Your books! Are they work, art or a product?

[Tonyonline]

As you peruse the various threads on this board you see people describe their books as work, art and a product.
After thinking about this (for a moment or two) I came to the conclusion that I could say, I work to create art that is sold as a product!
So it’s all three…right?

Well, yes and no! When I think about a book sale I think to myself, I want to sell my work for X amount…I don’t think, sell my art for…or product for…I suppose I could also think I don’t want to sell my labour for…
So! I think of my books as work.
Thinking of my books as art seems like something I don’t produce, to my mind that sounds a little too posh, but, calling them a product seems to cheapen them, at least to my mind…Maybe that’s it! How you think of your book is subjective, but then it would be, wouldn’t it?

So, just out of interest…How do you see yours?

[guest390]

While you're writing it's work, when it's finished it's art, when you put it up on Amazon for sale, it's a product.

[guest215]

 I consider mine work to produce a product, and it's up to the audience to decide if it's art.

[Maggie Ann]

None of the above. I'm merely putting my daydreams on the screen so it's not work and it's not art since I've been daydreaming since I was a kid. Amazon may consider my books a product, but I don't.

Brian, I appreciate your breakdown, but to me, it's just something I do.

[Simon Haynes]

It's definitely a product to me once it's finished. Until then, it's work.

Art is how I describe book covers, not books.

[guest390]

None of the above. I'm merely putting my daydreams on the screen so it's not work and it's not art since I've been daydreaming since I was a kid. Amazon may consider my books a product, but I don't.

Brian, I appreciate your breakdown, but to me, it's just something I do.

Actually, it's that too. It's really whatever you want it to be. I just said something I thought was clever. 

[Bill Hiatt]

It's all three.

The creative process is work, but what it creates is art, which is then sold as a product.

I'm not sure whether the mindset affects the final product or not. Shakespeare's work is now considered art, but there's little to suggest that he thought of it that way. People often consider films from the earliest days of cinema art, but so many of them were lost forever because the people who made them couldn't even visualize the possibility that anyone would want to watch a movie twice, let alone that movies might be art.

[Maggie Ann]

None of the above. I'm merely putting my daydreams on the screen so it's not work and it's not art since I've been daydreaming since I was a kid. Amazon may consider my books a product, but I don't.

Brian, I appreciate your breakdown, but to me, it's just something I do.

Actually, it's that too. It's really whatever you want it to be. I just said something I thought was clever. 

It was definitely clever. 

[Shoe]

Maybe that’s it! How you think of your book is subjective

Not if you have a clear mind. It's a book, sold as a product, which someday may be considered art. That last bit isn't really your call.

[PJ Post]

From a marketing perspective, books perform more like art than they do soap, just like music and paintings and sculpture and poetry. This is a fact of business with extensive documentation going back decades. The science, as they say, is in.

Calling our books Art isn't pretentious, it's just a fact of business - proper categorization. I know more than a few people would like me to shut up about this already, but the truth is that normal retail theory does not apply to Art. We have no idea why people like one thing over another - there are way too many variables to account for. This is why success is so difficult to reproduce; do everything exactly the same and still fail.

Books are literature, even the pulpiest of genre pulp, and literature is Art: MFA = Master of Fine Arts.

But as noted up-thread, books, no matter how artsy they may be, are also products if you intend to sell them. I prefer to explore the Art of it all, such as it is, during the 'work' portion of our program, and then figure out the best way to market it after that. Beyond the obvious, covers and blurbs, with the changes in the market over the last year, this has become increasingly difficult to figure out. 

[Lorri Moulton]

Mine are stories that I want to tell, need to tell or write because I think others will enjoy them.  Sometimes, all three. 

[Anarchist]

While you're writing it's work, when it's finished it's art, when you put it up on Amazon for sale, it's a product.

For me, it's a product at all three stages. (I'm non-fiction.)

[NCB]

Speculative and steaming mostly.

Later a disapointing figure on a website screen.

One day however

[Vijaya]

While you're writing it's work, when it's finished it's art, when you put it up on Amazon for sale, it's a product.

I was going to say all three but I love the way you put it.

[Tonyonline]

Calling our books Art isn't pretentious, it's just a fact of business

[Jo]

Work and art. A product to the retailers and shops.

[prolificwriter]

If they’re selling? They’re a product.

If they’re not selling? Art.

If they sell enough just to get by? They’re work.

 

[PJ Post]

This emoji is so cool. lol

[Rick Partlow]

The plotting is fun, the writing is fun.  The book is fun.  The marketing is work.

[Ghost5]

This emoji is so cool. lol

Right? The emoji game is strong with this one.

[elleoco]

My books start as daydreams, as Maggie Ann said. Stories I design in my mind to entertain myself. However, writing them out in a way that others will enjoy reading is work. Doing it well is IMO a craft, not an art. Books have always seemed like a thing to themselves, but I'll concede a book for sale is a product.

[wearywanderer64]

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Since nobody else wants to buy my book, I'm the only one who sees the beauty.

 

[Rob Martin]

While you're writing it's work, when it's finished it's art, when you put it up on Amazon for sale, it's a product.

^^This, 100%.

[Vidya]

So now Brian D Anderson left too? I see he’s now Guest390.

What’s going on? I don't read all the posts. Why are people suddenly deleting their accounts?

[Tonyonline]

So now Brian D Anderson left too? I see he’s now Guest390.
What’s going on? I don't read all the posts. Why are people suddenly deleting their accounts?

No idea. Maybe ask the question in the bar & grill.

[Anarchist]

So now Brian D Anderson left too? I see he’s now Guest390.

What’s going on? I don't read all the posts. Why are people suddenly deleting their accounts?

I can't speak for Brian. But I can give you my perspective.

If I had made thoughtful posts like Brian, ones that were clearly informed by experience, and received knuckle-headed blowback for my trouble (like Brian received), I'd stop making thoughtful posts.

Why waste the time?

In fact, that's why I usually hang in the Bar & Grill.

[Tonyonline]

No offensive to anyone but...

[PJ Post]

This is where I get into trouble. 

I don't know a nice way to say this, so I'm sorry, but our opinions don’t matter on this one. Consumers respond to books in the same way they do Art, which includes stuff like music and television and movies. They just do. It's not up for debate or personal conjecture. New writers really need to understand this point because it affects everything we do, especially when it comes to managing expectations. It's like ignoring color theory because we like gray. Our favorite color has nothing to do with the fact that different colors trigger different psychological responses in consumers.

At the end of the day, we’re selling an emotional experience. How do we mathematically quantify why some people cry when others yawn?

For simple proof, ask yourself why you like one genre over another? I can rationalize about it all day, but the truth is: I have no idea why I like what I like, I just do. Readers are the same way.

This phenomenon is literally the reason we say: your mileage may vary. For companies selling dish soap and lawnmowers and desktop calculators, their mileage varies practically not at all. The same actions typically provide the same results because, by and large, these are mostly fact-based purchase decisions. On the other hand, Art is way down at the other end of the spectrum, it’s all about emotion. And emotion is totally unpredictable.

I know I should probably just let it go, but it's one of those vitally important business fundamentals that might not be so obvious on the surface, and yet is central to strategic thinking, especially as the market continues to shift toward a pay to play dynamic.

eta: I think the discussion would be more beneficial if we could figure out a methodology to account for the emotional component (if it's even possible). Fashion, for example, is in the middle of the spectrum between facts and emotion, or rational and irrational consumer behavior. Fashion has a fact component, but it also reinforces self-perception, which is an extremely influential driver of consumer psychology.

[CoraBuhlert]

So now Brian D Anderson left too? I see he’s now Guest390.

What’s going on? I don't read all the posts. Why are people suddenly deleting their accounts?

I suspect it was because some posters disagreed with him on the big sellers thread and he got modded.

[Vijaya]

At the end of the day, we’re selling an emotional experience. How do we mathematically quantify why some people cry when others yawn?

For simple proof, ask yourself why you like one genre over another? I can rationalize about it all day, but the truth is: I have no idea why I like what I like, I just do. Readers are the same way.

PJ, your post reminds me of an excellent craft book by Don Maass: The Emotional Craft of Fiction. This business is subjective but gosh, the emotional response is what stays with us long after we close the book. I cannot always explain my own reactions but if they are strong, the book stays in my heart.

[Tonyonline]

I had to add this!
Last night I was watching Salvage hunters, (English pickers) except they go to lots of posh places like mansions and castles, anyhow they were on a Europe pick. So there they are in this German castle in the attic and among other "treasures" was a glass cabinet with some very tatty 17th century books in it, I think they were bibles of some sort.
The buyer turned to the seller and said "Wow, they're like little pieces of art, they'd be a feeding frenzy if they came onto the market"...I looked at them and thought, I wouldn't give you a thank you for them and, as for them being art...freak the freak off!

OK I get that the books are antiques but really, when does a cabinet full of old, ugly, worn out, tatty looking books, that I assume if you opened one of them, would fall apart, become art? I dunno...
(Yes the questions rhetorical really, beauty in the eye of, etc and it's all subjective, yadayada, but I had to have a little rant about it  )



 

[Hopscotch]

I'm waiting for the Nobel Prize Committee to answer that question for me.

[CoraBuhlert]

I'm waiting for the Nobel Prize Committee to answer that question for me.

Well, they're on indefinite hiatus for all sorts of nasty shenangigans, so you may be waiting a long time there. ;)