If you want to publish two books a year under your own name and your publisher doesn't, maybe you need a different publisher.
Many years, I would publish four books - an anthology, a book of criticism, a new book of poems, a book of essays.
If you imagine writing 1,000 words a day, which most journalists do, that would be a very long book a year. I don't manage nearly that... but I have published slightly too much recently.
You have to remember when we were going once a month, we were putting out issues that were 480 pages, and people were complaining that these were too big, I can't get through a 480 page magazine every month.
Fewer than half of all university professors publish as much as one article per year.
I'm not a writer's writer. I'm not a craftsman. I could be, and that would be a one-book-a-year operation.
When I present or speak, I write the slides myself. And regarding time, I would like to be able to publish more than I do.
An author needs to be in the market. He or she needs to come out with a new book every year. That keeps you alive in the public mind and gives a push to your older books.
People are used to streaming and binge-watching. When they see an author they like, if there's only one book, even if they like the book, they're going to forget about you. The way to keep you in their mind and to get you to become a habit for these readers is you have to have a lot of product out there for them to read.
For an author just starting out, you've got to deliver the goods every year or sooner or people will forget you or you will lose momentum. There is a contract that exists between author and reader.
It's very rare that publications double their frequency.
For a very long time, I wrote a book a year, and was eager and willing to do it, to put bread on the table, to have my work out there. Now I must write a book every two years, and that's never enough time, either.
I'm used to doing comic books, where every month there's a new comic book! I find that the movie business is not quite the same. It doesn't move quite as fast.
If I could have somehow been the kind of artist who could crank out two or three issues a year, that's different. That's sort of what it's all about, to get this thing out so that there's some kind of continuity. But to do a comic book every year or two was just so anti-climactic.
We probably put about four or five comic books out a year and probably about two or three art books and various trade paperbacks - maybe four or five of those a year - and that's what we do now.
I notice that I only publish once every four years. It takes a couple of years to write a book and then, for me, for one reason or another, it usually takes about a year of sort of dicking around before I start up. I write a review or little magazine pieces and touring with the other book. But mainly it's just you're not ready, I'm not ready to start another. You're just not up for it.
I think I write or publish as much as I do because I can bear being without a book to work on.
