The Ephemeral Career of Authors

A Self  Portrait of An Author in the style of Van Gogh 

Hope springs eternal. At least in the minds of would-be authors. It amazes me how many people, myself included, want to be writers. I think most avid readers would like to write their own books. And these days, is seems, most do, dreaming of making a living working in their pajamas for the rest of their lives. I did dream of being making a living as author, though a long time ago, though working in my pajamas was not one of my ambitions. 

Sadly, it seems to me that very few aspiring authors have looked beyond landing their first book or series deal. Because if they had, they would know that even if they got very lucky and landed a publishing deal, the chances of staying published, is also very, very slight. Especially these days.

I have heard it said that half of the traditionally published authors are out of the business, i.e. having no publishing deal, after their first contract, or within five years or less. And that 90% are out of the business within ten years. Now these numbers may well be just anecdotical, but I am also pretty certain that there is more than a grain of truth in those numbers, since, even with my very limited exposure to mid-list authors, my own anecdotical experience illustrates the shortness of a traditional writing career in the 21st century. Off the top of my head, I have followed the careers of four authors over the last decade. One makes his living off of his writing, that being Mark Lawrence, who has sold over 3 million books since 2011. The other three are "mid-list" authors. Aryan works part time, Donne has a full time job, and Shackle is a stay at home dad.

I will use the number of ratings on Goodreads as an approximate yardstick of book sales. According to Mark Lawrence's research you might multiply rating by a factor of 4 to 5 to get a ballpark estimate of the number of sales. Imprecise, but good enough.

Let's start with Stephen Aryan. He had a YouTube channel that offered writing and publishing advice as a "Traditionally Published Fantasy Author". I even joined his Discord channel for half a year or so. He published his debut fantasy trilogy beginning in 2015 with one of the big five publishing house.

Aryan's first three books have, 3.3K, 1.6K 1.3K ratings, good enough, back then, to earn him a second contract. This second series, however, garnered only, 1K, .6K, .5K ratings, and didn't earn out, so he wasn't offered a third contract. 

He did, however, land a two-book contract with a small press, the first book published in 2021 garnered 3.4K ratings, but the second only has 1.K ratings. Perhaps on the performance of the first book, he landed a second contract for a three book historical fantasy series. The first book only has .7K ratings, and well, the other two books were dead on arrival, with about 200 and 100 ratings. After the first book in the series came out, he dropped "Traditionally Published" from his title. The handwriting may have been on the wall. When I wrote this piece he did not have a book deal - 10 years after his debut*. He self-published a novella in 2023 and hopes to publish the sequel this year. In the meanwhile his agent has had two of his novels out on submission since the fall, so he may make a comeback. But as it is now, he is out of the traditional publishing business.

*UPDATE

Since writing this post in January, I received Aryan's February newsletter in which he hints that he has indeed, sold the two novels he had out for submission, though the papers have to be signed before he can officially announce this. In the newsletter, he offered this insider's look at book publishing:

"Publishing is a weird, weird business and moving forward in this career is never a straight road. I thought it was a set of steps but it really isn't. It's snakes and ladders. Sometimes it's two steps forward and one back. Getting published was incredibly difficult. These days, I would say it's more difficult to stay published. In my decade, I've seen a lot of people fall off and disappear for various reasons."

While this is a "happy ending" in Mr Aryan's quest to remain a published author, it does confirm my observations about the often fleeting nature of a career as an author. I have further examples of this sad fact.

There is Alexa Donne, a YA author who also had a YouTube channel of writing advice. Her first YA science fiction book was published in 2018, earning 4.8K ratings, and a second one in 2020, with 4.6K ratings She then switched to YA thrillers with The Ivies in 2021, which garnered 19K ratings. She followed that with two more thrillers, the first garnering 5.3K ratings, and the second, 2K ratings. She is also no longer under contract and so would be considered out of the business. She has written a romance that she hopes to sell, but once again, it seems that when you fail to meet expectations, you are shown the door. Plus, you leave with a reputation of not meeting expectations, making it hard to get back into the business. 

Last we have the case of Mike Shackle. He was on the Aryan's Discord server when I was on, so I interacted with him a little. He was writing self-published fantasy novels when he got offered a traditional publishing book deal after submitting his work in one of those open submission windows offered by Gollancz in England. His trilogy came out in 2019 thru 2021, garnering Goodreads ratings of 3.3K, 1.7K and 1.3K ratings, but apparently these numbers were not enough to offer him another contract. Though it should be noted that these are current numbers, after being something of a fantasy booktube darling, getting good reviews and guest appearances, as recently as last year on YouTube, so they were likely less when the last book was released. I know that he has written and self-published a number of crime novels since then, but when I went to his website the other day, where he was offering a series of short stories that readers could buy, I found that it no longer existed. Read into that what you want.

I am sure there are many similar stories on BookTok and other social media of which I am not a part of. But the fact that two out of three mid-list authors are seemingly out of the business within ten years of their debut novels, says something.  

There are two realities facing would-be authors; the first is that there is an overabundance of would-be authors, so they are expendable. And the second, because they are expendable, the industry audition them, one after the other, and discard them if they fail to be a bestselling author, the ones who pay the bills.

All of this makes it seem nice to be a self-published author. No one can fire you. You can strike your tent and move on, but your fate is in your hands. Now all of these author have made a whole lot more money than I have, and likely would've made if I tried to sell my books like everyone else. They had a "career" and I didn't. But by tempering my expectations and defining my yardstick of success as sales rather than revenue, I'm still in the business. And a success by the standards I set.