Do I really want to publish my books?

Writing as a business

A while ago, I watched this video about selling your weaving from a weaving teacher I follow on YouTube. If you’re interested in selling your creative work, I definitely recommend checking it out.

While being an author and publishing books is obviously different from selling individually hand-crafted items,¹ I found a lot of considerations do carry over to writing.

Like a lot of folks, I wanted to be a writer for a long time. I worked really hard to sell my first book (I wrote sixteen before it!). I dreamed of a lifelong career filled with just the right amount of fame and fortune. But one thing I didn’t spend much time thinking about was how careers work . . . and how becoming a published author would change my life and my relationship with my writing. I imagined that I would keep doing what I was doing — writing all day — but every now and then someone would give me money for it. I thought that once I was in, that was it. I was in.²

While it’s true that a lot of being an author is sitting down to write until the manuscript is finished (then revising it more times than you thought you ever would), there’s more to authoring as a job. A lot of new authors are really surprised by this; I was, too.

So with that in mind, here are a few things I would share with writers considering whether or not to pursue publication.

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What do you want?

Kelly (from the video) talks about why someone might want to sell their weaving. For writers, I think most of us want to share our stories. Some are happy to share with friends, while others dream of wandering through a bookstore and seeing a book they wrote on display. (Or, imagine this, a reader taking the book off the display and carrying it to the register! Imagine!) I also know folks who just want to write down their stories and that’s that.

There’s no wrong answer here, but I do think it’s really important to know what you want early on. Do you want to write for yourself? For an audience? What kind of audience? How much work do you want to do to produce the book?

You can change your mind. Okay? You really can.

But having an idea of what you want — what your dream is — can help carry you through some of the tougher times.

From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to be published by a publishing house. That meant I needed an agent. I needed to write something that was not only good enough for an agent to take on, but something that a publisher could sell to thousands of readers. That desire kept me striving to improve my writing (and my stories’ marketability) through a lot of rejection.

So what are your goals? And what steps do you need to take to get there?

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Time

I should say upfront that I’ve been very fortunate. Authoring is my full-time job. I don’t have kids. I’m relatively healthy. That has always left me with a lot of time to work on my books. That is not the case for everyone. Developing a writing schedule is highly individual.

But this section is actually about publication time, and understanding that whatever time you use for writing/authoring is going to shift.

Before I started publishing, I could write/revise three (sometimes four!) manuscripts a year. Were they good? Well, apparently not. But I wrote them. And I thought they were good at the time. I truly believed that I could be the most prolific author out there, if only someone would give me the chance. (Meanwhile, more experienced authors kept telling me to slow down, breathe sometimes.)

Then I sold INCARNATE.

The need to adjust my own timelines wasn’t immediate, but certainly over the first few years of my career, I slowed down. Revisions with my editor were a lot more intense than anything I’d done on my own. And I also had the whole job part of being an author to learn and manage — emails, travel, promotion, figuring out what to try to sell next.

Even so, I distinctly remember seeing a tweet from an author a few years ahead of me saying something about how difficult it was to publish two books in a year. And I remember (privately, to myself) kind of laughing and thinking I could do it easy.

Some of you might know where this is going.

I did end up with two books a year for a few years. In 2016, I had THE MIRROR KING come out in April, then MY LADY JANE come out in June. In 2018, I had MY PLAIN JANE in June and AS SHE ASCENDS in September. And just this year I released NIGHTRENDER in January and MY IMAGINARY MARY in August.

It’s not easy, it turns out. Because it’s not only those books coming out within months of each other; it’s all the work it takes to write and edit (and edit again) multiple manuscripts in the years before those books release.

For a while, I was able to block off my time working on the Janies books for a couple of months and then my solo books for a couple of months. It took effort to make those schedules possible, but it was, in fact, possible. Eventually, though, it became less possible (thanks, pandemic), and for the first time ever, this year I had to ask to have books moved.

Where am I going with this? Basically, if you’re planning to publish with a publishing house, the speed you produce books is going to change. Your schedules will shift in ways that are not always in your control.³ It helps to be flexible, but sometimes you will end up just trying to power through.⁴

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Control

Speaking of things that are out of your control. . . .

For a lot of authors, this is a dividing line. I know people who’ve chosen to self-publish because they want to retain control over the packaging, release, distribution, etc. And I know people who’ve decided to traditionally publish because they don’t want to do those things. (I’m one of those people who doesn’t want to be responsible for all that!)

But no matter which path you take, there’s still a lot that is outside of your control: namely, reader reactions to your books, reviews, sales, placement on shelves, whether anyone tells someone else about your book. . . .

It is alarming how much of your success (however you measure it) comes down to other people getting excited about your book. Or not.

I think this is one of the harder things for new authors to deal with. Heck, it’s not easy for established authors. So much of continuing to have a career depends on readers coming back for more — or discovering the books in the first place — and that can be emotionally distressing. (Erin Bowman has a great article on the topic: Does pursuing success make authors unhappy? Give it a read.)

Publishing is a business that is filled with a lot of ups and downs. Celebrate your wins.

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Making a business out of your creative passion

For so many authors, being a writer is being their truest selves. It’s part of their core identity. I know so many authors who don’t feel like themselves if they’re not writing — for whatever reason they’re not writing at that time. (Health, time, being stuck . . . anything.) And when rejections come in, or a negative review drops, or books just don’t sell — it can cause real emotional damage.

We work so long and hard on our books, and when we don’t get the reception we want, it feels personal.

If you talk to other authors, though, you’re likely to discover they’re dealing with a lot of the same realities of publishing: it is hard as heck to separate your self worth from the performance of your book.

I wish I could give you the magic trick for managing those feelings, but to be honest, it’s something I still struggle with, even more than a decade into my career. But I do think having things outside writing helps — deep friendships, family, hobbies, other creative pursuits that are not monetized. (This is one of the many reasons I don’t regularly sell my knitting. Or, now, weaving.)

But when your financial stability relies on how well your writing does — it’s definitely going to make things harder. It can change the way you look at your writing, the things you decide to write, and how often you think about the story vs. how often you think about whether or not the new release is selling well enough.

I don’t want to scare you. But I do want you to know that if you’re struggling with any of that, you’re not alone. This is where having author friends can help. Why you might want a mentor. And why I’m mentioning it here — I don’t want it to sneak up on you.

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Do you want to publish your books?

If you said yes before, I hope you’re still saying yes now. And I hope you feel a little more prepared for writing as a career.

Personally, I’d still say yes. Sharing my stories with readers has always been The Dream. If I could go back in time and tell Younger Me everything that’s happened in my first decade as a published author — well, for one, she’d be astonished at a whole decade of publication.

But I’d still do it. Even with the schedule crunches. The disappointments. My imaginary “days without crying” sign being at 0 for months at a time. I’d still do it. Because I want to tell stories. I want to share them. And that joy of being able to do that outweighs everything else.

1. Can you imagine the hand cramps if we had to pen each copy to sell?? And honestly, you wouldn’t be able to read my books after the first page.

2. I’d heard people say that getting published was hard, but staying published was harder. Either I didn’t think this was true or I believed I was an exception. Boy was I wrong.

3. This can happen for a variety of reasons, from paper shortages to a bigger author turning in a late manuscript that your editor has to jump on immediately.

4. There’s a difference between powering through when you have the Don’t Wannas and powering through when powering through might hurt you. It really is okay to ask for more time if you need it. Your agent can help you. Just be upfront and tell them as soon as you know what you need. I’ve known too many authors who sacrificed health (*raising hand*) for the sake of a deadline, and none of them think it was worth it. We want to get books to our readers, but your health is more important. Have you read Susan Dennard’s article “Take Time to Heal?” If not, you should.