . . .
Best of luck on your becoming the next F. Scott Fitzgerald.
@Pachyderm_In_The_Room – not sure I agree with the “self esteem” point. Some authors (and for that matter, artists in other genres) do their art for internal, self esteem, and similar motivations. Maybe that’s how you get started.
But I would argue that some authors (and other artists) are in it to make money – pure and simple – and don’t have any internal muse that is pushing them tell a story from the heart.
Wouldn’t you consider someone a painter who actually painted, regardless of his commercial success?
Don’t musicians write and play music, even if no one comes to the concert?
Are sculptors not actually sculpting unless their work sells?
It’s kind of a silly question, isn’t it?
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As far as I know, “writer” and “author” are more or less synonymous, aren’t they?
I would qualify “published” with “self published”.
@CWOTUS Yes. A painter is a person who paints. A writer is one who writes. A sculptor is one who carves.
You can define yourself by what you DO. Whether or not anyone else thinks you’re worth looking at or reading is a meter of popular success.
I can paint something, but there isn’t a soul out there who would consider it worth the canvas and gesso wasted. If it meant something to me, and still does when I look at it, I’m a painter.
I know many, many, many BAD writers (some have commercial success, God knows why) But, if you write, you are a writer. If you publish in any way, you are a published writer. If people like what you’ve written enough to shout “Author! Author!” then you’re one of those.
I think anyone who writes a book is an author by definition. Then you add adjectives or phrases to further define him/her: published; self published; successful; academic; of children’s books; lousy; stodgy; wonderful; unknown; of biographies; murder or mystery; etc., etc. These modifiers may be subject of discussion in literary circles.
@Pachyderm_In_The_Room It is an achievement to be sure, but not success as measured in the material world we live in.
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