When the going gets tough the 'Authorpreneurs' get going

Billy Ocean’s song “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” immortalised the phrase attributed to 1950’s Texas American Football coach John Thomas. Despite its macho connotations – or perhaps because of them – it has since been used as a motivational tool in a variety of contexts outside sport, including business.

I thought of it last summer when I read Karen MacNeil’s beautifully crafted piece on the demise of wine writing opportunities, and again after the recent UK Budget with its battery of body blows to the wine sector. Tough times for both.

American MacNeil is a colossus of the thinking wine world, a wine communicator par excellence with awards and accolades aplenty. Her piece ‘Nothing Left to Say?’ was first given as a speech at the Robert Mondavi Institute at the University of California at Davis. In it she bemoans today’s trends away from the appreciation and value of wine based on place, people and stories towards commercial alcohol products, the anti-alcohol lobby and declining consumption.

But the main focus of her piece is on the parallel demise of wine writing in the USA, real wine writing that “has a duty to communicate wine’s beauty, awe, and wonder “. It is, she says, vanishing as the amount of coverage and number of paid writers in curated media outlets declines. Her observations could equally be said of the UK.

She is right of course. Yet as an entrepreneur and businessperson as well as a writer, I can’t help a feeling of ‘yes but.’

Yes but shouldn’t those who care about this negative change do two things. First, ask why it is happening. Second, make a plan to fight back. Or, failing that, gracefully acknowledge that the world has changed and accept the inevitable. The fourth option, sitting on the sidelines and complaining, does not seem a fruitful response. (MacNeil is evidently not doing that.)

Why have opportunities for properly remunerated consumer facing wine writing declined? Because the paymasters do not see the financial value. Why don’t they see the value? Because too few readers want the product to warrant giving it space. To put it another way, they can get a better return by using available space for something else.

Sales of mainstream print media – magazines and newspapers – have been in decline for many years. Inevitably this means ever greater focus on profitability. The cost of supply - the wine writing - is not the problem. MacNeil says that fees paid to wine writers are now between two and eight times less than they were 30 years ago, and sometimes no fees are paid. That says it all. This is now a craft that commercial publications see little need for, and when they do the supply is so plentiful they can source it for a pittance or less.

What about a fight back plan?

MacNeil makes a distinction between wine writers and wine critics, one telling stories, the other giving scores and comments.

Older readers will remember Malcolm Gluck’s Superplonk columns in The Guardian and the eponymous books they spawned. By focusing on wines in supermarkets, with scores and witty comments, they became a decision-making aid for drinkers of everyday wines. You used to spot people in the aisle of Sainsburys and elsewhere, book in hand. Today we have Vivino.

Another long-time wine communicator, Englishman Robert Joseph, used his own experience to explain why wine writing (as distinct from criticism) has faltered in the mainstream market:

?“In the UK, in the late 1980s, Sainsbury, M&S and Tesco all published attractively produced and priced wine books they hoped would help to 'educate the consumer'. Oz Clarke wrote the - excellent -?Sainsbury's Book of Wine?and, to declare an interest, I was the author of the?Tesco Essential Guide to Wine.?Sadly, too few of their customers shared the chains' enthusiasm for wine education for the project to survive. To be blunt, the shoppers preferred to spend their money on a discounted bottle than a book.”

The inconvenient truth is that the market for wine writing and wine criticism on printed paper has shrunk so far that it is not commercially viable in all but a handful of cases.

Not enough people want to read about wine. Those that care about changing this situation must change something themselves – whether it be what is written about, the style, where it is available, or how and when it is presented. They need to create the demand.

They might begin by understanding who might give a damn and why. Wine traders are usually guilty of focusing too much on their product and not enough on their customer. This is an error. There is little benefit in trying to persuade someone to buy a wine they have no interest in or understanding of. Wine writers and critics may do well to absorb those learnings.

The customer bases for wine and wine writing are not a homogenous mass but a kaleidoscope of diverse groups, each with their own predilections. Engaging with this variety allows wine producers and wine writers to understand their target consumer better, adapting more precisely to what they want and where they consume. Some will respond to writing that inspires “wine’s beauty, awe, and wonder.” Others may lean towards a different angle. We cannot be all things to all people all of the time.

Where and how people consume is now the driver. Physical is losing out to digital for print media and retail outlets. Marketing guru Rory Sutherland encapsulated this when he said the medium isn’t just the message, the medium is the product.

While the old “pay me to write an article” business model has shrunk in print and online, other sectors provide inspiration for how to build a new one that pays. Access to markets has never been easier – anyone can publish a book on Amazon or write an article on Substack. Nonetheless, this ease creates a new problem – the haystack. How does the consumer find the needle they are looking for amongst an overabundance of choice? How does the writer stand out amongst the millions of others?

It can be done. “Authorpreneurs” embracing the digital world to create their own writing brand (aka reputation) with a deep pool of enthusiastic customers (aka readers), often also using audio and visual formats, build a business of writing alongside the writing itself. This is an entrepreneurial response to the problem of not being commissioned, or commissioned but not paid properly, or at all. Pick up the cudgel and find ways to create your own market and revenue flow.

As a businessperson I love the Authorpreneur solution for its proactive, problem-solving approach. It shows the writer accepting responsibility and taking control. Yet in the end, whether writing or wine, if not enough people like your product, you won’t have a market for it.

This article first appeared in harpers.co.uk