The Successful Writer: Guest Post by G.C McRae, author of Free Pizza

The Successful Writer by G.C. McRae

If you did a survey of authors and asked them their definition of literary success, most of them would cite the example of an author like J.K. Rowling, who sells tens of millions of copies of each book. Far be it from me to dissuade anyone from striving for that rare kind of success, but I have met many authors who believe their options are binary: unless they are as successful as J.K. Rowling, they are failures.

My wife and I watch reality shows like The Voice. It’s a bit shocking to hear the same story over and over again. “I’ve been gigging in bars for over twenty years, five nights a week. I have just gotten married and we have a new baby. All I want to do is make my wife and daughter proud. I’m forty years old. This is my last chance.”

Umm... If bars want to hire you five nights a week, that is a full-time job that apparently you are quite successful at. But no. They consider themselves failures unless they can live in a mansion with gold-plated bathtub fixtures.

Literary agent Steve Laube did a quick survey of 10 authors who had their books at major publishers and discovered they had sold an average of 12,455 copies for each title. At $20 list price and 10% royalty rate, they earn around $25,000 per book. How is that not successful? Especially considering they have multiple books for sale at a time. And I have to mention Romance authors. In 2014, 15 percent of them earned $100,000 a year from their writing.

In every profession, there are clear paths to success. Success being defined as, “earning a living in your chosen discipline.” There are no clear paths to becoming the next J.K. Rowling or Beyoncé. Most of the time it is not even up to you. Publishers reject books for any number of reasons. Quality writing often has nothing to do with their decisions. They reject works of pure genius all the time.

Getting from amateur status to professional may not even be one of your goals. Many writers find supreme fulfillment writing whatever they feel like without caring about earning a living from it. 

That’s the joy of being an amateur. The word amateur literally means “lover” (amatore in Italian). So when you’re deciding to put in all those hours on a story, take a moment to reflect. Are you doing it for love or for money? If it’s for love, calm the heck down about not having those gold-plated fixtures. If you’re doing it for money, do a little research on what sort of book makes those big bucks and spend some time developing the skills to write them.