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The Ego in Writing
March 4, 2025Years ago, a forty-something friend went to an open workshop at his local library. This friend had been heavily published, worked as a writing mentor, and knew as much (if not more) about writing than most people in the industry.
He said he was petrified as he handed in his work. He was worried what people would say.
Then somebody else came in – a twenty-year-old who handed in his piece, and behaved so cocky he was bordering on arrogance.
My friend didn’t get it – how could he be so afraid of what the workshop would say when somebody with an iota of his experience was so confident?
It puzzled me for a while. Why such different attitudes? Surely the writer with all that experience and skill should be cocky, and the inexperienced writer should be insecure. That’s how it would work in any other field.
But eventually I realised the weird dichotomy at work.
The inexperienced writer knows very little. They’re confident in their writing to the point of obliviousness. Often, they just don’t know enough to see that there might be problems with their writing.
My friend, with all his experience in the industry, knew not only what might be wrong, but that there might even be stuff he hadn’t considered.
Writing’s a strange craft where the more you improve, the more experience you gain, the more insecure you grow.
That’s not such a bad thing, though.
Especially in dealing with feedback.
As much as that fear and insecurity might terrify us, it can – and should – drive us to improve.
It’s worth seriously considering every bit of feedback we receive. We don’t have to take it on, although if we do reject it, we need to measure whether we have a valid argument for rejecting it, or we’re rejecting it out of ego because we want to protect our own self-image.
As an aside, when we receive feedback, we don’t have to consider it literally. For example, a feedbacker might comment on a particular plot point. Now we might acknowledge there’s a problem, but instead come up with a different way to remedy it.
There’s a beauty in revision that opens boundless possibilities – ways to not only improve our work, but our skills as a writer.
So when it comes to writing, sometimes we have to put our ego to one side.
And ride the fear to something better.
Books Don’t Sell Themselves
February 25, 2025Too often in publishing, we encounter authors who think their job is done the moment their book is printed.
Then they come back in a year’s time to find they’ve only sold a handful and don’t understand why.
How are people going to know that your book exists?
Have you been in a bookstore? Have you seen the thousands of books you’re competing against?
Have you been on Amazon? Have you seen the millions of books that are all vying for the consumer’s attention?
Now I’m sure there’s some exception in the world where the author did zero promotion and, somehow, their book sold.
But that’s what it is: the exception.
The reality in this industry is that you have to create awareness for your work, as well as for yourself as an author.
The industry is more competitive than ever. With self-publishing growing increasingly accessible, with ebook publishing becoming as easy as uploading a Word document, you’re in a market that’s not necessarily saturated, but flooded.
Authors expect that their publisher has some magical marketing formula, but they don’t. They’ll do marketing within their own circles – that’s something else to keep in mind. Just how big are their circles? Just how many people are they hitting up?
Also, consider this: take a big, big multinational publisher who are releasing X amounts of titles a year. Do you think every one of them is a hit? No. Most will sell moderately, or underperform. So even with their big marketing departments and all their money, even they find it impossible to manufacture hit after hit.
This is why it falls more and more on the author to be their own best fan.
Think about ways to promote yourself. Try get book reviews. Pitch yourself to podcasts. Do social media. Think laterally.
Years ago, we saw Matthew Reilly give an author talk at Eltham Library. Reilly talked about how he would sit on a bus with his first book – a self-published title – and pretend to read it, making appreciative noises. He held the book splayed open, so everybody could see the title and cover.
Did it work for Reilly? Who knows how much it contributed to building his author brand?
But it shows somebody applying some innovative thinking to getting themselves out there.
You need to do the same.
Don’t expect it to happen.
Make it happen.
No Guarantees
February 18, 2025
There are some real sharks out there in the world of self-publishing.
I’m a writer – and have been for almost forty years. Kev Howlett, the owner of Busybird Publishing, has been a photographer and illustrator for just as long. His wife, Blaise van Hecke (who formerly ran Busybird Publishing until her unexpected passing), was also a writer.
We’ve always treated the prospective client the way we’d expect to be treated.
We’re not corporates. Anybody who’s visited us can attest to that. We’re laid back, the place is relaxed, and a big, bumbling blond Labrador greets you at the door.
But there are others out there who only care about making a buck. They will flatter you outrageously, stroke your ego, and fill you with unsupportable claims.
Take Shawline Publishing, for example. A Ballarat self-publisher, they went belly-up last year. The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC wrote articles calling into question the practices of their CEO.
One of Shawline’s promises was to build you into a “midlist author”.
Great claim. Genius, really. Promise bestsellers, and it sounds too fantastic to be true. But midlist? Well, that doesn’t seem that out of reach, does it?
Is it manageable, though?
Uh uh. And that has nothing to do with you, the author.
The reality is there are big multinational publishers out there with marketing departments that, despite their best efforts, can’t build their authors into “midlist authors”.
We can’t control these things because we can’t control the consumer, the market, or what the trends are at any given time. You might’ve written a fantastic horror story about werewolves, but just a week earlier a werewolf story came out and captured the market. Or tastes might’ve morphed into romcom.
Anybody who makes you a promise that they can guarantee any level of success is outright lying. They can try. That’s different. But they have no control over the outcome. This isn’t Facebook marketplace.
If there was a formula to this, then publishers would have hit after hit after hit.
They don’t.
We had a situation a couple of years ago where we spoke to a young author about his nonfiction book. I read a few chapters and gave him some honest feedback. He went elsewhere, where they told him his book was fantastic and it just needed to get out onto the market. Six-thousand dollars and eighteen months later, he has no book.
Now this blog isn’t an attempt to exalt us, and condemn everybody else. It’s simply to warn you to be careful. Whoever you’re dealing with, ask questions. Check websites, like Writers Beware for any red flags.
If somebody’s selling you a scenario that sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Most importantly, keep all your rights and royalties. If you’re self-publishing, there is no reason to surrender even a single percent of these, unless the self-publisher is selling your book directly. But even in this case, they should only be garnering commission from the books they’re selling.
The writing life is tough enough already – some people will call that outlook pessimistic. But it’s true. It’s hard. You can have every confidence of success, you can believe in yourself and your work, and I commend that. You need to nurture that self-belief.
You need to persevere, to push and push and push, to give yourself every chance of succeeding.
Just know there are no guarantees, and anybody who tries to tell you different isn’t being honest.
Stepping Into Genre Fiction
December 24, 2024The past few years of my life have been spent knee-deep in a literature degree. Countless hours have been dedicated reading and studying literary fiction, from Wilde to Woolf to Joyce. I’ve read the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth and the poetry of her brother, William. Poring over research and formulating theses to turn into essays, literary fiction has consumed me in a manner that genre fiction has been unable to in recent years. That was, until Busybird came into my life around the same time that I began taking a class called ‘Popular Fiction.’
This class aimed to challenge the preexisting standards of the academic setting in which it was housed and posed the question of why popular fiction is often seen as unworthy of being studied in the way that literary fiction is.
Literary fiction is often laden with allusions and language that assumes a mass of existing knowledge, isolating those who can’t engage with these texts. Historically, these people who were isolated were often women, as these literary texts were aimed at an audience of educated, upper-class men, while popular—and often serialised—fiction that lacked these same allusions was relegated to those seen as lesser, relegated to women.
Approaching the topic through a critical lens, ‘Popular Fiction’ drew on genre fiction spanning from 1862 to 2023, including romance, science-fiction, mystery, and fantasy. These texts have allowed generations of readers to experience the wit of Sherlock Holmes, the allure of vampires, and the threat of apocalypse; all from from the safety of their homes. Contrary to literary fiction’s aim to promote deeper consideration of the world in which we live, genre fiction allows, if you so desire, an escape from this world altogether.
This, however, should not allow genre fiction to be discredited. Just because a text explores ideas not of this world does not mean that it does not also speak to the world we know.
Take, for example, “A Scandal in Bohemia,” the first short story in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. This story allows Arthur Conan Doyle to explore the way that gender informs, and is informed by, masculinity and femininity. When Irene Adler outsmarts Holmes, the text positions itself as calling into question gendered expectations of the time, placing this popular text in the realm of social commentary, if the reader chooses to engage with it as such.
Although, unlike literary fiction, the story stands on its own without the need to read with a critical lens. It is welcoming and lets the reader in without judgement.
Stepping into the world of Busybird, I felt strongly that authors were given a similar safe space to explore their ideas and challenge themselves to tell the stories that they would want to read. At Busybird, there is value seen in every story, whether it is a family history or a young adult fantasy, and all are treated with the same respect.
As a reader, I have always been familiar with popular fiction. It’s what I first read as a child and what I have continued to read alongside literary texts. As a student, this class was a new world that I was stepping into. Approaching popular fiction with the same regard that institutions give to literary fiction and transferring my critical lens from one to the other challenged my skills of analysis and engagement. It proved that popular fiction can fill not just a market for those seeking entertainment but also one for those seeking a challenge.
Coupling my time in this class with my time at Busybird, it is clear to me that there is undeniable value in telling stories regardless of their supposed esteem. Value not just for readers, but for authors, too.
Jo O’Connell
Editing Intern
Learning and Growing
December 17, 2024“You need to write a blog. It can be about anything.”
Those were the infamous words spoken, yet I still didn’t know what to write. I went through many examples and tried to come up with ideas, but nothing.
So as I stared at a blank page, the emptiness of it haunting me, an idea finally came: I decided to write about my experience and the environment here at Busybird.
It has not been what I had expected.
From the moment I walked in on the first day, being greeted by Oscar the Labrador at the door to walking through the shelves of books aligned on the walls, it is a chill and inviting environment.
And of course, how could I forget about the iconic 80s tunes playing in the background? Every now and then Les would ask me, “Who sings this?” to which sometimes I would respond with the right answer, but other times I would undoubtedly get it wrong and respond with, “Oh yeah I’ve heard this song before, but I’m unsure who sings this”, much to the horror of Les and Kev.
I didn’t know that studying 80s music was a requirement of the internship. Even though I have heard my parents listen to many of these songs, some of the names just never come to me.
Oscar the blond Labrador is a calm dog and very friendly, although Les constantly proceeds to call him a “doofus” and a “fiend”. It’s just his way of expressing his love for the dog, I guess. Oscar doesn’t seem phased by it. Most of the time Oscar just sits around and wants food.
The place is very bright with light coming in through the windows. There are many different items around, different plushies, pictures of Kev’s past travels, pictures of Oscar, Hawthorn footy memorabilia. (Kev is a big Hawthorn supporter), published books and posters.
Kev and Les always offer everyone a tea, coffee and maybe even a sweet treat. Everyone at Busybird is friendly and chatty.
I have learnt a lot so far here as an intern. My knowledge of editing, proofing, design and the publishing industry have expanded. I know that there is still much to learn and as I continue to learn and grow, I know that this is an experience that I will not forget.
Many thanks to Les and Kev.
Cristina Sirianni
Editing Intern