Can You Control Whether You're A Bestselling Author?

A.k.a. "Sins Of The Publishing Industry"

There’s an ingrained sin in the publishing industry – a sin that bars way too many talented women, trans folk, and other minorities from getting published.

You might think it’s editorial bias… And yeah, there’s lots of that. 

But the most tragic biases come from inside the house.

I’m talking about the sin of self-rejection. Which usually sounds like, “Aww, I’m not good enough to be published in Clarkesworld yet – I can’t send this there.  Actually, I’m not good enough to be published anywhere.  I’ll just… stuff this in the Drawer of Shame and write another story.”

And to you novice writers struggling your way to success, allow me to break out the megaphone:

Don’t DO that.

Let the editors reject you. 

I’m not saying you’ll get published.  But I am saying that there comes a time when you can’t make your story any better with the skills you currently have. 

I’d love to tell you I’ve published a perfect story. But I haven’t.  All my novels have been shambling Frankenstein assemblages of dribbling body parts, stitched together with dental floss and used braces. 

Some of that cobbled-together monster was good – they always had good hearts.  Occasionally Olympian legs.  I always brought the best bits I could dig up in my personal graveyard… but sometimes I knew this liver was going sour, and I hadn’t a clue how to fix it. 

Here’s the trick, though – when I look at my stories, all I see is stitches. 

When other people look at my stories, they see a walking, talking song-and-dance man.  (One who occasionally kicks a toe into the audience, but maybe that’s charming, who knows?)

You are so much more keyed to see your own flaws – it’s why every criticism feels like a knife sunk deep into your appendix, whereas praise blows over you like autumn leaves whistling into the wind. 

As such, you are not a good judge of your work.  You need to make it as good as you can reasonably make it – not “perfect,” but “the flaws are things I’m not sure how to fix” – and then push it out the window like a mother chucking her baby bird out into the cruel world. 

Submit it to an editor.  The best editor of the best publication around, the place you’d literally die if they accepted you.  Let them tell you it’s not good enough.

Then send it to the next-best place. 

And the next. 

Do that at least fifteen times.  As they say at Viable Paradise, “’Til hell won’t have it!”  

Yes, this means it might take a year of submissions, before you realize your story isn’t good enough – your tale sitting in the slush pile for months at a time before someone hauls it into the light and says “Not this time, thanks.” 

So what you do during the wait?

You write another story. 

That’s your whole literary exercise routine – keep juggling stories, always having all your good ones out on submission, and while your precious pages are floating between slush piles, you write something else.

You thought NSFW meant “Not Safe For Work”?  No.  For you, it means “Never Stop Frickin’ Writing.”  And you don’t let your own preconceived notions of what’s salable stop you, you fling your work at editors and let them be your judge.

The Author, At Work.

And with luck, you’ll make a little sale some day – to a small market for a pittance (never write for free, not at this early stage, attach a value your work), maybe for $10, enough to buy you a celebratory Starbucks.  And then as you take the feedback better, maybe find a nice honest supportive writing group, you start making bigger sales – the $25 a stories, the $75 a stories, the 5 cents a word, the pro rates. 

Next thing you know, you’re able to write stories that sell reasonably consistently!  The editors have told you, and with luck you’re better than you thought.

Do not self-sabotage.

Let the markets judge your work.

And as with most survival techniques, that’s a good strategy to survive the early game.  But the problem with the habits you adopt to survive one crazy environment is that that technique becomes your next dysfunction. 

Mainly, if you let the markets judge your work once you start selling to them, you can come to believe you’re only as good as your sales. 

How do I know this?

Guess.  Just guess.

After publishing six books, I entered into a spiral of depression because my books weren’t bestsellers.  I’d spent years telling myself “Let the markets decide whether you’re any good or not” in order to convince myself to send out imperfect stories to editors – and I’d internalized that logic, coming to believe that since the market wasn’t flinging mighty coin at my efforts, I couldn’t be much good. 

Which… isn’t true.  To a certain extent.  I mean, if you define “quality” as “the most popular,” then McDonald’s is the finest cuisine on the planet and Call of Duty is the peak of videogaming.  And that’s not to crap on mass-market successes – I like me a Big Mac from time to time. 

But being a bestselling author isn’t necessarily under your control. 

Here’s my thoughts: I think most authors are driven by a set of core kinks they write to fulfill.  They really loved the friendship in Lord of the Rings, so they write found families to scratch that itch.  They adored the take-no-prisoners battles in The Black Company, so they write gritty fiction to satisfy their needs.  And so forth.

I’m not saying every author is copying an author.  But I am saying that as a kid, they had a set of tropes they fricking adored, and now what they want to write is a plot that mashes down on every one of their favorite feels. 

Those feels may not be marketable.  

I think of J.G Ballard’s Crash, which is the best possible novel you could write about people who are sexually aroused by car crashes.  I don’t think J. G. Ballard himself was aroused by semi-truck wrecks, but I do think he really liked books that explored the dark parts of humanity… and so he scratched that itch.

Crash is still remembered today.  (David Cronenberg even filmed an adaptation of it which caused a lot of fun when the other Crash, an insipid awards-bait film about racism, got nominated for an Oscar in 2004 and oh man was it hysterical watching people rent the wrooooong film.) 

But my point is that J.G. Ballard’s Crash has probably sold immensely well to the folks who want to read about folks who masturbate to Daytona 500 pileups.  It is probably the bestselling book of all time about eroticized vehicle wrecks.  In terms of market saturation, it owns the damn field.

Yet is it a bestseller?  No.  Through no fault of its own – it executed its plan perfectly, it sold thoroughly to the people it was meant to appeal to.

There just weren’t enough of those people to make it #1 on the bestseller lists. 

Likewise, my novel The Sol Majestic was a gay food-porn-in-space book.  I’m proud of it.  I consider it my finest published work. 

But how many people are looking for a gay food-porn-in-space book?  

My point is, at a certain point in your career, you have to consider whether the things you want to write – the combination of itches that your oh-so-fickle muse wants to scratch – are really meant to put you on the bestseller list. 

You can destroy yourself measuring success by “copies sold” because that’s not under your control.  The Sol Majestic had a couple of shots against it that I had little control over – neither the title nor the cover really conveyed what it was, and the publishers weren’t 100% sure how to market this quirky weirdo of a book – and maybe it could have tripled its numbers with a great cover and a perfect title and the right reviewer falling in love with it to tell her fans and Lord knows what else…

But can I control that? Not really.

And as far as content goes, I mean, yes, I could theoretically switch into renowned Dan Brown territory, analyzing detective series to see what style of prose sells, what kinds of characters resonate, what plots are classic…

Yet then those books, on some fundamental level, wouldn’t be mine. They’d be written for other people, and honestly, it’d be a chore to write them. And even then that’s not guaranteed success; the publishing trenches are filled with manuscripts by advertising agents who thought they’d glommed onto the formula.

(Even as I note that Jim Butcher propelled himself to the bestseller lists by churning out a book that mashed every trope, but then he started writing books in that series that were very much not that, in part because I think he got bored.)

Honestly, for the combination of authentically me things that it was cobbled together from, The Sol Majestic probably did pretty good numbers. 

And there’s the opposite problem – sometimes, the stuff an author thinks isn’t very good skyrockets.  If you’ve ever read beyond The Wizard of Oz (there’s fourteen more books in the series written by the original author), you’ll see L. Frank Baum say “Well, kids, it’s been nice telling you Oz stories, but they’re over now” and then having to backtrack in the next book three separate times.  (Also see: Arthur Conan Doyle killing off Holmes, etc etc.)

My point is this: most authors have no frickin’ clue why they made it big when others didn’t.  Most authors, if they’re honest, have a few favorite writers who they’d swear should be bestsellers and aren’t.  Some authors get big and then construct elaborate theories why they’re so popular, and some of those even touch reality sometimes.

But few people – if any – know. 

(If you do, hit me up. I promise I’ll keep your secret handshakes secret.)

And if you have friends who are authors, support them in ALL the ways!

So your job, as a writer: do your best work and fling it out into the marketplace.  Maybe it takes root, maybe it doesn’t – that’s beyond you. 

But don’t hold yourself back – either by hoarding stories until they’re “perfect,” or by allowing commerce to judge your quality. 

You make your story the best that you can.  With luck, you find an editor that gets you.  And you hope the magic happens.

And that’s the best any of us can do. 

Until next time,
Ferrett Steinmetz

P.S. - Remember last time when I told you about the podcast I was doing? Well, the second episode is up - detailing how Seanan McGuire writes a passive character dynamically. I love the Wayward Children series, so check this episode out.