We're All Authors Now

I spent this past weekend at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. As is custom, on Friday night there was a book-signing event for all the authors, both those invited to teach and speak as well as attendees whose work had been published. This was a tipping point year. For the first time, the number of authors sitting behind a pile of their books outnumbered the number of people looking to have those books signed. Such is the inevitable consequence of holding a book-signing at a writer’s conference in the age of self-publishing. It would be tempting to lament this imbalance, except that this imbalance is anything but. Rather, it is the recognition of what has always been the truth – that everyone has a story they want to tell and share with other people. With the rise of self-publishing, and blogs, and YouTube, and programs like Garage Band, we’re all authors and filmmakers and musicians now.

Fortunately, we are all readers as well. My boys often claim they aren’t interested in reading, though they spend most of their days doing just that, only on blogs and forums and wikis. The books I sold at the reading were sold to other writers who took a moment to climb out from behind their own stack. YouTube celebrities watch YouTube. Musicians listen to music. Entertainers, it turns out, want to be entertained.

I do not know how all this will shake down. Amazon currently boasts two million titles for sale, with more being added every day. With everyone promoting their latest $.99 title, social media can seem cacophonous with self-promotion. But I cannot believe that anything but good will come of people understanding that they have a voice and that it is worth using, that there is no true barrier to expression but the willingness to express. The gatekeepers were never real. They were servants of our own self-imposed silence, boogiemen born out of the secret hope and secret terror that one story or one life could ever matter more than another.

Write Within Yourself: An Author's Companion.

"A book to keep nearby whenever your writer's spirit needs feeding." Deb Caletti.

You can find Bill at: williamkenower.com