Worth the Risk

Welcome to the blog! You might be eager to know who won the Shadowfell series. If that statement confuses you, check here and here for the interview with the always gracious author of the Shadowell series, Juliet Marillier. Book 3 debuts on Feburary 25 in Australia! (The U.S. debut is July 9. Check Juliet’s website for more details.)

                     

                             

Without further ado, the winner is . . .

Sue Knight!

Congrats, Sue! To prove you’re a real person and not a Spambot, please confirm below, then email me at lmarie7b(at)gmail(dot)com to provide the email address attached to your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, or other eReader, and the country in which you live, since that will determine to which Amazon I will head. Because these are highly coveted books, if you haven’t at least confirmed by the end of February 25, I’ll have to choose another winner. Thanks again to all who commented.

On with the subject of this post (and it is a fitting one, since I was just discussing a great author like Juliet): blockbusters.

Um, I don’t mean these . . .

The other day, while reading the March 2014 issue of Game Informer, I stumbled upon a discussion of blockbusters in an interview Matt Helgeson conducted with Anita Elberse on her book, Blockbusters. Who’s she? I didn’t know either until I read the article. (I didn’t read the book.) She’s a professor at Harvard Business School and a marketing expert.

One of Anita’s comments jumped out at me:

[I]n order to be successful, it is probably best for content producers to make blockbuster bets. They should spend a disproportionate part of their budget on what they see as a handful of the most likely winners. But, the alternative strategy also feels intuitive to many people—a strategy in which content producers say, “It’s so incredibly hard to predict what’s going to work in the marketplace, we’re going to make a larger number of smaller bets and spend our resources equally. Then we’ll see what sticks in the marketplace.”

While Elberse’s statements might inspire a “Duh” from you (or not), they emphasize what I already guessed: participation in the entertainment industry is a gamble no matter what. As Elberse later said, “It’s incredibly risky to make entertainment products in the first place.”

Many experts try to find ways to predict whether a book, videogame, or a movie will be a blockbuster. Don’t we all wish we had a golden formula that would guarantee a product’s success, especially if that product is ours?

While reading the interview with Elberse, I felt discouraged at first. The discussion of blockbusters led to thoughts like this: How on earth do I make my book blockbuster worthy??? and Arrrrrggggggghhhhh! Such thoughts in the past have resulted in my uttering, “What’s the use?” followed by a period of non-writing. I hurt myself once by a three-year, no-writing decision. So this time, I decided not to try for such a needle-in-a-haystack goal as producing a blockbuster (and no, I don’t know the steps for doing so), and instead shoot for a measurable goal: quality. I can produce the best book within my power to do so. Maybe that’s your goal too.

I don’t need an expert to tell me that life is “incredibly risky” at times. If you don’t believe that, take a look at the statistics for traffic accidents. (Then again, maybe you don’t want to see them.) Does the risk of an accident mean I should stop driving like I stopped writing? Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? The risk factor actually spurs me to work toward being a better driver. I can’t control what another driver does. I can only do my part to ensure safety on the road. Such is the case whenever I read articles on the search for the next blockbuster. I can only do what I can do to make myself a better writer.

Theories about how to produce the best product always will abound in times of economic hardship. Such theories might tempt us to panic or doubt our ability to produce anything anyone else might want to read. But we have to believe that what we produce is worth the risk of producing it. Like many other things, producing it begins with love. Do I love what I’m doing enough to keep making the effort to do it, despite setbacks?

Are you willing to take the risk? Do you agree with Elberse, or do you have your own “blockbuster theory”?

Quality, like this hamster, is only a step away . . .

Helgeson, Matt, “The Blockbuster Rule.” Game Informer March 2014: 14-15. Print.

Blockbuster logo from telegraph.co.uk. Blockbusters cover from Goodreads. Game Informer logo from gameinformer.com/blogs. Cat from LOL Cats.