There is a prevailing attitude within the independent writing community. An attitude and approach that I see on forums, social media and elsewhere, all the time. It is an attitude which I have observed as having negative connotations both for the individual writers concerned and the wider writing community. An attitude that is all to do with managing perceptions and the desire to be seen to be successful. The latter is a very human desire I completely understand. The former however is very much a problem.

To understand why I say managing perceptions is problematic you have consider the perceptions that are being managed and the impact of doing so. Generally most writers want to give people the perception that we are successful, because of course we do. But what is success? How do we measure it,? More importantly, how do people try to manage its perception? And why is doing so damaging?

Simply put. Every writer wants you to believe they are more successful than they are because of the ‘fake it until you make it’ mentality wider society has been buying into for the last few decades. The problem is that we are then measuring ourselves against other writers who are likewise ‘faking it until they make it’. None of whom have ever really ‘made it’ because the measure of ‘making it’ they are seeking is effectively unachievable as it is based on false premises.

Determined to be as successful as every one else is pretending to be, writers chase the unattainable and fall short, as they were always going to do, of the mirage of success created by the community as a whole. This is damaging to the mental health of individuals who invest everything in false personas of success they build to face the world.

Here’s a couple of stark facts for the fresh faced new writers.

The average independently published book by a new author will sell less than 100 copies in its first year. Actually 50 copies will be quite a milestone. After that it might sell a couple of copies a month…

Another stark fact, your first novel will also be quite possibly the best selling book you ever write because it is the one all your friends and relatives will buy, something that will become less likely over time. ‘I’ve written a novel’ is a powerful statement ‘I’ve written another novel’ less so.

What some more stark facts?

There are over 12 million individual kindle titles available on amazon a high percentage of which are also available in paperback on print on demand…

An average of 1.4 million self published books alone are added to that figure every year, that is 7500 new books a day, every day. To put it another way, you are not a small fish in a large pond, you are a single tear drop in an ocean

The average earnings for full time writers across the profession in the UK is according to The book seller £7000 a year. That is writers whom’s main source of income is writing, and ‘the average’ which means many earn an income that is less than that… If you wish to gauge success on a purely economic standpoint, which is the societal normative in a capitalist society whether we like it or not, less than 10% of full time authors are successful, in terms of making a viable living wage out of the craft, and only the top 1% at best are actually making what you could call a good living from writing.

Meanwhile in regards to the vast majority of writers, for whom writing is a passion and a hobby, not how they keep a roof over their heads, there are no figures for average earnings, but we are not talking four figures per annum in the vast majority of cases. Indeed three figures would be nice I suspect.

Most authors do not measure success in terms of fiscal rewards. You can’t, because doing so is almost certainly going to lead to considering yourself a failure. Instead we measure success against other writers, our contemporary’s and our friends, because what other measure is there? Are we reaching an audience, do we have the same kind of following, do we sell books as well as they do?

This is a terrible thing to do, but we do it. It is terrible because other writers are friends, colleagues, contemporary’s. We are not in competition with them, we should be supporting each other. But if you are trying to gauge how successful you are being who else can you gauge it against? The temptation to assume everyone is doing better than you is inherent as well, all the worse because of those managed perceptions. Because we are all desperate to be seen as successful no matter how actually successful we are, or more probably are not, being. And this is damaging because we all end up assuming everyone is being more successful than we are, which is damaging to our own sense of self worth as individuals.

So, an honest conversation needs to be had. Or at the very least here is an honest conversation from me to offer some perspective

Here then are the stark facts:

So far this year I have sold 130 books (inc all kindle, paperback, hardback) on amazon

I have sold may be 30 more books at events (I have not done many events)

I have also had 46588 page reads on Kindle Unlimited

Once you include advertising and the expense for events etc. I have earned nothing, in fact its fair to say it has cost me more to sell these books than I earned.

These figures are admittedly all down on last year, because I have only released one new book which was an anthology (which never sell well) as opposed to the third book in a series and a non-fiction work I released last year. But I also have 11 titles available on amazon. (I am not including sales of multi author anthologies in these figures only my own stuff)

Yes I should do more events, yes more focused advertising might help and yes that all sounds grim. But it is honest, as is the fact that I know from comparing sales rankings that I am doing better than many of my contemporaries. I am actually being successful within certain parameters, it just doesn’t seem that way.

What is success, well for me it is readers, it has always been readers. You have to find your own way to judge your success. But as a community writers need to be more honest with each other. ‘Fake it until you make it’ is all very well except that builds false expectations against which we measure ourselves. And that is damaging.