June 24, 2004
I Am a Whore

There are writers in this world, my beautiful children, who are very careful about where their work appears. They won't let just anybody publish them. Sometimes it's an issue of money—they want to be paid for their work. Sometimes it's politics—they won't let their work appear somewhere where the belief system differs greatly from their own. I don't judge them. You make your own decisions in this life, and if yours is that your delicate words are too precious to be plastered all over the universe, well, so be it. Me, I'm a whore.

You'd think I'd be holding out for big paydays, refusing to even lift my pen for less than five or six digits. This would certainly be true if people were lining up to pay me huge sums of money. This might even be true if people were occasionally willing to pay me huge sums of money. Since neither situation is the case, I've found that hard-line tactics don't really work very well.

Want to publish me? Please offer to do so. You don't necessarily have to pay me. I'll accept money, of course, but it isn't necessary. All that's necessary is your willingness to put my name on a page or a screen somewhere without me having to pay you. Web sites, Blogs, magazines, your family's holiday newsletter—it's all good, as long as it includes a byline, and maybe a token payment of some sort.

This might seem to be a counter-productive attitude. After all, I spend at least 50% of any given day bitching about having to work for a living, don't I? You'd think I'd be holding out for big paydays, refusing to even lift my pen for less than five or six digits. This would certainly be true if people were lining up to pay me huge sums of money. This might even be true if people were occasionally willing to pay me huge sums of money. Since neither situation is the case, I've found that hard-line tactics don't really work very well.

You see, I'm on a very low rung on the writer ladder. I'm not Stephen King, who sells a million copies of his worst trash. I'm not someone like Jack Kerouac, who's so well regarded people who passed him the street can publish books based solely on the strength of that association. I'm unknown, for the most part. If I were to stop writing today the vast majority of the world would never even noticed that I'd started; as a result the pay is pretty low. I've had a couple of four-digit paydays, but they are sadly long gone, absorbed via bottles of beer and handfuls of Cheetohs.

All writers go through the Various Stages of Jealousy, of course. When you're just starting out and have three sloppily written short stories, all based on the works of O'Henry, in a battered notebook, you dream of just being published, and are insanely jealous of any writer who's had their name in print. Then, you get your first few 'sales' in non-paying markets, small zines or APAs or whatever, and the thrill of merely having you name in print fades, and you glance up the ladder and become insanely jealous of anyone who's been paid—however slimly—for their work. Then you sell a story or two for a few bucks each, and you look up again, and think everything would be great if only you could publish a novel, and once you publish a novel you start thinking about making real money.

Through it all, I think it's always a good strategy to get your work out there. Lord knows you never know who's reading that zine or web site, and I'm personally always haunted by the thought that this person requesting permission to run one of my works will be the last person to ever make such a request. Since I'm not exactly stretched thin by the demands for my writing services, I don't see the point in being coy: I want people to read what I write. To do that, I can self-publish—which can be expensive, exhausting, and disappointing—or I can seek out every opportunity to put my words in front of eyeballs. In short, I don't feel like I have the luxury of being picky about where I publish, not yet. Let's face it, while I believe my work has value, and the effort I put into my work deserves compensation, the fact is, you cannot simply decide on a price for something. This is a mistake a lot of DIY publishers and indy types make: They think that just because their time and energy is worth something, people will pay them what they think their work is worth. That's not true. People will pay what they think a work is worth, regardless of how much effort you put into it.

While there's something to be said for valuing your work, you have to be practical: Assigning monetary values to things no one wants to pay for is just pointless. On the other hand, ubiquity has its own value: Sometimes just being out there enhances your chances of actually selling something. People tend to trust markets: The assumption usually is, if you're being published, you must be good, and vice versa. This is not true, of course, but a lot of consumers think that way—even I think that way sometimes, without realizing it.

So, having your work appearing in magazines, on web sites, wherever--even if no one actually reads them--often means you're perceived as a legitimate, successful artist. I'm not saying you have to be making gads of cash in order to be a legitimate writer—that's silly. But the good people who might possibly purchase a book by you often do think that way. Giving them that impression can help—and having your name out there, getting web hits and garnering reviews in periodicals, can't hurt.

And finally, let's consider my untimely death.

Money's nice and all, but really, who the fuck gives a shit about it? It pays the bills, keeps me from drinking antifreeze while sleeping in a box in the back lot of a 7-11, but otherwise it's meaningless and I don't have the energy to pursue it. What I really is to be remembered. For my writing, if possible, but I'll go all Charlie Manson on ya if the whole writing thing starts to look shaky.

Towards that end, I want my name everywhere. In zines, on web sites, in literary magazines, newspapers, police reports, Presidential memos—everywhere. When the future Proto-Ape Archaeologists dig up the faded remnants of our society, I want one of them to decipher my name in a Punk Planet review from 1999. I want future cargo cults of primitive human survivors of the coming atomic wars to worship me as a god after finding a crate of Lifers turning to mold in a crate somewhere.

Whatever pathetic amounts of money I manage to earn in my lifetime won't matter. No one will ever know, and you can't take it with you. I'd love a big hunk of change so I can quit my job, but a mansion and begin persecuting the lower classes, but all I really care about is leaving behind a legacy. And getting my name out there in true whore fashion is the best way I can think to accomplish that.

So let's all put my name in things! Come on, it'll be fun! Just seed my name, Jeff Somers, into everything you publish. It'll be like a big, cool meme, and eventually journalists will notice and begin running stories like "Who in the World is Jeff Somers?" and I will grow large with success, forget all of you, and start acting like the huge, arrogant jackass I know I could be if given half a chance.

Thank you, for your support.

E-mail me your outrage here.

Jeff