In this post, I will talk about the two problems that led me
to the decision 100% of my ebook earnings to support a charity:
My first
problem:
Whenever I was 18, I read The Stand by Stephen King. I was blown
away. I had read a number of novels before, but this was the first that I truly
loved.
To give you
some background, I had an entire year of writing under my belt when I began
reading The Stand. I had started
writing over 10 novels at that time, but had only written one through to
completion. I had already decided that I would be an author: I believed that I
had aptitudes that, if nourished, could result in work that people would
appreciate. But, I wasn’t good enough yet. I often found that I wasn’t
finishing the novels because I didn’t know what would happen next. Your
imagination is like a muscle, and mine still had a lot of growing to do. I
didn’t understand how stories were supposed to flow, and I didn’t know what
magic elements made people entertained by fiction.
I read The Stand like a ball rolling down a
hill. The more I read, the faster I read. I found that I had a deep, genuine
care for the characters, and an overwhelming desire to know what would happen
next.
It wasn’t just that I was reading a
good book; I was using the novel to escape some things that were happening in
my life. Reading is a safe place. You can go home, and whether you’re bullied,
or divorced, or dying, or don’t have any friends, or are on top of the world,
the book will treat you the same, and you can enjoy it just the same.
I was at a Chinese food restaurant
a couple of years ago in Denton, Texas, and I saw a man come in, holding a
paperback. He had called in a to-go order, and he sat down on a bench in the
front, reading his novel. He sat by himself, and when he had to talk to the
host to explain that he had called-in an order, he was painfully shy. I saw
that he didn’t have a wedding ring on. He was wearing stained sweatpants, and a
t-shirt over his protruding belly. His face wasn’t shaved. He had glasses on.
His food was brought to him, and judging by the containers, it was just enough
for one person. He would be eating alone. I didn’t know the man at all, but I
began to construct a model life for him in my head. I imagined that he worked
from home, online, and would go weeks without having a face-to-face
conversation with another person. I imagined that he was painfully alone, and
sad, and depressed, and that he didn’t know how to fix his problems. But when
he went home, he had his novel to disappear into. I felt a lump in my throat,
and my eyes were threatening tears. I stepped outside for a second to get some
fresh air. I saw the man pull away in his car. His little girl was sitting in
the passenger seat next to him, and I saw that I had been wrong about him. He
wasn’t alone, and was part of a family. But, the thought still stood in my
mind, and I knew that the incorrect idea I had had of this stranger stood for something
true: At times, we need fiction to escape.
I knew then that I wanted to make
something like Stephen King’s novel. I wanted to be a contributor.
So, I became disciplined, and I
practiced. I’ve surrounded myself with readers who offer good advice, and I
write nearly every day, most often for several hours.
And, to the best of my estimations,
I’ve gotten better. I receive a decent amount of fan e-mail, and have a big
group of supporters who tell me that I need to keep writing. I still have room
to grow, but I believe that I can now write stories that people will love.
With that accomplished, my problem
becomes this: How do I expose people to my work? I’ve had novels up on Amazon
now for over a year, and the most buys that I’ve received in a month has been around
300 (which is encouraging, but I would like to have more readers). If I could,
I would offer my novels on Amazon for free, but I can’t. I wish that I had some
way that I could get people to just try my novels out, because if they did, I
think that they’d like them.
This is my first problem.
My second problem:
Later in the same year that I first
read The Stand, I was in Jamaica with
my high school. One of my friends got sick, and we had to take him to the
hospital. They didn’t know what was wrong with him. He was scratching, and
itching, and crying, and screaming, saying that his skin hurt. I volunteered to
ride with the school principal and my friend to the emergency room. The doctor
didn’t know what was wrong with my friend. The only medicine that he could give
was Benadryl.
The facility was small, and dirty.
It wasn’t connected to a hospital. The doctors wrote with pen and paper, not
computers. They had no other physicians to consult if something went wrong, or
if they didn’t know what to do (like what was happening with my friend). In the
end, my friend was fine, and had had an allergic reaction to all the sunlight
that he had been exposed to. But I never forgot the experience.
Six months ago, I began working in
an emergency room here in the United States as a physician’s scribe. Basically,
I follow doctors and help them with their charts and workflow. While working,
I’ve seen hundreds of examples that show the powers of modern medicine. An
ambulance will bring in a patient who has had a stroke, and the doctor will
administer a clot-busting drug that nearly resolves their symptoms. People will
come in with gunshot wounds and get life saving blood transfusions. I’ve seen a
man talking to his wife 5 minutes after he was seizing in his bed, and his
heart beat had stopped.
I compared this to Jamaica, and
thought: What happens when patients like
this are brought to the emergency department there? And Jamaica’s
facilities are a mild example. There
are still places in the world today where people die from a small cut on their
foot that gets infected. There are warzones the medical personal is spread so
thinly that they cannot give attention to every gunshot wound.
And, all of this is completely
solvable with the right amount of capital. Organizations like Doctor’s Without
Borders (MSF) allow people to donate to this cause: Each dollar they receive
actually contributes to providing medical to people in need, whether it’s
paying for a physician’s airplane ticket to a remote part of the world, buying
scalpels, or latex gloves, or even simple soap that these hospitals can use to
clean the patients. Each dollar actually counts, and actually helps to provide
someone with better medical care.
While I’ve continued to work as a
scribe, and see people get incredible health care at affordable prices in this
country, I’ve felt hopeless. I know that there are people, just like me, who
will die because they didn’t have access to something as simple as an
antibiotic that I could have purchased for them, if I had the money to give.
This is my second problem: I would
like to give money to this. I would like to help, but I don’t have the
resources.
My solution:
In thinking about these two
problems, I’ve noticed some factors.
I have a good product, but find
that I’m having trouble convincing people to try it out. If it were free, I
think that people would enjoy it. But as it is, people must give me money to be
exposed to my novel. Why would they want to do that? What if it’s awful? When
people buy a novel from an independent author, they are at a risk of losing
money.
The second factor is this: people
like to give. I think that it’s an innate instinct to want to donate to people
in need.
My solution, in simple terms, is
this: If people donate money to Doctor’s Without Borders, I will give them my
ebook. If they don’t like it, then they have simply donated money. If they like
my ebook, than they have found a great deal.
Here’s how it will work: For every
ebook purchase a customer makes, I will donate my earnings to supporting Doctors
Without Borders. Every month, I will post proof on my website of what my ebooks
have earned, and then I will post a receipt after I make my donation. I will be
as transparent as possible.
This is my vision of the outcome:
If my ebooks are successful, this could generate a huge campaign for Doctor’s
Without Borders, as well as expose people to the novels that I’ve worked so
hard over. And, it gives people a unique way to donate. Each time a customer
buys one of my novels on Amazon, they have made a donation that will help save
lives. In addition to this, every time someone gives my ebooks a positive
review, or tells someone else about my ebooks, they have also made a donation
by increasing a good cause’s visibility. In this way, donations and support
will have a synergistic effect: This model can actually be more effective than
simple donations (just look at the kinds of contributions a company like TOMS
makes).
I believe that people will
recognize this as a valuable opportunity to receive a great work of fiction and
to do a great thing.
