A Message For Writers

First, an observation, then an epiphany...

Everyone knows that literary one-hit wonders exist (writers who write one book and find attention and success). But one-hit wonders are quite rare. If you go back through history, you'll find that most of the one-hit wonders are soon forgotten. Yet would-be writers still think about writing a single book. You could write the next To Kill A Mockingbird or Gone With The Wind. But your odds of success would be vanishingly small.

In the past, I've said that writers shouldn't think about writing one book. They should think about writing a shelf full of books. If you want success, the need for this approach is increasing. And that is the point of this post. I'm beginning to think that the number of books you have, and the frequency with which you publish them, makes more difference to your success than most anything else. (Yes, the books still need to be good. Yes, you have to have professional covers. And yes, your books probably shouldn't be 140-page novellas masquerading as novels, as the bad reviews reveal that readers are unhappy with what one reviewer called "pretend novels.")

It takes very little research (poking around on Amazon will do it) to see that nearly all successful writers have a dozen or more books. The most successful writers have far more. In my experience, every successful writer I know has at least a dozen books. (Look at your own favorite writers!)

Today, writing a shelf full of books is almost a requirement to find success in the book business.

Here's where my epiphany comes in:

Writing a lot of books generates success. Every writer I know who's written a dozen or more books has found success!

In other words, if you do write many books, you will find success. Put in the work, you will succeed. That can't be said about all fields of complex work. Writing novels is a complex undertaking. But with sufficient practice, it can be learned. In fact, it has to be learned. People aren't born with writing talent. In the same way a coordinated person cannot simply strap on a snowboard and then do a triple twisting, double back flip off the half-pipe, a writer has to learn the skill. Yet writing can be learned. And with enough work, it will be learned.

The idea that every writer should stop thinking about a single book and instead think of many books may be the single most important aspect of finding writing success.

I should probably put in a qualifier and say that it would be best if those dozen books are in a single genre, comprise some kind of series or two, and need to have been written in a relatively short time frame, like a book or two a year or faster. A dozen books strung out over 40 years won't cut it.

It's possible that there are people who've written a dozen books and haven't found success, but I haven't met or even heard of one, at least not one in the self-publishing era. 

Why is this, that simply writing a dozen books will bring you success? I don't know. But it's probably that a dozen books will give you a mixture of substantial writing skills, teach you how the book business works, and, most important, you will spend thousands of hours thinking about what works for readers and then trying to craft your prose to fit what you've learned.

Should you start trying to publish before you've written a bunch of books? I think not. Readers are looking for multi-book authors. They don't pay attention to single-book authors. Why? Probably because there are too many of them. Write one book, you have millions and millions of competing authors. Write a dozen books, you have relatively little competition.

I recently read that fantasy superstar Brandon Sanderson wrote 12 novels before he showed any of them to an editor. Hugh Howey wrote 20 novels before he ventured away from his desk. 

By comparison, I only wrote six, the last two of which became the first two in my series. But that was in another era. If I were starting out these days, I would write a dozen. 

Yet another perspective is to realize that, if you're going to be a success, you will end up writing many, many novels. So why bang your head against the publication wall with just one book? Assume you'll be successful, which means you will write a bunch of books. So write a dozen of them first, and then venture forth into the book world. You will be amazed at the difference as you proceed with a substantial body of work, while you watch others struggle trying to find traction with a single book.

Is writing a dozen books hard? Yes, of course. So is studying to become a neurosurgeon or a lawyer or a competetive snowboarder or opera singer or a Shakespearean actor. All worthwhile skills take enormous amounts of time and effort to acquire. But most serious skills produce great reward, whether financial, emotional, or other.

Writing is one of those skills. If you investigate careers that successful writers have abandoned, you find all manner of occupations. It's worth noting that writers don't quit to become doctors or professors or attorneys. But if doctors, professors, and attorneys find success writing, they often quit their former careers. What does that say about the rewards of writing? It says this: Writing is a very attractive job. So get going on those first dozen books!