What Does It Mean to Be a Successful Self-Published Author?
Is it just sales numbers? Or can we include other factors?
They say that most self-published books don’t even sell 500 copies, and in the four months since I published The Biographies of Ordinary People, I’ve only sold 222 ebooks and 135 paperbacks.
Does that mean my book is not successful?
By all other metrics, I feel successful. I’ve gotten excellent editorial reviews and lovely reader reviews, the type of response that proves readers understand what I was trying to do with this book and—more importantly—that they’re emotionally connecting with my characters.
Here’s just one example, from Goodreads:
This book captures so many poignant, ordinary moments with simplicity and grace. The points of view and relationships between the characters are very detailed and realistic, and I loved seeing them grow and change over time. I also loved this novel because I identified so strongly with Meredith—I’m amazed someone else can understand and articulate how she lives in her own head and observes/analyzes/self-edits like I did as a child (and still do). The prom scene and the scenes with Jackie and Priya stand out as two that are especially powerful, but overall the novel illustrates the passage of time and the episodic nature of memory beautifully. I can’t wait to read the second volume!
How can I read that kind of review and not feel successful?
I also had a well-attended book launch at a local Seattle bookstore, went on a very small, very self-funded book tour—and just last weekend got to be a panelist at a book festival, talking with other authors about what makes a novel “literary.”
My books, meanwhile, are doing their own travels; they’re on the shelves at multiple libraries, often by reader request, and are currently available at two bookstores.
All of this represents success. My books are in all the places books should be, I’m doing the things an author does—readings, appearances, podcast interviews—and I’m getting a lot of positive response from readers.
But I haven’t yet made those 500 sales.
I write a weekly blog post that I call “This Week in Self-Publishing,” in which I keep track of how much money I’ve earned as an author vs. how much money I’ve spent.
So far I’m in the black, but that’s also because I “earned my advance” by funding the initial draft of The Biographies of Ordinary People through Patreon. (Readers pledged a total $6,909 over 18 months to support the writing and get access to my draft chapters.) If I were basing my earnings vs. expenses on book sales alone, I would be a few thousand dollars in the red.
But since I’ve earned more than I spent, does that mean I’m successful? Is a book successful if the author makes money, even though the author hasn’t actually made that money from book sales? Plenty of traditionally published books never earn out their advances, after all—but even those books probably sell more copies than mine has.
How many sales does it take to be successful these days, anyway? After I beat the 500-sales metric, it looks like my next big metric will be 3,000 sales, which is the low end of “what constitutes literary fiction success” for a debut, traditionally published author.
Do I think I’ll sell 3,000 copies of The Biographies of Ordinary People? I am doing steady promotional work, from the aforementioned podcasts to purchasing promo spots in newsletters like BargainBooksy, ManyBooks, and The Fussy Librarian, and I’m still selling a book or two every day, four months after launch. (On days when newsletter promos go live, that number jumps up significantly.)
Plus, I’ll be releasing the second volume of Biographies in May 2018, which should help boost sales of the original volume.
Still, at the rate I’m selling now, it’ll take two more months to get my first 500 sales… and two more years to get 3,000.
Is that the point at which I’ll be able to say I’m successful?
I’m very curious about how all of you define success, because I absolutely feel like a success every time I look at anything but my sales numbers. Everything from reviews to revenue has been great for me, so far—and, if I look at the data from Goodreads and Amazon, great for my readers.
But I still haven’t sold 500 books.
So am I successful, or not?
What about you?
Nicole Dieker is a freelance writer, a senior editor at The Billfold, and a columnist at The Write Life. Her debut novel, The Biographies of Ordinary People: Volume 1: 1989–2000, published in May 2017; sign up with her TinyLetter to learn more about Volume 2.
