A couple of days ago, I saw a video review of The Click Moment: Seizing Opportunity in an Unpredictable World on The Creative Penn. I needed something to listen to on a road trip anyway, so I picked up the audio version of the book. Joanna already did a nice review of it, so I won’t summarize it here, but one of the ideas was that talent and hard work only get you so far in business (including art, music, and writing). You need a serendipitous moment here or there (AKA a lucky break) in order to succeed in our rapidly evolving world.
For authors, the ultimate sign of success is often considered hitting the bestseller lists and hanging out there long enough to sell a million (or more) copies. This doesn’t mean you can’t make a perfectly nice living as a mid-list author (something that is more possible than ever in the world of independent e-publishing right now), but that’s not quite the same as rocketing up the charts to fame and fortune. True, that’s not something to which every author aspires, but, especially in today’s economy, one can certainly understand the desire to not simply make a living but to be “set for life.”
But can a bestselling book be manufactured? Is there a formula that, with enough practice and talent, an author might follow? Or do the stars need to align in just the right way for one to reach such lofty heights?
The Click Moment author, Frans Johansson, suggests it’s the latter.
Among other examples, Twilight gets a mention in the book. As we all know, the series took off without precedent. Stephanie Meyer wasn’t an experienced author with years of practice penning novels; in fact, she hadn’t been writing much at all before getting an idea for her story and going from there. She wasn’t well-versed in vampire lore and made things up as she went. Johansson even points out that much of the series’ success might be attributed to Meyer’s lack of knowledge, which allowed her to tackle things from a fresh angle. Had she been better versed in vampire lore and gone with the accepted norms, she couldn’t have written the same story, the one that resonated with so many teenage readers and rocketed her up the charts.
Stephen King is also used as an example in the book. He had some early success, then was able to build on it until he reached a point where his name alone could place a new release on the bestseller lists. But, Richard Bachman, a pen name King used early on (because his publisher wouldn’t allow him to publish more than one book a year) failed to have that early break-out moment. The Bachman books, despite being written by the same author with the same storytelling talents, failed to gain traction until it was revealed that King was Bachman.
In these cases, as well as many others, it seems that some serendipitous moment caused a tipping point in the authors’ careers, and it is that moment, rather than simple hard work and talent, that allowed them to achieve bestseller status.
So, what does that mean for the rest of us? All we can do is hope to get lucky?
Well, yes, and no. Johansson argues that randomness and luck do play a part in success but that we can set our selves up to be in a position where luck will be more likely to strike for us.
How we can improve our odds of becoming a bestselling author
1. “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.” – Herb Kelleher (AKA Write a Lot!)
Johansson uses that quotation in the book, and I caught myself nodding. The more books you write, the more chances you have of hitting it big with one.
As some of you know, I used to build content-based websites and monetize them with affiliate programs and Google Adsense (that was the old day job). I must have made about twenty sites over the six or seven years I was making a living doing this. I read up on SEO and learned about the various keyword research tools that let me see exactly how many people were searching for which terms on Google. I also knew how to find out how much advertisers were bidding for clicks on ads in the various fields (so I could estimate how much I would earn for each ad click originating on my site).
All that science should have meant that I could pick a winning website topic every time and turn each one into a cash cow. It’s true that none of them failed utterly, and they all ended up making at least a dollar or two a day, but perhaps one in five would make much more than that, and one in ten might make more than a hundred dollars a day. The thing is… I couldn’t, despite all that research, accurately predict which sites wold take off. A random link from a popular blog (which often resulted in links from many more blogs) could make a site overnight. Or one particular topic might resonate with people, and word-of-mouth marketing would come into play. In other words, some sites got lucky and others didn’t.
When it comes to novels, I think the lesson is that most of us aren’t going to hit it big with one book. But if we write ten or twenty books, the odds are much better of one become a hit. One thing I pointed out in a post on JA Konrath’s $140,000 earnings month is that one or two of his 30- or 40-odd titles were responsible for the majority of his income. (There’s a chart on that post, showing his sales numbers.)
So, if we hope to become bestsellers, we must not only write well, but we must write and publish lots to increase our odds for success. Johansson calls this making a lot of bets and suggests we should also minimize the size of those bets. If you’re not the fastest writer, this might mean trying some novellas and shorter works (Joanna from the Creative Penn link above is planning to try this). It might also mean publishing a number of potential series Book 1s before committing to a six-book storyline, thus to see which series has the most potential to take off. There are doubtlessly numerous ways authors can pursue this philosophy.
2. Don’t try to follow a formula or use current trends as an indicator of what to write
Hollywood, for all its money and power and experience, can’t predict which scripts will turn into blockbuster hits and which will flop. That’s why they buy so darned many; they’re also hoping to “get lucky.”
New York publishing houses can’t predict which books will become hits either. They try their darnedest to manufacture them, but again and again they’re surprised by what actually takes off. When they’re regurgitating popular formulas, it’s not necessarily in hopes of creating a bestseller, but rather in putting out a middle-of-the-road style of product that’s proven over and over again that it can be profitable enough. These folks are usually as dumbfounded as you and me when something like 50 Shades of Greys takes the world by storm.
As we discussed, one of the reasons Twilight may have been such a hit is because Meyer made up her own versions of vampires through sheer ignorance of the precedents in the genre. She was essentially an outsider, and, in being so, brought fresh ideas to the table. This is actually a fairly tried and true concept. Sometimes the most brilliant ideas come from people outside of a field, because they haven’t been trained to think in a certain way. There are sites out there (and I forget the name or where I read about this, so someone please post more details if this rings a bell) where huge companies with staffs of brilliant engineers, scientists, etc. post problems on the web with rewards for those who can solve them. And the most random, sometimes utterly unskilled, people solve problems that eluded teams of specialists in the field.
So, what does this mean for us as writers? Johansson suggests we go places and do things that have nothing to do with our core work, thus to open ourselves up to moments and experiences that will give us unique ideas. He mentions talking to random people, traveling and experiencing different cultures, and going to conventions and conferences in fields outside of our niches.
For authors, I think, too, it’s important to read widely in areas that have nothing to do with the genre in which you write. When I was in my teens, I read nothing but medieval fantasy for a few years. And the stories that I wrote at the time were medieval fantasies that sounded a heck of a lot like all the other stories I was reading. I won’t claim that I create the most original worlds these days either, but I do find a lot of fun plot ideas from reading real-world history and listening to podcasts on a variety of non-fiction topics. I’ve found that travel can indeed inspire ideas, and you don’t necessarily need to cross the world (something we authors aren’t always rich enough to afford!); an hour drive and a tour of a small town with an interesting history can also stir the imagination.
3. When something seems to be working, exploit it!
Once one of your bets pays off, and you have a winner, take advantage of that. Write more books in a similar vein.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to wait for a book to become a bestseller. If one of your titles sparks better reviews and more fan mail than the others, it may make sense to launch a series based on that book. This may be Step 1 in creating a bestselling series.
Each of Stephen King’s books becomes a bestseller because he’s built up a fan base of readers who know they will get what they expect when they buy a new King book. If he’d decided to bounce around between genres and write something different each time, he might have been, at best, a one-hit wonder. But, by writing the same types of novels each time, novels that have proven popular for him, he’s created, as Johansson calls it, a self-reinforcing loop.
Final thoughts
Though I can see many of the points in the book, and often found myself nodding, it’s hard for me to give up the belief that a savvy author could gradually work one’s way up to bestseller status without some random bit of luck suddenly turning a book into a phenomenon. If one can put out good stories and build on small successes along the way, gradually gathering more fans with each successive release, it seems that one would eventually hit a tipping point (caused by X number of fans buying a new release on Day 1, and thus propelling it into visibility on bestseller lists) regardless of lucky breaks. But perhaps that would only result in one becoming a popular author and not a bestselling one.
Your thoughts?
Excellent post, Lindsay! I think many of us have pondered these ideas and I agree that it takes hard work and constant production of new content in order to get noticed.
And once you are noticed, sit back and wait for the Fans to start RP on social media, and building forums for you…
Sit back? Like in the dungeon those fans build for you? The one where you’re chained to a laptop until you produce the next book? 😀
Yep. Lap of luxury… *whip crack*
Heck I’m coming to hang out with you Lindsay! Hope you got some sexy Alpha Males hanging out too LOL
I agree with you, but also consider: Many folks assume that writing is necessarily slow. A writer that produces two books a year is fast. Ten books a year? Why, that author must be sacrificing quality! (Yes, that’s sarcasm.)
So those who insist that an author must rely on luck might also be assuming that an author can only produce something like two quality titles a year, which affects when that “tipping point” might be reached.
Yes, it’s most likely going to be a longer road for an author who only publishes a novel once every couple of years (though I have favorite authors that do just this and have built up notable careers over time). One of the best things about e-publishing is that we can gets books out so quickly without a lot of rigmarole, so it’s suddenly possible to publish multiple titles a year.
I’ll never get ten or even four full-length novels out in a year, but I’m all for trying those novellas and short stories in between (I was doing that anyway, of course, just because I enjoy having multiple projects going).
Luck is a factor in any career. The thing is, in most careers you can make a nice living without having to rely on luck–you can support your family as a middle manager, you don’t have to be the CEO. The problem with writing fiction is that for a long time you either were a bestseller or you were broke, so you had to get lucky just to make a living. Self-publishing I hope is putting an end to that.
I recall reading that Stephen King was of the opinion that it was only a matter of time before Bachman would have broken out. After all, his next book under that pen name was going to be Misery.
And Misery would have been a hit under anybody’s name. Right?
Hmm.
As always, your comments gave me a whole new understanding on Click Moment. And I found your background and the perspective you brought with it really interesting! I may just have to check out “Click Moment” now.
I’m also interested in your theory of how you can build to that “tipping” moment by hard work, because that seems like a more attainable goal than hoping for luck. But at least I won’t have to waste time trying to decide which to pursue since both require the same thing – put out a lot of work.
And I’m curious about this “There are sites out there (and I forget the name or where I read about this, so someone please post more details if this rings a bell) where huge companies with staffs of brilliant engineers, scientists, etc. post problems on the web with rewards for those who can solve them. ” I know there is a site where non-scientists play games to try to solve protein structure, but this sounds really interesting too!
That sounds familiar too, ES! I’m looking at my audiobook collection, and I think these sites might have been mentioned in Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works. Alas, the big downside with audiobooks is you can’t highlight in them so you can go back and peek at notes later.
That looks like an interesting book and it’s available in my library so I’ll check it out. Thanks!
I can’t give you the actual website, but I can give you the name of one of the companies that offers rewards: Netflix. If you can improve the performance of …something, some algorithm they use, by 10%, there’s a massive reward. A million dollars, if I remember correctly.
But I, too, am very interested if anyone can remember more about the sites in question!
Oooh! That’s interesting! It sounds like it is a programming program but I know someone who might be interested in taking a look for fun. Thanks!
Excellent post. I think your point:
“if we hope to become bestsellers, we must not only write well, but we must write and publish lots to increase our odds for success”
is spot-on. An author can get lucky right out of the gate (like Meyer as you noted), but if the author wants a plan, it has to revolve around quality and quantity.
How does that old saying go?
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
I think the problem with looking at “lucky breaks” is that you’re always looking with 20/20 hindsight. The experiment has already been run, and you know the results. You’ll never know how it would have turned out if you’d done things differently.
Since you can’t make luck, but you can make hard work, I’ll stick to the latter.
Hindsight can be misleading.
It’s like the people who get rich and tell you that they’re rich because of Factor X, the most unusual habit they have. Surely that’s the reason. But is it? Or is it just that they worked hard, believed in themselves, and got lucky? No one likes to attribute their success to luck on top of their hard work. Factor X, that they ate cat fur maybe, only looks golden because they succeeded. If they were broke, it would look silly. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t the cat fur. It could be. But you’d need more subjects to prove it worked.
Hi Lindsay,
Excellent post! I think I had a specific affinity for writers which is why I ended up suing a couple of examples in The Click Moment.
I also think that aside from placing many bets in terms of producing many books, one can also place many bets in terms of how to reach or interact with readers. In addition, one has to pay attention to where there seems to be momentum and double down on those approaches.
For instance, the creative pen post you refer to has gotten a lot of pick-up. Is it possible that my new book has a special interest among authors? Got to pay attention to that, if that is the case. The story of how my first book became a global hit is outlined in The Click Moment but also retold here: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/when_success_is_born_out_of_serendipity.html
The key part about this story was that once it became successful people had no problem explaining why, and attributing it to a intentional strategy…only problem was that it was really just a moment of serendipity.
Frans
Thank you for taking the time to visit and post, Frans! I’ll definitely check out your blog entry.
“I also think that aside from placing many bets in terms of producing many books, one can also place many bets in terms of how to reach or interact with readers. In addition, one has to pay attention to where there seems to be momentum and double down on those approaches.”
Oh, yes, I can see it. I’ve seen people do well finding readerships on everything from Wattpad to fan-fiction sites to Podiobooks.com. It’s worth trying a lot of promotional strategies to figure out where one’s most responsive readers might be hanging out. 🙂
I read this post and it was interesting! Here is what I was struck by – yes it was luck but it was also recognizing something unique and following up.
This reminds me of when I was working on my dissertation research. The project my professor assigned me wasn’t working out *at all.* But because I had been collecting tons of data in another area of my project, I was able to discover a phenomena that no one else had noticed.
The reviews I have seen hints at this – taking advantage of chance moments – as also being covered in the Click Moment; I guess I will have to check it out to see for myself. 🙂
Yes-once you see it taking off you should double down on it. One sign something might be close to doing so is if you are surprised by what is happening. It tells you that you may stumbled upon something serendipitous-something no one else would have thought of…
I have to clear up one well-traveled misconception about Stephanie Meyer, and that is that luck, her lack of knowledge, and her “fresh angle” on the vampire genre somehow were key to her success.
It’s true, as you said, that “Stephanie Meyer wasn’t an experienced author with years of practice penning novels; in fact, she hadn’t been writing much at all before getting an idea for her story and going from there.” However, she didn’t just pull an idea out of the ether. She met up with a great writing teacher at Brigham Young University in the person of David Farland. She spoke with him and was quite candid in asking him for his advice and opinions about what it would take to create a best-selling novel. She wanted to know things like what genre, what plot, what character types, as much as he could tell her based on his experience with the business of writing. He told her, and she went and did it.
It wasn’t luck at all. It was seeking out good advice about the book market and then applying that advice with single-minded workmanship and the putting out of a lot of words.
I don’t begrudge her her success, but her story, when the details are left out, gives many beginners the all-too-common fantasy of thinking that, if only they could think of that one special story, they, too, could be successful and famous and, yes, even rich.
It’s not one special lucky story that does it. It’s diligent work directed toward a well-thought-out end.
I’ll respectfully disagree with you here, Peter. I’d say that almost every serious author has been to cons/classes/lectures/etc and talked to pros (bestselling authors, agents of bestsellers, editors of bestsellers) and asked those exact same questions. For most of them, it hasn’t translated into staggering success. There are so many examples of wonderful stories that never break out (and then there are bestsellers that you find mediocre at best) and, as a reader, all you can do is scratch your head and wonder why some people get lucky and others don’t.
You might try the book, by the way. It might challenge your assumptions. 😉 It certainly made me think a bit!
I think that placing too much emphasis on luck gives too little credit to talent, craftsmanship, and skill at reading the market. I think that Stephanie Meyer had all of those, at least with the first book (I think the craftsmanship diminished in the later books of the series). To a familiar genre, vampires, she skillfully added story elements that, as “The (London) Times” said, captured “perfectly the teenage feeling of sexual tension and alienation.” The fact that she did so at a perfect time in our culture for that type of story to be a hit was, I believe, no accident.
You are correct that most authors, even the serious ones who work hard at their craft, do not achieve “staggering success,” but I believe luck plays a small rôle, at best. I think that some people are just better at sensing what an audience wants than others. They can make the most of that sense because they are better writers, and their words, intentionally on the writer’s part, touch the sensibilities of a wider audience.
But there’s also the luck that there was this audience there at the right time for her to tap into. What if she’d had the same idea and executed it to the same or even better level but the zeitgeist was wrong for it? Luck works on the writer side and on the audience side. Of course the writer must deliver, but the right audience time and any number of other factors must also be present.
You’re saying that she sat down with this audience and mind and crafted the book to hit them perfectly. Many a writer has tried that and failed. I’d highly doubt that she did that unless it was by pure instinct.
But let’s say that she’s a marketing genius who identified this need no other writer or publisher had identified so well (or they would have targeted it themselves), there’s still the luck of getting readers to read it in the first place and having them spread it.
I’ve invested many hours and have read many books and attended many panels on writing. I’m friends with published writers and traditional editors, some award winners. I study story structure and I’m complete nerd about it. I’ve sought out what makes for bestsellers and have studied craft far more than most. I don’t have Meyer’s success. I’m not likely to, even if I writer better books someday. Maybe I don’t have her talent. But you put in the sweat hoping to catch the breaks.
And some of us don’t write things that will ever strike it big, anyway. Some of my books will never hit it big. I don’t expect them to. There will be no cultural zeitgeist to propel an antihero sword & sorcery book to stardom. Sadly.
My YA works could potentially reach that level, though it’s extraordinarily unlikely. If they did, it would be because I put in the hours, the blood and sweat and tears, and then got lucky. And I would think on some of my favorite writers who are broke and deserving, and I would appreciate what I have.
No offense to Peter or the original poster, but I don’t see how anyone could attribute the Twilight phenomenon to anything OTHER than luck. I’ve read the series and neither the writing nor the stories are GOOD. They’re not as horrible as some people make them out to be but there are much, much better books out there for that audience. The same as with 50 Shades of Grey, the author got LUCKY. I don’t know why people have such a hard time believing in such things. People win the lottery after all.
I’ve spoken with Brandon Sanderson, who took the same class at BYU from David Farland (and later went on to teach it for several years), and he claims that Farland is mis-remembering things–that Meyer didn’t take the class when Farland was the one teaching it. Without the actual class roster to look at, though, it’s all hearsay one way or another.
I agree with everything here, and in particular the advice to put a lot of different things out there and build on the ones that sell best. People love series, because they innately hate having to familiarise themselves with something new, which is why they’ll go for the same author over finding another one.
I think there is absolutely no shame in being a midlist author under the radar but selling well enough for a living. Much less kerfuffle and scutiny, for one.
I think people are afraid to admit luck takes a role in success because they fear their luck isn’t that good. They want to believe they have control over their own success or failure.
The fact is, luck (good or bad) is with us from the moment of conception (if that particular sperm hadn’t fertilized that particular egg, someone besides myself would have eventually been born– or not).
That said, the more you work at something, the better your chances of success. If you just sit around and never do anything, you can almost be guaranteed to fail. Unless your goal was to accomplish nothing…
It’s so hard to read outside your genre. You write in it for a reason, after all. But I do think it’s important. Usually Michael Moorcock’s first piece of advice to aspiring writers. One it took me a long time to follow. (And Moorcock’s my writing hero. Bad me.)
But even after just reading all of Dan Brown’s books, my writing improved noticeably. You can learn a lot about pacing from that man. Say what you want about his writing, but his pacing covers up a lot of his flaws. Fantasy authors, including many excellent authors I enjoy reading, often have pacing struggles. Not the genre’s strong suit.
So yes, read in other genres. You can learn pacing from thrillers. Foreshadowing from mystery. Worldbuilding from fantasy. Exposition from science fiction. Relationships from romance. Distinct voices from unexpected places, authors, or passages.
You also improve your word bucket. You know, you read words and they go in your bucket. When you write, you pull words out of the bucket. If you stay in the same genre and with the same writers, you only have your natural words and theirs in your bucket. That makes sense to me, but maybe not to anyone else.
Read nonfiction as well. Always good ideas to be acquired.
One could always strike gold with their first novel and become paralyzed forever after. Luck can bring its own curses. You see it with authors, movie directors, bands. They get the one big hit and then don’t have follow through. Building a steady career ain’t so bad.
Of course, if you write the next To Kill a Mockingbird and sell a copy to every 8th grader for 50 years, lack of additional successes won’t hurt your income. Your chances of doing so are only microscopically bigger than 0, of course.
Luck certainly plays a part, but I’ve found that the harder I work and the more persistent I am, the luckier I get.
Interesting that David mentions Factor X, because the first thing I thought when reading Lindsay’s post was about the TV show, the X Factor. It seems to surprise some that so much raw talent is just waiting to be discovered. Much of it is fresh, different, and–dare I say it–even better than the stars who get frequent play.
Since publishing my own work independently, I’ve started seriously reading other independent authors. And, similar to the auditions on the X Factor where Simon holds his hand up to stop the music early, you only need to read the first page of a large percentage. But on a regular basis, I find great stories that are just as good as anything the bestselling authors put out. I’m sad that I, along with these other authors might never achieve breakout success.
It only makes sense that the more exposure a book has, the more opportunity for it to be discovered. However, the majority of the buying public continue to let major record companies, movie studios, and yes, publishing houses to dictate the art worthy of consideration. And for authors, that is bad news.
Excellent post; thank you, Lindsay, and thank you, Frans!
For me, this post–particularly the parts about increasing your bets by being prolific–brings up a main strategic question that I’ve been wrestling with for a while.
I’ve not yet published anything. However, I have nearly a dozen half-finished novels that I’m actively working on. It’s a bit nutty to have so many going at once, but as they’re all set in the same fantasy world, and are all loosely connected through common characters and so forth, it actually is helpful to work on them at the same time. Some are intended to become part of a series; some are intended as stand-alones that can be read in any order, but would appeal to readers of the series.
That’s the background; here’s the strategy point: is it best to place all those bets concurrently, or space them out?
Originally, my strategic plan was to wait until I had most of my in-progress books finished, and then release them in a flood: if readers liked one, I didn’t want to risk them forgetting that while waiting around for the next release; rather, I wanted them to be able to just click, boom, get the collection immediately. (I’ve certainly lost track of many writers myself while waiting for their next book.)
Then, I decided that perhaps it’d be best to try a test-run strategy: pick whichever stand-alone can be completed fastest (and would best stand alone) and go ahead and get it out there, as a learning experience.
Now, I’m not sure what I plan to do! What do y’all think? (The Southern dialect is so useful. We rednecks actually have a distinct you(plural) word!)
For what it’s worth, here’s my thought. You might as well finish one and get it up there. So you might lose someone you find before you put the next one up. But if you wait ,that might be someone you would never find at that late day anyway. Meanwhile, it is always possible that you’ll have a book catch on, and if you miss being in the right place at the right time then you will have to wait until…. later. 🙂
The one thing would be to not get distracted by promoting and not writing, from what I hear.
Just don’t watch your sales figures while you’re working on getting the rest up ! 😀
Long time lurker, first time poster.
You hit a good point, Lindsay, sometimes authors can hit big out of the blue, but I believe that it because it hit right accord with the audience at the right time.
You have great example like Star Wars (sure it is not book). Star Wars become a massive hit overnight, but the story itself isn’t that extraordinary, it is quite simple and straightforward if you take good look close at it.
If you took another major success series is Harry Potter. JK Rowling had several rejections before it hit, big. It is a very straight forward story.
Both seems to follow the Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces a young boy who has humble beginnings (that make him distinguish right from wrong, who has call to adventure and in the end become the great Hero).
Does the myth like Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces have influence how the stories hit the right accord in audiences?
Point 2, Point 2, Point 2. OK, I agree with the whole post, but definitely with, did I mention Point 2?
I write in the paranormal genre. I love books in this genre but only watch TV shows or the occasional movie as I fear drawing too much from an existing theme. It’s not a matter of stealing, it’s a matter of getting to the end of the novel, editing and going, ‘darn, I’ve just rewritten a supernatural episode here.’
I definitely agree with writing what you want, and what’s in your brain. We don’t know what the next breakout genre is going to be, which sort of books people will be rushing to next. I say, just write what you want to write, and be patient. As has been mentioned many times before, eBooks have a practically infinite shelf life, they can be discovered at any time. So when your genre comes back into vogue, who knows what can happen! 😀
My thought is that if you can’t pinpoint exactly how something happened, don’t think it will happen to you.
The two theories on “building a successful writing career” that I see battling each other are the proliferates and the promoters. Proliferates say stuff like “good work finds an audience eventually, so focus on pumping out good work.” Promoters are obsessed with marketing, which is basically an attempt to create momentum.
I don’t think that all of your focus should be on writing the next thing. However, you’re wasting your time doing promo promo promo if the next book is far better. Write until something picks up on its own, and THEN flog the heck out of it (while writing!)
(One good thing to remember about marketing: You don’t use your favorite products because of marketing. You TRY them because of marketing, and then your love of them brings you back. In order for people to become your repeat customers, they need something to come back to. This is where being prolific enhances marketing and vice versa.)
The best plan I know is to push yourself to put out good work frequently, and to never stop being excited about it. That’s how you build a fanbase.
If you really are an interesting storyteller, and you don’t cruelly neglect your fanbase by refusing to feed it, it will grow. People, don’t be cruel to fanbases. It’s wrong.
I refuse to think that I need luck to reach my goal. I’m a big fan of making choices and working to succeed in any area I might choose. To think that I’m dependant on blind luck is just so insulting to the sleepless nights and hours spent in front of the computer. I mean I spent months getting up at 6am to write before I had to leave for my day job and I stayed up later than I should’ve before I could quit my job to become a full time writer… None of that was luck.
I don’t think anyone is devaluing hard work. You get nowhere without putting in the hard work first. I think you missed a key thing about the article.
The topic is becoming a best-selling author. That’s not the same as being published and making a good or even very good living at your writing. Bestselling writers are in a special league, and getting to that league seems to take some lucky breaks. Again, those breaks come after the hard work.
So if your goal is to be a successful, moneymaking author, hard work and a base level of talent can get you there. If your goal is to be a Bestselling author, good luck. There are many, many hardworking authors struggling for that and not getting there.
* I’m assuming we mean generally the same thing when we say Bestselling. Some may set the bar lower than me, I have no idea. 🙂
Just what I was thinking, David.
Yes, I’m really talking about the household names when I say bestselling. I know a lot of people who’ve hit a Top 100 category on Amazon (no matter how obscure it is) claim they’re bestsellers, but they’re not selling millions of books.
I don’t think the point is that you’re dependent on blind luck, I think the point is that you’re AFFECTED by it.
It looks different if you look at it like this: there will always be factors that affect your success that will be completely out of your control. You have control* of how much effort you put into your work, but you don’t have control over how others react to it, nor of social fads, nor of national and global news events that impact buyers’ behavior, nor of a zillion and one other factors that will have subtle or obvious effects on your success.
*Oh, except you might unexpectedly come down with a coma tomorrow, so no, no you don’t even have complete control over that, either.
You do have control over a handful of the factors that go into your own success, but no one’s success or life is unaffected by the actions and decisions of others. You might be able to predict some or even many of these factors, but even if you were the world’s only 100% accurate psychic, you STILL wouldn’t be able to predict all of them, because there’s just plain too many of them for a billion brains stuck together to compute, much less a single brain!
Here’s a non-literary example of what I will call blind luck for the sake of expediency. Several years ago, I put a great deal of effort into learning how to make Edwardian corsets. Everyone else was making Victorian or Elizabethan or 18thC corsets, but gosh darn it, I liked the Edwardian ones, so that’s what I specialized in. Well, a few months after I’d gotten good at it, I started hearing scuttlebutt about a Titanic movie. Sure enough, a year or so later, out comes this huge movie that all the teenage girls swooned over, and scads of girls suddenly wanted Edwardian corsets so that they could dress up as Rose for their prom or wedding or what have you. And guess who just so happened to be one of the few corsetieres in the world who knew how to make an Edwardian corset? Yo.
But… while I had control over how much effort I put into learning the skills needed, and I had control over the way I took advantage of the sudden upswing in interest in those skills, I had absolutely zero control over the factors that had such a huge impact on the demand for those skills. I didn’t discover the Titanic’s resting place on the ocean floor; I didn’t inspire James Cameron to make a movie about the tragedy; I certainly didn’t make everyone swoon over Leonardo DiCaprio. I definitely had something to do with my own corset-making success …but other factors had a whole lot MORE to do with it.
That is a perfect example of how luck factors in.
Hi ExStock,
Perfect example of how, in my research, I have seen serendipity and randomness play a massive role in success. In The Click Moment there are tons of examples of this. The common rule for all of them, however, is that if you are doing what everybody else is doing your chances for having such a breakout as you described is much lower. I would love to share your story to a wider audience, actually. It is a great example. If you are open to it pls tell me how we can get in touch with you or just email Eric on my team at eric@themedicigroup.com.
Frans
Well, the part that I didn’t include, because it didn’t work as well for illustrative purposes, is that I did NOT go on to parlay that early success into a long-term success in the corset-making industry! 🙂
When Titanic came out, I was still several months away from my 21st birthday, and had no clue what I wanted to do when I grew up. I was an early internet adopter, and had already been designing websites for several years, but was investigating my options, so I really had two things going on at the time. While I was able to take a lot more advantage of the situation than other corset makers, I was simply too young and too unfocused to take _as much_ advantage of that particular confluence of events as someone older and wiser might have been able to take.
But hey, if you have no problem with that caveat, you’re welcome to the story!
Corset making as a hobby – I had absolutely no idea that there were (apparently) lots of people who do this. I love it!
I think some luck has to be involved. There are so many authors out here trying to hit a bestseller list, how can it not rely at least a little on luck. This is the first year I’m making above minimum wage with my writing career.. and it can all happen in the blink of an eye.
I spent three years promoting my books and the latest one is no better than the others, in my opinion, so why is it selling so much better? Luck! I definitely didn’t do anything different. I was promoting 6 hours a day then just like I have been for this one.
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Another brilliant post, Lindsay. I suspect you and I read the same marketing material. Good luck!
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I think luck definitely plays a role, but that’s not all it takes. If there were a tried and proven formula for becoming a best-selling author, everyone would be doing it. We’d all just follow in the same footsteps and everyone would be cranking out bestsellers.
The thing is, there is more than one road to success. Looking at the examples you provided, Stephenie Meyer was an almost overnight success, while Stephen King tried and failed for years before reaching the status he’s at now. Meyer doesn’t have to write another word — at least not while she’s selling rights to movies and tee shirts — and King could easily write only one novel a year or every other year. Both would still make a solid income.
I think the takeaway is to not give up, and to not put all of your proverbial eggs in one basket. This is why I won’t solely publish on Amazon, but will put at least one ebook in KDP Select to keep that momentum there while distributing others. What I’ve learned, from watching other indie authors, is that it’s best to get as much work out as possible — keep your name in everyone’s mouths. There are certain authors I see being mentioned all the time. Those are the ones who are more than likely making the most money. Releasing at least one full-length novel a year while releasing short stories and other short works in the meantime is probably a very good way to go.
I agree with your take on the balance between luck and quality.
But I think there’s one element here that some answers allude to, and that element can PRODUCE the lucky break: the dogged determination, or the “unbending intent” to win.
Steven King wrote a book each time he sat down for a coffee. Amanda Hocking wrote 17 books before starting to build her “writer’s platform”. JA Konrath may be making money from 20% of his titles, but he does have 30+ to lean on. And so on.
Oh well. I should go take my own advice and write some more 🙂
Great post – a mix of serendipity and 20:20 hindsight is definitely the way to go.
Also I think the best way to promote book 1 is to write book 2 and the best way to promote book 2 is to write book 3 etc …
… and when you write a book you are really, really proud of to shout from the roof tops and promote them all as if they were a natural, pre-planned sequence 🙂
An overall true to life post, I think! However, I will say that Stephenie Meyer brought anything but new ideas to the table. If you’ve ever read The Vampire Diaries, written about ten years before Twilight, you’ll find a striking number of parallels. Her ideas came from a plethora of YA paranormal romance series, the only difference is that they were lesser known. Which I would call a fluke.
Hi Lindsay. Writing well, and – I don’t call it luck, rather ‘MY time’ – are the two keys to success. I have not attempted serious novel writing, or publishing – yet! – but I can feel it, my time will come, when I’m ready, and all I can say is I will know when that time arrives…. as you noted, aligning with the universe is what I believe will be when things take off for me. In the meantime, I need to learn more about ebooks, self-publishing… Great post, thanks for sharing! 🙂