Writers In The Storm: Publishing Choices

Traditional…POD…Indie – OH MY! Publishing Choices, Part 2 by Susan Spann is the best and clearest explanation I’ve yet read about authors’ options in this new era of publishing. 🙂

The above post is from the Writers In The Storm blog.

My post about the Tattered Cover Press.

Stephenie Meyer is a great writer

Yes, this is a April Fool’s day post. But Stephenie Meyer is a great writer, no joke. And not just in the sense of selling a lot of copies and raking in the dough.

Only a great writer could have made the powerful connection Stephenie Meyer made with her audience. Bella Swan, Meyer’s unrepentant Mary Sue, became the Mary Sue for millions of young readers around the world. Her success, and consequent repeated criticisms about her skills as an author, demonstrates once and for all that a great storyteller may not even be a “good writer” (in technical terms). Irony, thy name is Twilight.

Stephenie Meyer also inspired thousands of writers to craft their own tales. “Breaking Dawn” had its fair share of good moments. The ending, to me, wasn’t one of them. Upon closing the back cover, I thought, “I could write something better than that.”

Three years later, I have written something “better than that”, in my humble opinion. Of course, “better than that” is subjective. Dewey-eyed adolescent girls and Kardashian-istas won’t think my book is better than Twilight. In contrast, rebellious adolescents and avid fantasy/sci-fi readers (aka: my target audience!) are eagerly awaiting an “anti-Twilight” to come along and blow some cobwebs off the vampire genre.

I don’t define “better than” to mean “more popular than”. Neither does my target audience. 😀

I’ve read countless numbers of books for decades on end, never once inspired to craft my own, until Stephenie Meyer motivated me to get in the chair and type. For this alone, I will be forever thankful to her. And if my novel becomes a huge success, my fans (many of whom would be pre-disposed to hate Twilight) would ironically have to thank her for inspiring me. 😈