It's Luck, Not Talent, That Makes You Successful As A Creator

The one question everyone wants to know when it comes to being a creator is, "How do you make it?" There are panels dedicated to it at conventions, it's the question that comes up in every interview, and it's something people endlessly speculate on. What does an artist have to do in order to reach that level where they're famous or rich enough that they never have to work a day job again? Do they dedicate themselves body and soul to the craft? Do they make a deal with the devil? Is there some secret formula that lets you hack social media in order to reach your audience and become successful?

Well, I've been doing this professionally for more than 12 years now. I've talked to a lot of people, been to the panels, listened to the interviews, and there is a single thread that runs through every, single one of them. You have to be lucky.

That's it.

So roll the dice... or don't. But you can't win if you don't play.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

An Echoing Refrain

The first time I ran into this was when I was in my mid-20s working as a reporter for a small local paper and trying to break into fiction as a writer. I was given the opportunity to interview a local author of cozy mysteries and romances, and I jumped at the chance. At best, I figured that if I made a good impression maybe she could help me out. At worst, maybe she could give me a few pointers. And when I got to the question where I asked her how one got a publishing deal with a major company (she'd started off with Viking, if memory serves), she just shrugged and gave me an answer that boiled down to, "Right place, right time."

In short, yes, she'd written a romance manuscript. She'd worked really hard on it, done all the editing, cleaned it up nice, etc., but the major reason she got that first book in was it just so happened to be the kind of romance the company was looking for in that very moment. If she'd submitted it a few months earlier, or a few months later, they probably wouldn't have taken it.

She kept writing books, kept doing the work, kept trying to keep her place... but she had no idea why her books sold or didn't sell. No clue what would work. In short, she lucked out, and was doing her best to stay in the position that luck had gotten her by keeping her momentum as a writer going.

All right... well... that's an anomaly, right?

That was kind of a disappointing answer, but I did my best to take it in stride, and to ask other writers I met along the way how they managed to find success. A handful of writers who started later in life told me they just wrote while living off retirement, and they were able to finally write something that caught on with an audience. Others mentioned that their book's themes just happened to coincide with some trend that put a lot of attention on them. A few writers talked about how the success of someone else's book spilled over onto them, and they rode someone else's coattails.

And then I started looking around, watching trends, and comparing notes. There are a lot of big YouTubers out there right now (Markiplier is one that comes to mind) who got in early-ish on the platform, but who happened to catch on with over-the-top reactions, particularly to scary games and scary content. There are authors who became the subject of BookTok reviews, and it blew up their name and signal without their knowledge or understanding. Chuck Tingle was basically nominated as part of the Sad Puppies scandal, and while I won't say he didn't have a fan base before his name got dragged into that shit show, it definitely catapulted him into the faces of a lot of people who would never have seen his work otherwise, much less bought a copy of a book like Scary Stories to Tingle Your Butt: 7 Tales of Gay Terror.

That is a real book. Seriously, go check it out!

This point was driven home to me once again while listening to this interview with the monster creator Trevor Henderson. Now, you might not know him by name, but you're likely familiar with his most infamous creation Siren Head. A monster artist whose work speaks for itself, he is one of the more influential creators of Internet-based horror, and he currently creates so many scary things that it can seem hard to follow.

But when he made Siren Head he was working a retail job and just trying to squeeze money out of art. He was working hard (he mentions in the interview that he'd come home from shifts and force himself to draw even though he was exhausted), improving his craft, and making interesting things... but his fame came from an outside source. A video game designer came across Siren Head, and asked to use it in his game. Trevor agreed, as long as he was mentioned... and that game showed up on Markiplier's YouTube channel, to bring things full circle. This led to an explosion of popularity for the monster, and a big audience of people who were now aware of Trevor's work, as well as the designer who made the game. And that spring-boarded the two of them in a very big way. But it took 3 years between him finishing that creature's art, and it just exploding onto the scene like that.

Also, shoutout to The Wrong Station's YouTube channel. Go subscribe, and listen to them on Spotify or something. Their show is a LOT of fun!

Now, what I'm not saying is that any of the people I have mentioned, either obliquely or by name, didn't work hard. I'm not saying they don't have talent, or that they haven't refined their craft to create the best things they can. That is always the take away that people have when they reach this point, and it's because there's a very specific lie that so many people believe, and you believing this lie actively harms all of us.

Do you want to know what it is? It's the belief that talent and hard work are rewarded.

You can work as hard as possible, and you can make amazing art that deserves to be seen, and everyone who picks it up devours it, thoroughly enjoying every part of this thing you made... but if your signal doesn't grow via word of mouth, and no one lets a big enough audience find out about it, you won't sell copies, get views, or increase your subscriber count. And on the flip side, someone can write absolute drek, create the most low-effort music, or just crap out a few images, and if those things happen to strike a nerve with a current trend, if they become a subject of Internet conversation, or if you happen to be related to, dating, or already a minor celebrity for some other reason, you'll go gangbusters.

If you're a creator, get that lie out of your head right now, because it's going to convince you that if you just work harder, write more, etc., that eventually you have to succeed. Marketing and creating aren't the same thing, and you can't assume the quality of your work will grant you some kind of special dispensation that will spontaneously get you noticed by the public.

And if you're not a creator, you also need to get this lie out of your head because we're depending on you. You are literally the ones who decide whether we succeed or not.

You Have The Power, Here

I've said this before, and I sometimes feel like a broken record, but I'm going to keep saying this until people get it. Artists do not have any power to make ourselves succeed. Yes we can write books, make videos, draw things, and yes we can try to leverage social media to get attention, but we ultimately cannot force ourselves to be successful just by working harder.

The only thing that helps creators succeed is you. The audience. The people we are making things for.

If you don't cheer, we die.

I've used the gladiator metaphor since the beginning of this blog, and it's apt. Because gladiators who got famous were showered in money, they got endorsement deals, they have goddamn merch you could buy at their matches. But the fighters who didn't have that following? Who didn't get the cheers? They got nothing. Didn't matter how good the show they put on was if no one was paying to see it, no one was betting on them, and no one was paying attention.

Your cheers matter... but in this digital age we're living in, they can take a lot of different forms.

If you just want to turn the wheels and help the creators you love get numbers, and get noticed, do the following:

- Read/Watch/Listen to Their Content: The more reads an article gets, the more views a video or podcast episode gets, etc., the more likely the algorithm will push it out to other people. So consume the content (especially the free stuff), and share it on social media platforms to boost the signal.

- Subscribe and Follow: This dialed-in audience is a big factor in who sees us, hears about us, etc. If you have a million subscribers on YouTube, Facebook, etc., the algorithm treats your stuff very differently than if you just have 1,000. Fill the seats, make the arena look full, because it helps us!

- Leave Comments, Reviews, and Ratings: If you're watching a video, hit the Like button. If you're listening on Spotify, leave a 5 star review. If you bought a book, leave a rating and review. The more of this stuff we get, you guessed it, the more likely we are to be seen by others.

- Buy Our Merch: Whether you're buying books, TTRPG supplements, tee shirts, or just using the discount code we get from a sponsor, all of that puts money in our pockets... but more importantly, again, when the numbers go up, the algorithms, sponsors, etc., treat us better. If I get a top-selling book on Amazon, Drive Thru RPG, etc., those sites are going to tell everyone about it because they want more sales... and the numbers to become a bestseller are so, so much smaller than you think...

Again, I'm not saying you have a moral obligation to support all creators. I'm not saying you should spend more than you can afford just to boost someone's signal. I'm just explaining how the machinery works. If you want a creator to succeed (any creator), then pull the levers I just described. Pull as many of them as you can, as often as you can. If you can afford to buy books, buy them. If you can't, don't. But consume all the free stuff, check in on social media, hit the buttons, make the comments, follow all the followables, etc.

If you cheer, we rise. If you don't cheer, we die in obscurity. This isn't even a metaphor... it's literally how the industry works. Period.

And the only way any of us get famous is if our audience grows so big, and so loud, that the wider world finds out about us and what we do. So please... raise your voice, and be that noise.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Writing Isn't What Makes Writers Succeed

Generally speaking, if you're a writer, you would assume that writing is what determines the success of your career. Dedication to your art form, clever execution, quality storytelling, and even the rate at which you can churn out new work, though... none of this is really what makes you successful as a writer.

No... instead it appears to be how famous you can make yourself as an influencer, YouTuber, or TikTok channel, as Matt Wallace points out.

Yeah... it's like that.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more!

Writers Don't Get Famous For Writing Anymore

When you think of famous writers, chances are they're famous to you for their books. Whether it's Poe, Lovecraft, King, Gaiman, or dozens upon dozens of others, you know these people's names because of the books they wrote. Period. But even back in the relatively recent days of the 1980s and 1990s, things worked differently than they do now... and the things you need to do to be successful in today's market are getting further and further away from actually writing books.

I talked about this a few years back in I Just Want To Write... but Mr. Wallace really lays it out for all of us. Because 40 or 50 years ago the best advice you could give a writer was, "The best way to move copies of this book is to start working on your next book."

Sadly, that advice is for a world that no longer exists.

Now you have people trying to get seen on TikTok, to start podcasts, to run YouTube channels, and to do anything to get noticed in this media-saturated landscape we find ourselves in... and even when doing that works, and gets you attention, that doesn't mean it's going to actually get you closer to your goal of being a successful author.

Take the above story as an example. I wrote The Final Lamentation as a stand-alone piece of fan fiction set in the Warhammer 40K universe. My text version of the story, no matter how hard I tried to push it, or how many Facebook groups, subreddits, etc., I shared it on barely went anywhere. A few folks read it here and there, but generally speaking it probably hasn't amassed more than a few hundred reads at time of writing.

The audio drama version, though? That has 157,376 views, over 500 comments, and over 7,000 upvotes! Enough people have seen this version of the story that I've had folks recommend it to me, without knowing I'm the guy who wrote it in the first place.

Now, to be clear, I adore this adaptation of my work. I love how it helped more people come across my story, and how it helped boost the signal. I am remarkably touched by some of the very kind things folks said about this story, and how much they enjoyed it. However, making something like this production is both not writing, and it's something that is a far larger undertaking than just putting words on a page. It takes voice talent, recording equipment, sound effects, the right music, and so much more to turn a piece of fiction into an audio drama.

But, even worse, there's no guarantee that the popularity of a piece of media like this will turn into something profitable. Because even if someone enjoys an audio drama, or a video you made, they're not all that likely to go check out your website, or to follow the links you left in the production. They probably aren't going to type your name into a search engine to find more of your work, either. People consume what's in front of them, and then move on to the next thing more often than not.

Which leaves you making more and more content to try to pull in the audience, to let people know about your work, which rarely does anything to sell the books you've already written, but which also eats up all the time you would spend writing new books which you now aren't.

So What Can You Do To Help?

As with all my other diatribes on this subject, it really does come down to you as the audience. I've said this before, but authors are like gladiators in the arena; we could put on the finest show of weapons skill possible, and defeat three dozen opponents, but unless you all make some noise for us we aren't going to get any kind of reward at the end of the day.

We need you to elevate our signal, and make people aware of us. We need you to share links to our books on your social media pages, tell your friends and family, leave reviews, share our posts, follow our pages and our channels... in short, we need you all to raise your voices loudly enoug that the algorithm cannot ignore you, and it becomes impossible to throttle our signal because so many people are talking about what we're making.

And, of course, it always helps if you can donate to help us keep producing more work. Because the further we can keep the wolf from the door, the easier it becomes to put words on the page.

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list. 

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Uncertainty is The Worst (and The Best) Thing About Being an Author

The most common piece of advice I've heard since the point I decided to become an author (around age 13 or 14, I think it was), is that I need to have a reliable, steady source of income while I do that on the side. It's not that they didn't think I had the chops or determination to crank out books till the day I died, but rather that there's no telling what the market is going to do when it comes to a writer's trade. You might write one book, hit the lottery, and explode! You might spend a decade or two writing shelves worth of novels, only to become an "overnight success" when someone with a big following tells their fans your work is amazing.

And while most advice you get from people with no experience being a writer is basically garbage, there is a lot of truth to this one. Because writers are self-employed now more than ever before in the age of the gig economy, and your income is going to depend almost entirely on the fickle finger of fate. And I'll be the first to tell you that can be both infuriating, and exhilarating.

Pay your fee, take your shot, and hope for the best!

Before we go too much further, if you want to help me negate some of the uncertainty I'm dealing with (and make sure this blog keeps on trucking), consider becoming a Literary Mercenary Patreon patron! Or, if you don't have the spare dosh for that right now, signing up for my weekly newsletter to ensure you don't miss any of my new releases!

Reliability is an Illusion (Unfortunately)

One of the hardest truths there is about being an author is that your entire profession is largely a matter of luck. Talent helps, developing your skill and craft is necessary, networking is good, and gumption goes a long way, but everything you achieve (or don't) basically turns on the fulcrum of luck.

And this is a door that swings both ways.

Sometimes opportunity doesn't bother knocking.

As an example, take the current pandemic. I had spent several years building up a rather large pile of completed work as a ghost blogger, and it was slowly getting approved, ensuring I had a "regular" check to help bolster all the work I do writing novels, RPG supplements, blogs, and all that other nonsense. Then when the plague crashed across the economy, many of my clients put a freeze on approving any more work. Others cancelled projects (some of which I'd turned in weeks or months before), and still others just ghosted entirely, cancelling their orders and vanishing.

So practically overnight I went from a ghost writer who is hoping to one day quit that job to write novels and RPGs full time, to suddenly relying very much on my body of creative work to make up the difference from the "safe" clients who'd left me hanging.

You know, just like any other job where you're considered an expendable worker, or where the company suddenly takes a nose dive into concrete.

That same zeitgeist can go the other way, as well, putting a surprising amount of good fortune in my pocket when I didn't expect it to be there. For example, a few months back my article Partners and Polycules: Polyamorous Designations Based Off Dungeons and Dragons Dice was randomly shared on a pretty wide scale thanks to a single mention on a subreddit. It picked up several thousand reads, and quickly rocketed up to the front page of my most-read pieces ever on Vocal, suddenly easing my difficulties covering bills that month. In the early summer of 2020 Drive Thru RPG had a big sale on a huge number of World of Darkness game supplements, and overnight my entire 100 Kinfolk project that I'd written for Werewolf: The Apocalypse jumped in sales, pushing my earnings in royalties over $200 for the first (and so far only) time since I started getting a cut of my RPG earnings. I haven't gotten my first check for my noir mystery novel Marked Territory yet, but it's entirely possible that a mystery with a Maine Coon alley cat trying to figure out why a pack of stray dogs is putting the squeeze on a church mouse and her community sold far better than I expected it to.

And one of the hard truths of this job is that while you can tell the story, talk about the story, and try to spread the word, so much of whether or not you succeed is actually out of your hands.

You Can Only Do What You Can Do

Hitting the jackpot as a writer is basically being a professional gambler. You need to read the trends in fiction, understand your audience, learn to recognize interest, figure out what the social media algorithm wants to see from you, and do what you can to gather support from the community. But even if you crunch all the numbers, put your links in the right place, show up to interviews, do readings for your audience, at the end of the day you're basically just gambling. Every book, every blog, every supplement, every article is just one more roll of the dice.

As Captain Picard says, it's possible to do everything right and still fail, when all is said and done.

Even if the odds are on your side, there's no guaranteeing you're going to win. And even if the odds are against you, there's no guaranteeing you're going to lose. The best you can do is put the words on the page in the most compelling way you can, do everything to get it in front of the audience's eyes you can think of, and hope for the best.

Never depend on luck to see you through. At the same time, understand that it is often pure, unadulterated chance that happens to be what makes a book, blog, video, etc. popular. And getting struck by lightning ain't an easy thing to do.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

The Strange Excitement of Forced Success

For those who don't know me, I basically decided that I was going to be an author around the age of 13. Since I was still at that age where adults were constantly asking me what I was going to do when I grew up, I remember being told time and time again, "That's a great goal, sweetheart, but you need to do something other than write novels. After all, what if that doesn't work out for you?"

I'm sure most creative professionals have heard the same spiel in one form or another.

Some adults calmly explained to me that it takes a long time to write a book, and I'll have bills to pay in the mean time. Others talked about how famous authors like Stephen King were teachers while they worked on novels in their spare time (telling me both that they liked these creative works enough to pay for them, and that they sort of missed how condescending it was to relegate the writing itself to a back room hobby, but I digress). While this didn't dissuade me, exactly, it did underline that I was going to have to really pour on the energy if I expected to be able to do this without also pulling a 9 to 5 the rest of the week.

And I realized something earlier this month... I've done it! Well, sort of.

And a big thanks for all the folks who helped me get here!

Also, for those who haven't seen it yet, I've got a newsletter! Sign up now to get weekly updates, and don't miss a single trick while I keep bringing you fresh content.

When The Eggs Weight-Test Your Basket

Folks who check my updates know that I'm a pretty busy bee. Ring of Fire recently released my cat noir novel Marked Territory, I manage two blogs, I'm constantly expanding my Vocal article archive (which is sitting pretty at 178 articles at time of writing), and I've released 46 separate RPG supplements such as 100 Sights to See in a Steampunk City and 100 Fantasy Tattoos (and The Meaning Behind Them) that earn me royalties.

Of course while working on all of that, along with probably a half dozen other projects that I haven't mentioned, I was also writing content as a freelance blogger. I wasn't writing as much content as I had in the past, but it was still the first thing I did everyday when I logged on before I got to the "fun" work.

Come on baby... go viral! I believe in you!

About halfway through the summer, though, I started noticing that my "day job" writing just wasn't paying me anymore. As with so many things, writers get paid when the articles get approved, and more and more clients were scaling back their publications, or just sitting on content for months. Sometimes a batch would squeak through, but it went from triple digit checks every week, to $50 a week, to about $20-$30 a week.

I have a small mountain of content still waiting for approval (enough to equal a second stimulus check if the clients would just approve it), but that income stream has shrunk to a trickle.

And you know what? The past few months I've actually managed to survive. I'm not thriving by any stretch of the imagination, but thanks to sales events like Drive Thru RPG's "Rogue-Tober," as well as the generosity of a handful of new patrons (you can always sign up at The Literary Mercenary's Patreon if you'd like to help keep things going, as well), and the semi-viral success of my article Partners and Polycules: Polyamorous Designations Based Off Dungeons and Dragons Dice, I've managed to break even without tightening my belt too much.

I don't feel secure where I'm at by any stretch of the imagination. I've got a dozen more projects I'm working on as we speak to expand my archives, and to make sure my readers have even more stuff to check out. But it's an odd feeling realizing that I sort of got where I want to be (or at least I'm a lot closer than I thought) when I wasn't even looking.

Missing The Forest For The Trees

The best comparison I have was when I was working two rather strenuous jobs in my early 20s. During the day I walked roughly 10 miles or so delivering newspapers, and then I drove a bakery truck overnight. The bakery was across town, and roughly a three mile walk where I left my place at 1 in the morning, and got there around 2ish. I needed both jobs to cover my part of the rent, and no matter what I tried to do nowhere else in town was hiring. So for roughly two months my schedule was get up, deliver the afternoon papers, come home, eat dinner, and relax. I'd either watch TV, read a book, or nap, then walk across town, deliver donuts till 5:30 or 6, take the bus home, and do it all again the next day.

I wasn't in bad shape when I started these jobs. But as they said in Fight Club after a month or so of this routine I was carved out of wood.

 

Artist's Rendering

 

The sudden realization that without going to the gym, making big changes to my diet, or really noticing it that I'd gotten extremely fit sort of threw me when I looked in the mirror. I was still tired a lot of the time, my feet hurt, and I'd worn the heels of my boots at an odd angle, but I hadn't really noticed just how far I'd come in adding lean muscle and peeling away extra pounds.

A similar thing happened with regards to my current body of work. I'd just been plugging away at it over the past couple of years, making sure that I put up articles as fast as I could, didn't miss deadlines, and generally tried to build that cushion. While I'm knocking on wood as I write these words, even in the midst of a pandemic my archive was still expansive enough that I was able to pay most of my bills between sales and patronage, with my leftover Vocal reads used to fill in the cracks.

Since about August, I've thrown myself into writing entirely new gaming projects, my current novel manuscript has rounded 56k words (coming into the home stretch), and I've got a whole list of Vocal articles I plan to add. While it feels like the devil is nipping at my heels a little bit, there's also a certain invigorating feeling of climbing without a harness; of being on the trapeze without a net.

Something could go wrong. I could lose my patrons, websites I use for hosting could shut down, projects could get terminated, contracts revoked... but for the time being I'm flying. It's a stumbling flight, and I can see the jagged rocks from where I am, but goddammit I'm in the air and I will stay there through sheer force of spite if that's what it takes!

I hope, my friends, that someday you also get to feel this feeling. Though preferably not in the midst of a global pandemic.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Authors, Don't Put Your Cart Before The Horse

I've talked with a lot of authors over the years, and there is something that I've found to be true. Authors who focus on the task at hand (writing the book, making sure the story is good, getting the proper spin on their marketing, etc.) tend to be successful, by and large. Those who get overly concerned imagining the future of their book (how many copies will I sell, how big will my fandom get, how large of an impact will I have on my genre) tend to go nowhere.

We're all entitled to a bit of day dreaming now and again, don't get me wrong. But if you don't hitch up the horses to the wagon, then you aren't going anywhere.

All right, first novel's out... my go a bit faster if we hitch that second one up, though.

Focus On The Book (Let The Rest Take Care Of Itself)

Let's be real for a moment here; when was the last time someone told you, "This book made me re-think my political stance on an issue," or, "Reading this changed my life," and you immediately decided you needed to go out and get it? If you're like most of us out there, you probably nodded politely, rolled your eyes, and moved on with your life unless that person was very important to you, and you put a lot of weight behind their opinion.

But if someone came up to you and said, "Oh my god, you have to read this book! There's demons, witches, a sentient car with the soul of a dead jazz singer under the hood, and a blind chain smoking nun who stole the archangel Michael's sword and refuses to give it back to him!"

Well shit, now you're curious.

No, I haven't written this book yet. But it may be on the list now.

It All Starts With Your Story

We've all had those stories that change our lives as readers. At least a few of us remember the big trends that seemed to encapsulate moments, or the books that became the voice of entire subcultures, or even generations. And sure, that's a nice goal to have. It's up there with winning a big award, or making the sort of money where you can just buy a house in cash, and kick up your heels.

But if you focus on that, then you lose sight of what actually gets you there... your book. The one you're supposed to be writing.

Seriously... it's a trap within your own mind.

By all means, have goals. Know where you want to go with your work, and your career. But remember that when you're a creator that you're essentially closing your eyes, spinning around in a circle, whispering a prayer, and hoping to the gods of chaos that the dart you're about to throw happens to hit a bullseye in a completely dark room.

As I said in Writing a Bestseller is Like Winning The Lottery, you have a 1 in 200 chance of hitting bestseller status. That's better odds than playing the lottery, but you aren't going to improve those odds by figuring out what message you want to give to a legion of adoring fans you don't have, or coming up with important political stances to take once you're famous. What will improve those odds, though is making sure that you write the best book you possibly can, doing your market research, having a solid promotion plan and schedule in place, and making sure that you've got a network of people who are willing to help you spread the word when your title drops.

Practical stuff, in other words.

But even if you do all of those things, there's no guarantee you'll become famous. The odds are, in fact, pretty damn poor. You may not sell a meaningful number of copies of your book for years, and it could take grueling efforts to promote, peddle, and hand sell your stock until your name is finally known to people who aren't your friends and family.

You can't actually do any of that, though, until your book is done and on the market. And if you spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about controversies your stances might generate in the genre as a whole, or worrying that people might attack you for daring to defy tradition, let me tell you this with all sincerity; those are problems you'll be lucky to have.

Because it means enough people noticed (and read) your book to give a damn who you are, and what you have to say.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

In Case You're Wondering, Novels Really Are Easier To Sell

I love reading short stories. I've always enjoyed the art form, and I treated both collections and anthologies as a kind of sampler platter. Which is to say, they were the thing I checked out when I wasn't sure what I liked in a genre, or when I wanted a lot of different flavors by the time I closed the back cover. These books were often how I found new authors, and how I explored new aspects of genres I liked. That was why I started writing short fiction; I figured it would give people a sample of my work so they could decide if they liked it or not.

Then I wrote a novel. And let me tell you, the difference in selling these two very different products is like night and day.

"So this is my fantasy novel-" Great, I'll take two.

People Really Like Novels (While Shorts Remain A Tough Sell)

For folks who haven't been by My Amazon Author Page lately, I've been a part of a lot of short story anthologies over the years. I've also released my own collection of steampunk noir shorts, titled New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam. From fantasy and sci-fi, to horror and romance, short story anthologies have been universally difficult for me to sell. That is not to say that they don't sell, of course, but you really need to have your pitch down perfect to get people to take a bite on a bunch of shorts. And even then, you're more likely to get them to take a card than you are to close a sale.

By contrast, I released a sword and sorcery novel last year titled Crier's Knife. And you know something? It is a lot easier to get people to buy copies of this book than any short story collection with my name in it.

Speaking of, go buy your copy today!

To be clear, I am not selling gangbusters. But in my experience, both online and in-person, novels hook more potential readers (and buyers) than short stories do. Especially because, with an anthology, someone tends to get entire stories with their sample. With a novel you only get a few chapters, which is enough to draw you in, but not enough to satisfy you. When you combine that with the fact that readers seem to enjoy long-form fiction, it's just easier to convince people to check out your book if it tells a single story, and has a bit of heft to it.

I'm not the only author who's noticed this phenomenon. Jason Sanford talked about it on his blog in the post Should Authors Avoid Short Stories if They Desire Literary Success? In this post he brought up something interesting... mainly that we don't consume our fiction the way we used to. Which is to say that in the old days we got our sci-fi, fantasy, horror, etc. mainly from magazines. They were all over the place, and they were paying big money to fill their pages. So much so that many writers would use short stories to pay their bills while they completed novels, thus making it seem that you should write short stories to build your audience and start stacking checks, and then release a novel to cash in. Then, as novels began to grow more common in new and burgeoning genres, they became the main meat for readers, and short stories became a kind of side dish.

In today's Internet age, magazines are niche publications. While there are lots of digital places where short stories are more than welcome, collections tend to move minimal copies unless the people in them are already famous, and have a following eager to gobble up any new content from them. And while you can do well with novellas (at least according to some metrics), short stories still tend to fall into the bottom of the barrel most of the time when it comes to sales.

There's A Market For Everything

Now, does that mean you can't make money writing short stories? Of course not! You totally can. Writing for open anthology calls can make you semi-regular paychecks, get your name out there, and help you build both your network and your readership. It pads your archive of work, and helps draw more people to you.

However, if you had the option of spending a year putting together a collection of short stories, or a year working on a novel, you're going to get a lot more bang for your buck out of the novel. Whether you're bringing it to readings, trying to move copies at a convention, or just doing online link sharing, a novel will almost always score higher, all other things being equal.

Just something to think about.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing installment. For more work by yours truly, check out my Vocal archive. Also, I'm on Pinterest now, so come take a look at my boards where you'll be able to find all kinds of fun stuff! To stay on top of all my latest releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Lastly, if you want to support me, Buy Me A Ko-Fi, or go to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today! Every little bit helps, you can trust me on that score!