"I Want to Grow Up to Be an Advice Giver" — Said No Child Ever
Advice giving is a classic shadow career because it can earn you a living.
I’ve been recommending Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art ever since it was published. His follow-up, Turning Pro, is less well known but just as valuable, where he has a passage about shadow careers that’s haunted me ever since I read it.
Sometimes, when we’re terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. The shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us.
Are you pursuing a shadow career?
Are you getting your Ph.D. in Elizabethan Studies because you’re afraid to write the tragedies and comedies you know you have inside you? Are you living the drugs-and-booze half of the musician’s life, without actually writing the music? Are you working in a support capacity for an innovator because you’re afraid to risk being an innovator yourself?
If you’re dissatisfied with your current life, ask yourself what your current life is a metaphor for.
That metaphor will point you toward your true calling.
First, I’ll be honest: If I have a true calling, I have no idea what it is. There’s nothing I secretly long to pursue. Sure, I’d like to write a few things I don’t have time for right now, but if I die tomorrow, I have no regrets about my work.
Yet I never aspired to my current role as advice giver, especially in an industry where advice giving is populated more by profit seekers than by people who have writers’ best interests at heart. And that’s partly because writers are the easiest of targets. Tell them you’ll share the secrets of publishing success for the low, low price of $16,0001. Or tell them their work is wonderful, they’re a sorry victim of the traditional publishing industry, and you’re the one person who will ensure they get the attention they so richly deserve. Just sign this publishing services contract and fork over thousands of dollars in three installments please.
Scams proliferate when millions of people with little stomach for the hard work all have identical dreams of success in an industry as opaque as publishing. Every writer needs to thank the gods that Writer Beware exists and Victoria Strauss continues to have the good health and good will to continue it. And certainly one reason that does motivate me to continue in my current work is helping people avoid the terrible deals, the terrible treatment, and the terrible financial pitfalls that likely await them. Please come sit by me so I can reveal you’re like 99% of writers out there, someone who probably isn’t very special and isn’t going to make a dime off your writing. And that the only lucrative part of this whole industry is where you pay me to tell you how to be part of the 1%.
Any author or publisher who stumbles into producing a book about writing and publishing quickly realizes that such work is more profitable than just about anything else they might ever release into the world, and if you find that to be a sad commentary on book publishing today, well, yes. You understand exactly how I feel about the profession I’ve ended up in. It’s made me reluctant to charge high prices for anything; I want to keep things as accessible as possible while repeatedly and vociferously reducing people’s expectations.
Early on in my career, I jokingly referred to myself as “the dream crusher,” and at one time my tagline was something like “tough love with Midwestern friendliness.” It’s not that I want you to be demoralized about writing and publishing, but I absolutely refuse to sell you a bill of goods. The only reason to keep writing is because you take joy in the writing itself, that you pursue the game for its own sake.
Ever since I went full-time freelance in 2014, I’ve tried to move further away from the advice giving and more into what I desperately want to classify as reporting and education. Still, there’s no denying that my revenue comes largely from people who will end up paying more to support their writing career than they will earn from it. The only way I can defend this model is by being as honest and transparent as possible about the industry, and ultimately helping writers either save their time or save them from an even more expensive mistake than paying $25 for a class or $79 for a newsletter subscription.
None of this is unique to the writing and publishing industry. “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”—I’m sure you’ve heard that one. Or maybe you’ve observed office workers roll their eyes when the consultants come in to “innovate” or re-envision the business, then exit with a nice payday without experiencing the consequences of their recommendations. Consulting is just another form of advice giving at a higher price point for corporate clients.
Writers helping other writers is not morally suspect—quite the contrary. Selling books rarely pays the bills, and working writers are less likely to defraud a fellow writer (let’s hope), plus they often have in-the-trenches wisdom to share. And many share freely without asking for anything in return. As for me, I began working in the publishing industry as an editor, not a writer, and most damningly in the field of writing and publishing advice—Writer’s Digest. The brand’s activities sometimes generated cynicism and criticism from the community, and rightly so. I’ll never forget a company executive pushing his idea of a writing contest for which we’d charge a $1,000 entry fee for a chance at a book deal. (All we needed were 100 entries for an extra $100,000 in revenue in the fourth quarter!) When I suggested this contest was predatory, the executive’s response was that he knew lots of people who would happily pay that entry fee given the potential reward.
Before you think too well of me, monetizing hope was and always will be part of this business. I didn’t object to the many other contests we ran that were just as lucrative, generating nearly $1 million in revenue every year, with a profit margin beyond 80 percent. Entering these contests rarely did writers any good, even when they placed well. The grand-prize winner I took to New York in 2002 to visit agents? It was incredible fun, but that author didn’t get a book deal and I haven’t seen any evidence of her activity in nearly 20 years.
I’ll end on this astute observation from the former spokesperson and Director of Publicity and Media Relations for three decades at Knopf (Penguin Random House),
.I have the answer, Paul. The advice givers are making money.
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Thank you, Jane. I love the affordable virtual workshops you host. I’ve learned so much from your advice over the years.
Jane, I love this. What you’ve described is the real or at least most lucrative business model of the industry, selling services to aspirants.