No matter how well a person writes, a successful book is a team effort involving many, many people.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Writing a book is very personal. It's a very personal relationship. A book will start with something as simple as two men talking about work. That gets the fire going. Sustaining that fire is the hard work. It takes attention and empathy to hone the characters.
I know that books seem like the ultimate thing that's made by one person, but that's not true. Every reading of a book is a collaboration between the reader and the writer who are making the story up together.
My books have occasionally been of mixed success. It's not like I have gone from triumph to triumph. I have had a couple of books do very, very well and a couple do very, very badly.
As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them.
Writing a book is usually a full-time job that takes years. I didn't have years. So I decided to crowdsource content for the book.
I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort.
The whole purpose of writing a book is to be understood - if other people write about you, they try to guess why you did things, or they hear things from other people.
When you write a book for publication, you're writing it for other people to read.
For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.
With a book, you're guaranteed the audience has a certain skill level and that the audience has to make an ongoing effort to consume this product and that the project is being consumed by just one person at a time. I really want to play to that strength because it's one of the few advantages books still have.