How many books a year does an indie author need to write to be successful?
May 20, 2017
This is a statement I’m sure many indie authors have uttered
in their writing careers.
I was speaking to a friend and fellow indie author the other
day and, as we often do, we were discussing what projects we were working on.
She has a comic-prose novel in the works and I have the final installment in
the Helheim Wolf Pack series that I’m working on. But then she said that exact
statement to me: “I need to produce at least two or three books this year.”
My first reaction was: I need to compete with that, because,
let’s face it, the self-publishing industry is nothing but competitive.
But my second reaction was: “How on earth am I going to do
that?”
I’m not sure what other authors’ lives are like but mine is
B-U-S-Y. I have a nearly three-year-old. I have a husband. I run the household.
I buy groceries. I clean the house weekly and tidy up daily. I cook dinner every night. I try to squeeze
in some ‘me’ time at the gym. I write when I can (usually after all my other
duties are done for the day), but I struggle to find a couple of good, solid
usable hours in which to be creative a produce something decent.
So when this statement was made, I recoiled. Yes, I’d love
to write 2-3 books a year, but the reality is, it’s never going to happen.
You’d be lucky to get one book out of me. But it did get me thinking…
On average, it would take me around 6-8 months to write a
book. That’s one book. Add another 3-5 months to go through the editing
and proofreading process and to get promotion and social media campaigns
in place, and you’re left with approximately 13 months of work that goes into one
book.
Can anyone else see the problem here?
Unless you’re happily unemployed, unmarried and without
children, I just don’t see how a target of 2-3 books a year is feasible.
So I did a little digging to see whether this figure is
truly accurate…
Let’s take Stephen King for example. He has written 54 books
in a span of 43 years (1974-2017). If you average all that out, Mr. King is
producing 1.25 books per year.
Seems weird, right? All right, take JK Rowling as another
example. Harry Potter was release in 1997. She is still actively writing, with
her last release in 2016. She has written a total of 22 books in 19 years, so
she’s averaging 1.15 books per year.
Still not convinced? John Grisham. His career spans from
1990-2017. He has had a total of 36 books published in his 27 year career. The
average? 1.3 books per year.
Here are some more startling stats:
Stephanie Myer (2005-2016) – 10 books ~ 0.9 books per year
Neil Gaiman (1984-2017) – 26 books (novels only) ~ 0.78 books per year
Jodie Picoult (1992-2016) – 27 books ~ 1.1 books per year
Nicholas Sparks (1990-2016) – 21 books ~ 0.8 books per year
Liane Moriarty (2004-2016) – 10 books ~ 0.8 books per year
Of course, there are a few freaks of nature out there who do
produce more:
J.R. Ward (2002-2017) – 47 books ~ 3.1 books per year
Dean Koonts (1968-2017) – 115 books ~ 2.3 books per year
Even with these two examples, their yearly production of
books is not ridiculous (4-6 books a year, for example; however, some indie authors are producing this many books a year).
So my question is this: where are indie authors getting the
idea that they need to become slaves to their readers and churn out books so
often? As a reader, I’d rather quality not quantity.
Wouldn’t you?
Share your thoughts in the comments below, and let me know
if you think this notion is crazy or not.
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