Writers Pimping for Commercial Success

Lately, I have been coming across the topic of writers pimping their work. Not pimping it in terms of dressing it up, but rather, selling out or compromising their work in order to increase its commercial appeal.

It’s an interesting quandary. Do you languish in some niche you love, or do you change your work, possibly even changing those bits you cherish and take pride in, those bits that make the piece truly yours, in an effort to achieve success? You could then ask yourself, what is success? Is it making money, or is it being proud and fulfilled by your creation? Is there a middle ground?

While reading Foreign Policy magazine (November/December 2009) the other day, I came across an interesting article by Chandrahas Choudhury called ‘English Spoken Here: How Globalization is Changing the Indian Novel’ which discusses the issue of Indian writers pimping their novels to the global market of English readers. Choudhury says “the Indian novel in English…often seems to sacrifice the particularities of Indian experience for a watered-down idiom that can speak to readers across the globe (page 96).” By translating from an Indian language (there are several) to English, the author loses “the specificity and charge of Indian life” and it creates an English novel that is “paler, weaker and more simplistic” which ends up being off-putting for Indian readers.

Therein lies the rub. Do you go for mass sales at the risk of alienating your local audience, the very people you are writing about? And if so, then is your writing still true? Because if it isn’t still true, your reader is going to know you’ve been pimping and quite possibly shun you. As Jessica Page Morrell says in Thanks, But This Isn’t For Us “Pimping also means you’re telegraphing to readers that your character’s lives and hearts don’t have value (page 94).” So, your efforts to reach that market could totally backfire on you, leaving you with nothing. Or to put it more bluntly: “Diluting your product to make it more “commercial” will just make people like it less (Hugh MacLeod, Ignore Everybody: And 39 Other Keys to Creativity, page 90).”

So where is the line? That thin line between being true to yourself, your characters, and your audience, and commercialism/success/making a living. MacLeod says “The most important thing a creative person can learn professionally is where to draw the red line that separates what you are willing to do from what you are not. Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring (page 64).” Ouch.

Where is you thin red line? Are you chasing a genre you aren’t passionate about in hopes of breaking into publishing and any market will do? Are you frolicking in novel-length poems that are likely to never see the publishing light of day? Where are you and why are you there? What is your intent?

But most importantly, are you happy? Do you enjoy what you are doing? If not, why are you doing it? Life’s short. Grab it by the horns and go for a joyride.

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