iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Haha yes! They’re the ones who get everyone’s hopes up because they’re the stories you hear about!

Oh interesting! So in either case you’ve got to write a lot of books before you get there!

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On the Chosen Tropes podcast the other day they were talking about needing at least 5 books still in print to earn out an advance and make a living. Would you agree with that?

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It’s reassuring to know it’s still possible even if difficult / unlikely!

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Exactly! I think when you first start out those unicorns look like horses, but the more you try the more you realise that they’re not. Determination is the only thing that’ll get you through.

010

I’ve gone from thinking one day I might make writing a full time career to one day I *might* get a book published around my day job!

As an outsider, I’m always struck by authors saying how little they earn AND that they’re often working to such tight deadlines that it’s difficult to fit around their full time job (which they need in order to pay the bills!). It feels a bit like the industry has unrealistic expectations?

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Yeah I think I’ve seen a couple of reports of publishers paying huge advances to celebrities for memoirs on the basis of their social media following, but a following doesn’t necessarily lead to increased book sales.

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I see how this can be an advantage for non-fiction, where the credibility of the author is key to a book’s success, but for fiction this approach would surely risk cutting off unique and interesting perspectives.

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Let's talk about book sales...

Great post from @phoebeannmorgan.bsky.social about how an author’s track record can influence future sales. There are so many factors, which go beyond whether the book is any good or not. open.substack.com/pub/honested...

open.substack.com

The dreaded track record, retailers, and luck!

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This is so true. We need to get away from the idea of AI doing things for us and start looking at it as a way to help us do things better.

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All writers need a bit of luck, but a good dose of determination is like buying multiple lottery tickets instead of pinning all your hopes to just one. How do I know this if I've never been published? Because I keep buying lottery tickets. I might never win, but if I stop I definitely won't (4/4)

Determination to start your book, determination to finish it, determination to edit it, determination to improve as a writer, determination to pick your pen back up when every agent you queried ignores you (3/4)

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Some people are lucky. They write one book, send it to an agent, and get a publishing deal. But for those of us who don't have this luck, there's just one thing we can rely on: determination (2/4)

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The most important thing a writer needs isn't skill, or good ideas, or even industry contacts. Having these things will obviously help you, but they will only get you so far. How many times have you been told there's no market for your book, or that your writing's good but not the right fit? (1/4)

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It's more about editing, but 'On Editing' by Helen Bryant and Kathryn Price is brilliant. I found it helpful both at the writing and editing stage. www.hachette.co.uk/titles/helen...

hachette.co.uk

On Editing