There are a lot of people who want to be a professional in a creative field, and freak out because they have no idea how to do it. In some cases (like in art or film) they might be able to go through formal schooling and at least have that plan worked out for them. Whether that education has any quality or not is another matter and for another essay. But in other fields, like writing, it's harder to find a formal schooling path (English degrees teach you to be English teachers or literary critics, not writers.) For others, like virtual youtubing, the medium is too new for there to be any formal training. And in those situations people freak out the most about whether or not they are "professional" and how they can become professional.
To start off with, what is a pro in the first place? In my book you're a pro if you meet these conditions:
That last condition is mainly there to get rid of outright scams, ex. people who become "professoinal authors" by forcing their friends and relatives ot buy copies of their book, kind of like someone involved in a pyramid scheme. But so long as someone has actually given you money for a product you made because that person enjoyed or found your product useful, then you are a pro. If you put up a book on KDP and sold 20 copies in one year, and have only had one reader say he liked your book, you're still a professional author. If you printed a bunch of books yourself you aren't yet a professional author, but if you sell a handful of those books at a convention, then you are. Of course there are degrees of success: someone who is able to buy a mansion from book sale proceeds is a much more successful author than someone who uses a rare book sale to buy a cup of coffee occassionally. But they are both professionals.
I say this mainly to avoid dumb definitions where you're not a pro until you've been properly gatekept. There are a lot of people who think that you're not a professional author until you've got a deal with a big publisher. You might sell so many books on KDP or wherever else that you literally quit your day job and bought a new house, but you're still not a pro to these people. Likewise, you might have a band that's making good money on tour and selling lots of CDs in local record stores, but if you don't have a contract with a big record company you aren't a pro. Conversely if you're a celebrity who uses a ghostwriter to write a book and uses your connections to force a publisher to sell it (at a loss) then you are a professional author to these people. Which is idiotic.
Given that being a pro means making money off what you do, how do you become a pro? And since no one wants to just be a pro at a merely technical level (i.e. someone who makes money, but very little), how do you become a more successful pro? Generally the best approach is the following:
Or to tie things back to the title, the best way to become a pro is to start off as an amateur. For writing, write a bunch of stories that you either show to no one or only to close friends. Perhaps post some fan fiction under an pseudonym. If you are serious about writing, you will reach a point where your writing is not great, but better than some books you've read. At that point start self publishing with a print on demand service. The number of sales that you make will likely be a lot more than you expected but a lot less than you dreamed. The latter is because your writing is still unpolished, you don't have good editing, the cover of your book sucks, you haven't gotten word out there about your book, etc. Now all of that is okay if you're treating this as a hobby you just happen to make a little money on, making you a pro on a merely technical level. If you want to step up your game you're going to have to fix that stuff, and it will be easier (especially in terms of motivation) to do this now that you have a product which is actually selling. Continue on this trajectory and your sales should go up. Will you get them high enough to quit your day job? Maybe, but also likely not. Writing is a competetive field and readers aren't willing to pay that much. But this the approach which will get you to the status of best selling author if that is a future that is available to you.
Unlike writing, I have no experience with the virtual youtubing game as a creator. But from what I've observed the process is basically the same. Start by messing around with video editing software and stuff like Live 2D. When you get to the point where you are better than the crappiest VTubers out there, open up a channel for a real audience, though you should expect your viewcount to not go above two digits. As you refine your craft, learn about marketing, etc. your viewcount should go up. This field is a bit different in that you are limited by your persona, so if you've been posting videos with no viewers for a long time it's hard to attract a large crowd. But if you find that you're doing well and still not getting an audience, you can always reinvent yourself under a new persona, or join up with a firm. Only this time you're doing it with a lot of experience under your belt and a lot to offer a potetntial firm, meaning that you can start from a better place with likely a much larger audience.
A lot of people think that amateur and pro are two separate classes of people. That is, a pro starts out as a pro and an amateur remains an amateur forever. You especially see this with Vtubing, and it is this attitude that is responsible for the plague that is "pre-debut Vtubers." These people see that most VTubers are not very successful at all. They may stream and pull in only 20 or so views per video. Then they see mega-successes, like Gawr Gura who has over four million subscribers and reliably gets over 200K views per video, with many going into the millions. So what is the difference between the two? They focus on the debut: Gawr Gura had a lot of hype on twitter before she debuted, and got something like half a million subscribers almost immediately. The unsuccessful VTubers debut without fanfare and never get many views. So in the mind of the predebut VTuber, if he just hypes and polishes his debut enough he will be sucessful. Perhaps not Gura successful, but at least something like 100k subscribers and 5k+ views per video. But if he messes up his debut he will be condemned to double digit views forever.
Of course what is being ignored is that Gura's success had very little to do with her debut in particular. Most of her initial fans new the woman behind the character from previous work, meaning that Gura's "debut" success should have been judged from Senzawa's history, though even that wasn't the beginning of the creator's web presence. That is, Gura is the culmination of a long internet history and it was this success that made people hyped for the debut, not hype for the debut that made her a success. Of course, Gura was also helped considerably by being part of the popular group Hololive, though by that point Hololive was only recruiting people who were successful to begin with. In any case, from the creator standpoint nothing about this was really a "debut" and so the predebut VTuber plan of making a good debut to take the world by storm is doomed to failure. And most of them figure this out, meaning that they never actually debut. They just talk about doing so, so that they can pretend to be part of the VTubing sphere while not doing anything. And the dumbest thing about this is that they will hold themselves as superior to people who actually started putting out videos, but to little fanfare. Those are just "amateurs" while the pre-debut VTuber can claim to be a "professional" or at least a "soon to be professional."
Of course, this type of attitude is nothing new. "Prospective authors" have been a thing forever. There's a joke going around that if you want to make a lot of money, you shouldn't write fiction but instead you should write books on how to write fiction. That is, there is a larger audience of people who want to be authors than there are actual readers. Everyone knows at least one person who says "I've got a good idea for a book. I just need to polish it up to make sure its successful. I'm sure that I'll get it out there and be a big success in a few years." But of course, the book never comes out, just like how predebut VTubers never actually debut. And these "prospective authors" often mock people who self publish through KDP or the like. "They are just putting out trash, but I am going to make a REAL novel. It takes time to make something good." But even someone who makes half-assed paranormal erotica on KDP is more of a professional writer than someone who has never actually finished writing a book.
I think some of this is generational, but it affects generations differently. Older generations, especially Gen X and older, have been conditioned to think of "success" only in terms of success recognized by an "official" entity. Hence you are not a "real" author unless you have been published by a major publisher, and your book appears in Barnes and Nobles. Similarly if we want to talk about "great" science fiction authors, it doesn't matter how many fans you have. What matters is whether you've won a Hugo or a Nebula. Of course, that attitude will push you into sucking up to publishers and famous authors rather than actually learning how to write, and indeed some people have used this technique to secure publisher deals and especially award wins. For younger generations the issue is more than they think that success needs to be immediate or it won't happen at all. They see all sorts of internet celebrities who exploded out of nowhere, often due to circumstances which were unplanned and can't possibly be replicated. But that is all they know for success, and so they try to emulate it. They are pushed towards large publishers, official awards, etc. not so much because of the cultural prestige of these institutions, but rather because they think it will help them achieve their massive success (which they view as necessary to prevent them from being a nobody forever.) So the exact motivations for their actions depend on the generation, but in all age groups people would benefit from simply putting their work out there without worrying about prestige or immediate success. Then you take the lessons you learn from your modest successes and leverage them into something greater until you achieve something great, or you realize that you've gone as far as you can go. (Since only a handful of people can become megasuccesses, just by the nature of the game.)
March 26, 2023