Hi everyone,
I hope you are all well! I have been thinking more recently about how hard the market can be for authors, and about some of the things that you can do as a writer to help sustain a publishing career. Of course, there is luck involved in this, and timing, and many other factors, but not all of them are within your control so I thought it might be useful to talk about the things that (in my opinion / experience) can be green flags to editors, and that you as a writer might want to do if you want to build a longer-term career. In no particular order, here are my six tips for today…
Write consistently. There are writers who produce books every ten years and make it work, but I would say these are the exception, not the rule, and they are often authors who have had a mega-hit at some stage (which again, is hard!) If you want to make consistent money from writing books, writing a book a year is really beneficial. Some write more than that - I think this is hard, especially with another job, but it is doable (quite a few authors write a Spring and a Winter book, for example, particularly in commercial fiction). Delivering your book to your agent / editor, on time and reliably, also helps build trust with your publisher, and allows us to know that we can try our best to build you. Deadlines do change, life gets in the way, and publication dates shift (I wrote about this here) but doing your best to deliver your manuscript on time is very helpful in terms of making sure the book can stay on the critical path, that we have what we need to talk to retailers about it and our internal marketing, PR and sales teams, and that we have time to go through the editorial process with you and make the book the very best it can be! Obviously, the more books you write, the more royalties you receive, too. Most big traditional publishers won’t have room for you to do more than maximum 2 a year, but non-traditional or digital-first publishers will, and if you also build up a good backlist, there will be opportunities for us to reissue your work (perhaps with new covers, or in time with any TV releases, etc) and find new readers in the future. All of this helps your overall sales picture and brand growth.
Create a newsletter. Newsletters are great because they are direct to consumers - you’re going straight into inboxes, rather than hoping people come across your posts on social media. You have more of a captive audience (that sounds weird as I write to mine; you are not actually held hostage!) and hopefully, the people on your list are those who really enjoy your content, and therefore are more likely to engage with it and to buy your books / recommend you to their networks. I really love Substack, I like the long-form nature of it, but before this I used to use other platforms that host newsletters, too. Sometimes your publisher might do this for you, or help you with it, and it can be a good way to give your readers special extra insights into your writing process, or to run giveaways, or to ask for preorders.
Grow an engaged social media presence, if you find it easy enough. I do totally get that not everyone is on social or wants to be, and that really is fine - it is not a deal-breaker for publishers, and particularly for fiction there are many who do not have or use it. If your book is brilliant we will absolutely still want to publish it! But if you do like social media or find it comes naturally to you, I’d suggest using it - again like the newsletter, it’s another way to connect with readers who might like your books. It’s worth looking at the channels of popular authors to see what sort of content they post and thinking about what you want your style to be. It can also be a lovely way to actually hear from readers (you have to be thick-skinned sometimes to filter out negativity, but you’ll hopefully hear from lots of people who love your writing!)
Collaborate with your publisher. I really love working with authors who are open-minded and keen to partner on their books - so that might mean discussing the synopsis in advance of you actually writing it, thinking about trends in the market that you might want to tap into, paying attention to previous sales/reviews/publication date timings that could indicate a previous book hasn’t worked, trusting your publishing team on titles and covers, and thinking together about what to learn from that and what we can do together in the future to give you a better chance of success. Your publisher should want the best for you, and sometimes we are privy to really interesting sales data or consumer insight that it’s useful to think about when you’re coming up with new ideas. Your book should absolutely feel like your own, but this is just something that might help your chances of success.
Be open to experimenting! Lots of new things happen in publishing all the time - Spotify beginning to sell audiobooks, Kindle Unlimited, IP projects, Amazon Prime, new retailer promotions, new Waterstones Book of the Month slots, StoryTel, BookTok - none of these are new now but they are just examples from the past few years. Talk to your publisher and agent about what you might want to try or what they think could be useful - decisions can usually be reversed if they don’t work, but often, they do! You should only do what you feel comfortable with, but as publishers we are always trying to look at new ways to reach readers so if an author is up for testing something out or trying something new, that’s always great.
Know that it’s a marathon, not a sprint - and keep writing. I’ve written around this topic in several of my posts, but publishing really can be a long game. Not every book is going to hit the bestseller lists, and not every debut is going to break out. Not every book is going to sell! Authors change agents, change publishers, have new ideas, write in new genres, write under pseudonyms, plug away for years before getting a big break, etc. I know it can be frustrating, and that it can feel hard when things don’t go exactly as you might like. But the only way to guarantee you will never be published is to stop writing. So don’t! You never know when your luck might change, and even when you do get published, keeping the faith is a huge part of it, so you may as well start practicing that now :)
I hope all of this is helpful - if you have any tips or advice you want to share, please feel free to comment below! I am not going to share specific examples as I want to protect people’s privacy, but just believe me when I say I have seen MANY ups and downs through many writers’ careers, and if writing is something you love and want to pursue, don’t give up!
What would you add to my list?
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Phoebe x
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