Steak, Sizzle, Or Self?

     Happy Autumnal Equinox, Gentle Reader! Today we enter the fall season, which is a favorite here at the Fortress. Soon the colors will be changing, the weather will cool, the fleece garments will come out of storage, and I’ll be sweeping up leaves and patching leaks in the roof… oh, strike that. This should be a happy occasion! It’s Monday, so… well, maybe you should strike that too.

     Anyway, a question has arisen that should interest all writers and anyone else who sells anything. That includes you, doesn’t it? You do – or did – sell either your products or your labor, right? So give this one a hard think:

What are you selling?

     It’s non-trivial, I assure you.

     Consider this pole of the discussion:

Some writers sell themselves.
A few sell a trendy comfort.
Others sell a product.
I simply tell my stories.

I’m not a product, and neither are my books.
The only thing that matters is that you read the stories.
Readers don’t need anything else.

— Delenda Carthago (@DelendaStories) September 20, 2026

     In the strictest imaginable sense, Delenda is correct. After all, the purchaser pays for the book and nothing else. He’s not buying any part of the author, or a guarantee that the author will do any particular thing in the future. What he gets is the book, no more.

     But the book, like any product, conveys other impressions. The purchaser will read the book and draw some conclusions from it:

• Is the story good?
• Is it well told?
• Does it convey specific ideas?
• Do I find those ideas attractive?
• Should I form any expectations of this writer?

     All those things help to mold the purchaser’s future decisions and actions. What do they sell?

     The purchaser’s impressions of the man behind the book matter quite as much as the book itself. Most of us who read have favorites – genres; authors; themes and associated ideas – that we seek to satisfy in our reading. Writers who are consistent about those things will develop followings. Consistency over time reveals the man behind the product.

     I contend that we’re buying into the author quite as much as his books.

     Obviously, this isn’t the same as sitting behind a table at a book-signing event. No one gets to shake the author’s hand or engage him in conversation. But the cumulative impression of a writer that develops over a number of books matters greatly. If he’s to develop a following, he must sell himself as much as his writings. He must consistently evince what I’ve called a sensibility: a set of convictions and attitudes that express a worldview that doesn’t drift or amble about aimlessly.

     The writer cannot “be all things to all men.” He must stake out a specific place in the universe of fiction providers and hold fast to it. That doesn’t mean his convictions can never change. It does mean that his Weltanschauung must be grounded in a particular vision of “how the world works.”

     I was drawn to the late Robret A. Heinlein for that reason, among others. Yes, his writing was unusually graceful for science fiction of the years in which he wrote. I did appreciate that. But more important by far was his remorselessly factual, logical approach to “how the world works,” especially the human part. That might have been because our personalities were compatible; I cannot know, as I never had the privilege of meeting him.

     Most other writers I’ve admired have presented more variable personas. I’ve enjoyed some of their output, but not all. I haven’t pursued their latest works as avidly as I might have. Their divergences sometimes displeased me; they suggested that the man behind the story wasn’t what I’d taken him to be.

     Sensibility, in my view, partakes of craftsmanship, but equally of the writer’s worldview and his willingness to let it show. If that isn’t part of the sale, how likely is the purchaser of your book to want to drink more from your well? And what are you selling, from that perspective? It isn’t just the book, is it?