30 things I've learnt from 5 years being published: no 27 – no-one knows anything
September 6 2023 marks 5 years since my first novel was released 😲
I’ve now published 6, and have 2 more under contract.
To celebrate, I’m sharing a new post about what I’ve learnt from being published EVERY DAY throughout the month. This post is part of that series!
Click here for the rest →
No one knows anything… including me. So please take all my posts with a pinch of salt. I’m just sharing my experiences in the hope that they will be, if not useful, then interesting at least!
I know the title of this post probably doesn’t sound too reassuring, but maybe in a way, it sort of is?
Maybe it lets you off the hook a bit, or allows you to cut yourself some slack.
Something I have come to realise over my past five years in publishing is that no-one really knows anything. There are no answers. Nothing is concrete. Everything is done on instinct and passion.
One of my agent’s favourite phrases when I ask her a question about ANYTHING to do with publishing or the book industry is ‘it depends’.
There are no right or wrong answers. There are only possibilities and hope.
Maybe that’s why it’s so incredibly frustrating and why authors teeter on the edge of a nervous breakdown all the time.
To become a successful author (I’m talking fiction here; non-fiction is - thankfully! - a little more predictable), there’s no ‘right path’ you can doggedly follow that ends in great success and bestsellerdom.
The only guarantee in publishing is that if you give up you definitely won’t end up in great success and bestsellerdom.
I once heard someone compare publishing books to betting on horses and I’m not even sure that’s an accurate analogy because surely some horses have natural advantages over other horses, even if they’ve all trained as hard?
(sidenote: I know nothing about horse racing!)
A lot of authors have their first books published later in life when they’ve already had a ‘normal’ career and it’s a real shock to find how much in publishing is down to luck not judgment. The first thing all debut authors ask is: what can I do to increase my chances of making my book a success?
They want some concrete answers - if I do XYZ then will my book be stocked in supermarkets? If we get the ebook into a Bookbub newsletter then will it become a Kindle bestseller? If I get good reviews in mainstream media then will that mean my book takes off? If I change publishers then will I get a higher advance for my next book?
The answer is always: ‘maybe’, or my agent’s favourite - ‘it depends’.
Nothing about publishing is predictable.
No one knows why some books take off and others don’t. It’s some kind of creative magic, and it can’t be bottled or recreated easily.
It’s been hard to come to terms with this. Over the past five years I’ve come to realise that the only thing I have true influence over is the writing itself.
Everything else is luck. You can push for certain things to try to increase your luck but there are still no guarantees.
Just keep writing, and keep your fingers crossed that one day your horse comes in first!
Hey, I write novels, but I also build websites!
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