Hey everyone,
First, some interesting statistics that I read online:
Queen’s Gambit, the show that’s been a runaway success for Netflix, debuted on the platform in the last week of October and has been watched by more than 62 million households. Predictably, following the success of the show, inquiries for chess sets were up 250% on eBay and the number of new players on chess.com increased by 5x.
But what most fascinated me was this: The original novel The Queen’s Gambit became a New York Times bestseller following the show’s success, 37 years after it was released. (Emphasis mine.)
I’m asked frequently about the publishing side of my business. I’ve been talking about writing a lot, but I haven’t spoken about the publishing side of things all that much. Mostly because for now, there’s not that much to talk about.
My first novel went out to top publishers and while we got amazing feedback on my writing, ultimately the book failed to get the high advance that my agent and I were looking for. My second novel was meant to go on submission at the London Book Fair 2020 but once that got cancelled due to the pandemic, we decided to sit it out until publishers were feeling a bit more confident spending money. I have a nonfiction book proposal that I’m finishing up and that my agent is incredibly excited about, but again, it feels right to everyone involved to wait until the new year to go out with it.
On the indie publishing side of things, I wrote eight books that I self published but only in ebook format. This year, I had planned to launch print and audio editions, but then I changed my name and I’ve now decided to re-launch everything under my new brand and byline. I’ve had two more books ready for publication since the beginning of this year but I wanted to know what I was doing with my byline before I launched them.
The way I see it, there are three important parts to being a successful author.
- Writing the books
- Publishing the books
- Marketing the books
What I have done until now, and what has been the right thing to do, is to learn and do all three of these things together. Write your first book, then figure out the publishing and marketing side of things as you write your next. That is the logical and effective way to do it.
Over the last few years, however, it’s been nagging at me that while I’m very proud of what I write, I’m not writing as much as I’d like. I’m not happy with the way I publish and I don’t think I do it particularly well. And marketing, something I’m excellent at when it comes to freelancing, is something that is pretty much non-existent in my toolkit as an author.
It’s not that I don’t know what to do particularly. It’s that I’m trying to do all of it, too much of it, at once.
This year, after the London Book Fair was cancelled and I decided to change my name, the publishing and marketing side of things came to a forced halt. While, let’s not lie, I’ve been incredibly frustrated about this, I was also smart enough to see this as an opportunity to focus exclusively on the writing. Without the publication and marketing side of things to distract me, I could get excellent at creating a habit around my writing so that when the publishing and marketing do come back into play, not only do I have a bunch of books waiting to sent out, but also a daily habit and practice of writing that is no longer quite so vulnerable to being disrupted.
In addition to my novel, I’ve finished two more books this year and am halfway through a fourth.
As the year has progressed, however, it’s finally been sinking in, what my agent’s been trying to tell me all along: It’s not about getting the books out there fast to anyone who will buy them. It’s about finding the right editor who will champion not just one book, but an entire career, and help me create the pathway to achieving my full potential. It’s about self-publishing in a way that I’m proud of, releasing books at the same rate and standard as those of traditional publishing so that who is publishing the book becomes immaterial and what is being published takes center stage.
My agent tells me the same thing I told myself when I first started on this path: We are not settling.
Publishing has changed, in new and exciting ways, and the changes are only just beginning. For decades, the model has been that a writer publishes a book, the book gets about a week to land on the bestseller lists, and if it doesn’t, it dies a slow, quiet death. Authors go all out to promote their books in those early weeks because these initial weeks are crucial to a book’s success. It determines whether bookstores will stock it, reviewers will review it, or whether it will get that word of mouth impact that every author lives for.
That model is on its way to being obsolete.
Indie publishing has already disrupted it. You can promote a book anytime now and make it a bestseller, not just at the time of launch but at any time during its life cycle. You can promote it steadily over time and never hit the bestseller lists, but get consistent guaranteed income. You can sell movie or production rights decades after you wrote a book and land on the New York Times bestseller list 37 years after its release.
What does this mean for us as authors?
Lots of things, but mostly, here’s what I’ve been taking away from it this year:
- There’s no need to rush. There is no deadline on your dreams.
- Get excellent at all three parts of the process.
- Surround yourself with people who will give you good advice.
There are so many more choices that we have now as authors, not necessarily in traditional publishing, but outside of it. It really shifted things for me to truly understand this year that whether I published my books today or three years from now would make very little difference, but whether or not I published and marketed them well would make a substantial one.
So, this year, I’ve been focusing on writing well and writing faster. The process will be different for everyone, of course, but I’ve been making decisions based on what I want my long-term career to be.
My books may become bestsellers today, win awards today, or they may be discovered 37 years from now. But they can only reach that potential if there is excellence in each step and every part of the process. This is why I’m making sure that I’m not just writing good books, but incredible books that people will love and that can stand the test of time. I’m learning not just how to indie publish but how to become a publisher who releases several titles a year.
I’m forcing myself to be bigger and better than I could ever have imagined myself to be. There is learning to be done, personal and professional growth to be had, and challenges that I need to overcome.
This year, I’m focusing on the writing. But when I’m ready to publish and market?
I intend to do it well.
Cheers,
Natasha