Transcription
Why don't people care about your writing? Because I know it sucks. To write something beautiful, to write a poem or a short story and hit that publish button and have zero people read it—I lived like that for over a decade. And today, I'm going to tell you guys why your vibe and your writing is producing no audience. We have brought mentalities on writing and publishing from the 19th century, from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, to 2024, and it is going horribly. Because most of you guys out there right now only have your family and your friends to read your stuff.
If you had your dream novel—let's say you had 8,000 hours in 5 years to write your dream book and it was the best thing ever and you had it in your hands—you wouldn't even know what to do with it anyway. And there are a lot of people in this situation who are great writers who have novels that are selling nothing on the Kindle graveyard, that are getting no backs from agents and publishers. And it's because of one mentality that I see nobody talk about here on YouTube. There are all the people on writing YouTube who flaunt, as like, "I'm an editor," and blah, blah, blah. "If you do this, you'll get published." Wrong. Then there are all the people that say, "You know, if you write Bigfoot erotica and market it the right way with Amazon ads, you'll make a lot of money." Also wrong. You already have everything that you need to be great, but you've been duped when it comes to what you think you should be doing as an author.
My name is Ian, and here on Right Conscious, I help authors like you build an audience so we can create a literary Renaissance—which is an educational and spiritual awakening created by authors like you publishing and awakening people in niche micro-genres. And today, I am taking one step closer to that realization by helping you with the biggest problem in writing. And so we need to start with the basics with literature and poetry, which is the three different types of books: There are entertaining books, like a booktok book like *The Song of Achilles*, mysteries, romances—a lot of genre stuff. Then there are literary books; we call them literary fiction—stuff like *Blood Meridian* or Toni Morrison, which hit the stylistic and narrative peaks. Then there are transformational works—something like *Infinite Jest*, among other books that can change your life. Because *Infinite Jest* helped me and hundreds of thousands of others overcome addiction and heal a lot of our family problems. You can't say the same about a lot of other books doing something similar. So there are books that transform; there are the literary heights; and then there are entertaining books.
But where are we objectively as a reading and writing community? Because this is something that people like to ignore, too. This is something that a lot of people here on YouTube don't like to talk about. There are 4 million new books published per year. And so, in let's say the last 6 years, there have been 25 million books published. Also, 98% of books published by major houses sell fewer than 5,000 copies. And so that means if you reach your dream, if you're published by Simon & Schuster, Random House, Penguin, Macmillan, HarperCollins, there is a 98% chance you will make less than $88,000 for your book when you look at royalty rates. If you sell 3,000 books, you are easily going to make only a couple thousand dollars for that. And so, does that sound like a good reality? Does that sound promising?
I've been a high school English teacher for the past seven years, and I've been on the battleground of the literary crusade. Unfortunately, literacy rates—people caring, caring about books—is also in decline. So are we just living in the end times? Is it over? Should we just try to find our little niche, sell a couple books, and call it a day? Or do we have the wrong mentality? Because there is a YouTuber named Wendygoon, and Wendygoon made a video on the book *Blood Meridian*, and at least 5 million people have watched that video, and he helped activate, I would say probably close to 100,000 readers—people who never read before—to go pick up one of the most literary books of all time and start reading. I have my criticisms of Wendygoon and his video, but he basically showed that there is an army of Manchurian candidates waiting to be activated, waiting for someone to make them care.
When you look at your actions, when you look at what you've done so far with your writing, with how you've presented yourself and your writing, why would anyone care? And it's really odd because when I look back at my old self, when I look back to two or three years ago when I would publish a short story or a poem, no one would read it. It would get zero views. And then, over time, maybe a couple views. And then I tell my family and my friends, "Be like, hey, go read this," and then it'd have 15 views. I'm like, "Yeah," but even though I've improved somewhat as a writer over the last three years, what's really changed is my mentality and what I'm trying to do with my writing. Because today, if I publish an essay, a poem, or a short story, within a week I could have over 10,000 people read it. But what I realized, and I hope you realize after this video, is that if you want that to be your reality, if you want people to care about your writing, then there is likely only one avenue for you to be able to do that.
Because I don't know what you're trying to write, so maybe you are trying to be a booktok author; maybe you were trying to write in the entertaining category. But the problem is is that most of you guys out there are too talented or have too big of ambitions—especially if you're watching this channel—to really fall in the entertaining category. And I'm not dissing on that, but in general, unless you were like a James Ellroy or a very nuanced Walter Mosley or something like that, most of the time it requires you to hold back a little bit, which is fine. But the other problem is, and this is going to come up in the literary fiction category also, is that to become good at this, you have to commit to it. You can't be an entertaining writer in some books and this great literary writer over here. You're going to have to commit to your camp for a while. Because when you look at Colleen Hoover and when you look at Sarah J. Maas and all the authors in that category, that's all that they do. They don't take breaks; they produce a book every single year that is entertaining and fun and can get a bunch of random 16-year-olds and 30-year-old bored housewives to go bananas. Or for mysteries, you know, a bunch of old men who are retirees to go crazy. And so there is actually a deep amount of craft within the genre and entertaining sections that you need to develop.
When you look at what those 4 million books that are published every single year—a lot of them fall into the entertainment category. And so to get into this, you are not only going to have to compete with everybody before you but also with everybody who is trying to get a deal with one of the big publishers because this is the most competitive field. I know plenty of women who I went to university with who were in my writing program who are trying to write YA fantasy and these things, and they are damn good writers. And so if you don't get picked up, and even if you do, you have a 98% chance of only making a couple thousand. But if you don't get picked up, then you are going to have to self-publish a book in the most flooded category, and that presents a couple problems that also come up in the literary fiction category. Because I'll lead from the front with this: but unless you get that publishing deal, most likely you are going to have to put $10,000 plus into your book for the cover, for proper editing, for proper formatting, and proper distribution if you even want to start to compete with the past people behind me.
Because when you try and write—and this is what happens to a lot of people—I know a lot of young authors who do this. They think, "Wow, I want to be like Cormac McCarthy; I want to be like William Faulkner or George R.R. Martin; I want to be the best writer." And there's a couple mentality shifts that they haven't learned yet, which is Cormac McCarthy and George R.R. Martin and even Murakami would put 5,000 hours plus into revising one of their novels. Yes, you heard me: 5,000 hours. Then they would have $10,000 or more spent on all the cover, editing, formatting stuff. And then after that, how many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on who it is, of marketing put into their work. So then I now want you to look at your writing and your journey as someone who's trying to write well, trying to write in the category and show everyone that you are a great writer. You are competing with everyone who's done this before and had teams of people behind them. And this—the same thing goes with the entertaining category—these authors have teams of people working on their stuff. And so I can assume that it's only you because it's not just their fiction; it's their short stories when they get published in a journal that is being edited. And most importantly, it was all built off of 5,000 hours plus of revision because that's what it takes. Because when people like McCarthy were writing, he would look to the people before him and be like, "They revised for 5,000 hours, and so I have to do that, too." And most people today can't even—they won't even spend a couple hundred hours writing their novel, and then they're like, "I'm done. I did a couple drafts; I did a little bit of revision; I revised all the words; rewrote some scenes; I'm good. That's all I can do." Because they're only putting in two or three hours a day a couple times a week. And if you think about the math of that, if you put in 10 hours a week, that's 500 hours a year, so that would take you 10 years. Most people don't do that, and so most people don't care about your writing for a couple different reasons.
Because, first of all, no one reads something as crazy as *Blood Meridian* on Substack, a lot of the time. First of all, very literary short stories are somewhat hard to read on a computer screen—hate to say it—but I never do it at a certain level of depth. I want to be reading the physical book because to be able to follow it, to be able to interact with it, I want to be able to read it in different places, be comfortable with it. And if I'm having to read it somewhere online where you've posted it for free, a lot of the time I'm going to lose focus, and I'm a very good reader, you guys. I'm not some doddering old fool who was just reading an article on Donald Trump or Kamala Harris on Substack and randomly sees your article, "Oh, what's this?" and starts reading. What do you think they're going to think? And so we have a big problem when we look at the past because you're competing with everybody; you aren't putting in enough work; you probably didn't have, unfortunately, the upbringing they did. People like Cormac McCarthy—parents who were professors—a very high IQ individual. Guys like David Foster Wallace and others who are very—who are famous in the literary fiction category. Toni Morrison was an editor for decades. William Faulkner went to an Ivy League school. And the market is shrinking. Literary fiction is actually now being read more by women than by men. And literary fiction has also been co-opted by politics. I'm not here to diss on the left and the right, but when you look at the university system and is—and the MFA system and publishing houses—they have been overtaken by leftist ideology. And I am not voting in this election; I don't care. I joke about the left and the right on this channel, but that's the truth of it. And so if you do not align with that vision, if you do not align with the standards or the quotas, then you are even going to have a harder time getting published. And if you do align, then good for you, and you know, go on ahead.
But what's also happened because of that—what's also happened because of the loss of meritocracy, because of diversity quotas, because of all the fellowships and MFA programs and all these writers that are being supported that aren't actually good—is that there has been a loss of trust in modern readership. Most of the time, I would rather read a McCarthy novel or a Faulkner novel than something that got released in 2024 because I can't trust publishing houses anymore. I can't trust the people who tell me, "Go and read this," because I've been burned so many times. I've read at least 50 books in the last five years that have been released in the last five years that have absolutely sucked, that weren't worth my time. They were decent, but there are 18th-century novels that are more—that are better. And and and the MFA system and the university system and diversity quotas have taught us are actually the main reason we have not learned to make people care. Because I was in the system; I was with my fellow—fellow writers I should say—who were getting fellowships, and I was always so confused because none of them were trying to build an audience. All of them were just trying to get to the end goal of becoming a professor and getting published by university presses and networking and doing these things to get published instead of making people care.
Cuz all these professors of creative writing who barely sell any books have never built an audience themselves of people who actually care about the writing. And that should be the number one thing that's being taught in university writing programs: how to make people care. What do you need to do? And I'm about to give you that advice right now. And so if you're going to write something that's entertaining or literary, you are going to be in a very crowded field, and most likely you are not putting in the work necessary to break through. It's harder than ever. And if you're going to self-publish in those categories, then it's also going to be really hard to get people to come to you because technically you'll have to beat a Cormac McCarthy or Murakami to make people care. Because if you place yourself in the literary category and are saying, "I'm trying to be a great writer; I'm trying to do mind-blowing things," then you have to live by the sword and die by the sword. And I personally, most likely, am not going to read your stuff cuz I have a to-read list that is verified.
And so we finally come to the last category, and as I'm sure you've realized, is the only real method that's guaranteed to create an audience that cares in 2024, which is the transformational category. And I cannot say enough good things about books that have changed my life. It's crazy. Everybody—I just told you that I'm literally wearing an *Infinite Jest* shirt right now that I made when I read *Infinite Jest* when I was 18. It helped me solve so many problems; it helped me get ahead of so many people in life. And I could say the same thing about so many other books. I can say that about Rilke's poetry. And Rilke even says it: to become a better writer, you must change your life. He literally says it in one of his most famous poems of all time. Mishima changed my life; Murakami changed my life and how I live on a day-to-day basis, how I treat people. And unfortunately, when it comes to the creator economy—to the writing economy—three different things always sell: wealth, health, and relationships. And that may be bizarre to think about, like, "Hm, how the hell is reading William Faulkner going to get me a girlfriend or make me more money?" But in actuality, it's what happens when you write something that's transformational. When I read *Infinite Jest*, and it helped me overcome my addictions, a lot of my family issues—that improved my relationships, that improved my health, and that improved my actual money—excuse me—my net worth in the world because I started getting my act together. I could say the same thing about hundreds of other books that are fiction or poetry. Maybe they didn't capture all three categories, but they helped me in one of those categories. I love *Blood Meridian*; I'm making a 100-hour course on it. It did transform my life and my mentality on history and on why humans are like actually not trustworthy and violent by design. It helped me, but it really didn't transform my life other than being like understanding how great writing could be, understanding the Southwest, but it didn't improve my health, wealth, or relationships.
And this—this is such an important point—because people that try to write in the entertaining category, most of the time are just trying to make money. They're scared and are just trying to make money, and they think that's the easiest path. Cool. Most people who are writing in the literary category and trying to be the best have an ego problem. When you look at Cormac McCarthy, he would tell you himself. When you look at even someone like David Foster Wallace, those guys had massive egos. When you look at William Faulkner and the others—whoever you think—most of the time they are not the most coy and shy individuals. Um, even throughout history, some writers are, but interestingly enough, the top of the literary category are always pretty hard-charged individuals. There are some exceptions. And most people want to write literary fiction; most of you guys want to do that because you have academic trauma. You want to show your family; you want to show everyone, "I'm the smartest; I'm the best; I can do it." But like I said, you—in actuality—you're not trying to revise your book for 5,000 hours, which is fine. To create a transformational book, you don't have to revise your book for 5,000 hours. But when you switch from the literary mentality—which is where all our programming comes from—the literary mentality is, "I am so good that I can send my stuff off to a slush pile, and it's going to be—it's going—people are going to like it, or I'm just going to be a starving artist, and no one's ever going to understand me." That's the mentality. But slush piles don't exist anymore. Everybody—as I just told you—the literary fiction market is down. Even if you do get a book published over there, you spend your 5,000 hours, most likely it will make you $5,000. And even more so—and this is the big question and idea of the day—why the hell would you even want to write something entertaining or literary? There's already enough out there, to God, you guys. There's already enough great novels that show us the peaks of how well—how well one could write—and you know, *Gravity's Rainbow* and all this stuff. It's already been done, and it's not guaranteed that you can do it, but it is guaranteed—I can guarantee you—that you can transform the lives of thousands of people even if you suck at writing.
I took a workshop class in university, and it was at the graduate level. I don't know who the hell this was when I knew that it was all—I was like, "Who the hell let this girl in?" She wrote a story about—from the mentality of a dog, and it was the worst-written thing I've ever seen. And in—and in it, she put even dialogue like, "Bark bark," and it was the most flat thing ever, and it was terrible, you guys. But even that girl—even her—her—she had the most bland face, bland personality—she could transform the lives of thousands of people. But if she tried to write something entertaining, if she tried to write something literary, she couldn't do it. We could dope her up on all the maple and ataral and psychedelics that you could find; we could get her on a drip IV forever—she cannot do it. And so are you willing—are you ready—to not just transcend your ego but transform yourself? Because if you publish a transformational book that transforms others, you're going to transform yourself. To write something like that, you are going to have to go through a process of realization, of growth. When David Foster Wallace wrote *Infinite Jest*, he had just gotten over a 12-year drug addiction and alcoholic binge where he was abusive—where he dropped out of college and like left a wake of—excuse me—a trail of destruction behind him. But writing that book helped him become sober; helped him reach the point where eventually he got off his final anti-depressant that sent him down the spiral that led him to committing suicide. When Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, and James Wright brought nature poetry—that was inspired by the Chinese wilderness poets—to the American scene in the late 1950s and 1960s, they transformed American poetry forever. People finally realized that poetry doesn't need to be self-confessional or this complicated mess; it can literally be about the axiomatic foundations of spirituality and life, which is nature. And they've transformed countless people and awakened them to nature. You can't say that about John Ashbery or John Berryman, who are great poets—probably even better poets than the poets I just named—but they were literary; they were just writing about the self and about these things at a deep level but not about transforming the self.
And what's mind-blowing, everybody, is that if you blow someone's mind—think about books that have blown your mind and changed your life—did you want to tell people about them? How do they make you feel? Those are the books you give to other people. I don't give *Gravity's Rainbow* to some random person who wants a book recommendation. I don't give a Nietzsche book to someone who wants to get into philosophy; I give them *The History of Philosophy* by Bertrand Russell or *The Story of Philosophy* by Will Durant cuz that is a transformational book. And so it is guaranteed that if you write—and what's funny, like I said about transformational stuff—is that you can produce it all the time. It—most of the time—comes from a deep intuition that combines with your intellect and with a nice degree of revision. You don't need a $110,000 editor; you don't need an $11,000 book cover. What you need is a consistent flow of transformation—whether it's poetry, fiction, nonfiction, or all three—and suddenly people are going to start caring about your work; people are going to want to engage with your work. And a falsity is is thinking that your literary work is actually transformational to be—because it's not—it's—I'm sad to say—and if it's online, it's really not. But I can read—I read transformational stuff online in blog posts or poetry or short stories all the time, and it doesn't phase me that it's on a computer because it's flowing; I'm feeling myself unravel.
And this is the only way that we are going to create a literary Renaissance; this is the only way that we are going to solve any problems that you guys love to complain about. "Oh, no one cares anymore." They don't care because no one's being—being transformed. Everyone's trying to write from the perspective of some marginalized voice today or doing this or doing that—doing this hack—instead of focusing on the most potent stuff. And if you guys want me to teach you for free on how to build your audience, how to write better, how to write more, I am launching a free writing school soon. You guys can see right here that I'm already building out each one of these categories. On launch day, it's going to have over 10 hours of content, all free for you guys. We're going to have writing challenges, writing contests, daily, weekly, monthly, all for free so that I can get your asses in gear because I need you guys to start moving. I need you guys to start putting transformational work in the thousands, tens of thousands of sub-niche categories out there because that is the only way this is going to work. You have a pocket of people who you can transform, and I already know how to do it. You literally know how because you've done it yourself. You are a certain type of person who's become a growth-oriented individual if you're watching this far, and you know how to talk to people like you just like I do. And instead of focusing on impressing some random jerk with the most literary thing—
Of all time, you can help people who you actually like change their life with fiction, with poetry, because I know that's already happened to you. So why not focus on that? Because it feels better; it feels easier to market. And also, that link to my free school is down below. It is launching on October 13th. Everybody, I have a hard launch date—once again, October 13th. And so, if you get on the waiting list now, now, then you will be alerted when it starts. So go get your account now, and you could be in there because, on day one, we're going to be starting off immediately with a contest that, if you win, will put your work in front of a ton of people immediately.
So anyway, I believe in you. I think you can do it. I think you need to do it if you are already this far in this video, because you understand that to achieve your writing dreams requires you to transform other people. This isn't the classic “you can sit in the Ivory Tower and write from above to the plebs.” No one's a pleb anymore; we're all yearning for growth, even the most ignorant people out there, and it's up to you to give it to us.
And if you can't do that—and I'm going to give you the strategies, I'm going to give you the tactics—if you follow my guid, if you follow what I, you know, and it doesn't have to be me, it can be someone else, but if you follow the program and no one cares, then that just means that you haven't done enough inner, inner work yourself. You don't really understand what it is to transform. And if you haven't done that, if you haven't become a person who has the ability to blossom into something better all the time, then why the hell are you trying to even speak to other people? Why not go work on that for a couple of years?
And that's why so many people go sit in the entertainment categories and the literary categories; they don't want to sit and understand that it actually takes years to become the type of person that can transform other people. Crazy. But shout out to all my soul jaws out there; we are on the literary crusade, starting now. There's going to be a lot more videos like this, giving you guys more specific tactics, but this is the philosophy, this is the mentality that we have to shift if we are going to be successful. There is no other way. So peace out, and I will see you guys very soon in the next video.