The turnout for our January meeting on self-publishing was excellent and I hope everyone found the information useful. But one thing we didn’t really discuss is what self-publishing means in terms of a writing career. As writers, most of us rarely think beyond the book. We don’t like it. We want to think of ourselves as creatives, not business people.
Unfortunately, that’s not a practical way to approach a career. And if you’re thinking about self-publishing, it’s not only impractical, it’s career-ending. If you’re planning to self-publish, the very first question you have to ask yourself is why. What is the career goal that led you to that decision?
There are, I would argue, three basic career goals for authors:
1. commercial success, measured in the amount of money you make from writing
2. literary success, measured by the amount of critical acclaim you receive
3. personal satisfaction, measured by writing what you want at the pace you want
As a project management addict, my favorite way to think about a writing career is using the “iron triangle” or “triple constraint” of project management. The triple constraint says that there are three qualities to any project: speed, scope, and budget. These create the angles of the quality triangle. Scope is the project itself; it cannot, one assumes, be changed. It is the other two aspects that expand or contract the quality of the finished project. Or, as you may have heard it more colloquially, “you can have fast, cheap, or good—pick two.”
When you’re considering what you want from your career, you need to pick which of those three things is the most vital to you, and place it at the top of the triangle, where the “scope” is. This is your project. Then prioritize a second. Then the third. And there are no guarantees that even if you prioritize one of these you will actually achieve it. But you give yourself a far better chance of success if you know what you want. Never forget the axiom: “pick two,” because chances are that third thing on your list is going away!
Consider, for example, commercial success. If you want that, you have to aim for that. A career aimed at commercial success is going to require that you perform on demand, on deadline. You cannot count on being able to switch genres after three books, even if you’re bored writing what you’re writing. Because you’re prioritizing commercial success, you’ll study what’s succeeding. I am not saying “write to the market,” but study the market. Understand what makes books successful. Think about them. Not “it’s good,” but “it has this kind of pacing, this kind of characters, this kind of setting.” Don’t study books that were successful ten years ago, study those that are hitting now, people with careers that are starting out and working well a book or two or three in (no more than that).
Now a career with a goal of literary success looks utterly different. Consider Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. It did, in fact, become a commercial success (at least a minor one, and it was turned into a television series which counts as money made from writing), but it also took her ten years to write. If commercial success were the goal, that would not have been feasible.
Personal satisfaction is a strange one. With personal satisfaction as a career focus, you’re writing work that has deep meaning to you, regardless of whether it will garner awards or financial success. Some people might say “that’s a hobby.” I would argue that as long as you publish and market the work with the intention of it finding a larger audience, it’s not a hobby. If you treat it professionally—write on a regular schedule, invest in yourself and your work, don’t treat it as something you can just “throw up on Amazon”—that it’s a valid career goal.
It’s important to remember that big goals, career goals, don’t have time limits. Once you decide which direction you want to go in, which of the three avenues is the most important to you, you can begin laying out a path. And once you have the path, you can set goalposts that are time-limited. (Back over the summer, I talked about time-limited SMART goals. Check that out, too, if you’re trying to figure out how to set smaller goals.)
It’s also important to note that your career goals may change over time. Mine certainly have, but keeping the goal at the top of my own triangle means I don’t get mired in confusion. A change of focus is easier when you know what your focus is.