Most traditionally published books’ successes are measured with how well they sell within their first 9 months of release.
Just like with movies, it’s seen as either a hit or a flop immediately.
Most publishers and agents won’t even speak to you about publishing your work unless you have a built-in audience of social media followers (hundreds of thousands or bigger) that you can sell your book to immediately. You’ve done their work for them. The days of handing a manuscript to a publisher to sell to the world on your behalf are over.
After 9 months of release, your book becomes a catalog title, and that’s it. No one on the publisher’s side cares any longer, except possibly about your next book, if the last one sold well in those 9 months.
As a rule-breaker, who doesn’t use social media, I had to come up with another way to play this game.
My solution is to create a 10-year sales window, as opposed to 9 months. I will evaluate my books’ success and impact only after 10 years.
I did this the first time with my memoir, Requiem for my Rave, which was released November 2019.
I embrace being a “sleeper”. It’s been liberating. The sales for my memoir the past year have been the strongest they’ve been since the initial release, 2 years ago. More and more people are finding it. I’m actually selling at 70% higher monthly sales than what my 10-year goal requires.
In addition, as I write and release more books, they bring attention to my previous work. I expect the older books to sell better and better over the 10 year window as my audience grows organically.
Oh, also, don’t ask me about what my sales hopes actually are. I’m running my own race, remember? I don’t play the comparison game.
I set a goal for myself, and that is all I care about.
I create other victories for myself about what it means to have these books done and out in the world that mean so much more to me than sales. The sales are the byproduct, not the primary reason I wrote the books.
I have a huge sense of healing closure with the completion of Unorthodox Success, Secret Shame. A huge crisis I lived with for a large part of my life is being put to rest in the best way possible. I can’t even put a price on that.
I create games I win the moment I decide to play them. For this particular book, that was the audacious goal of creating and releasing it within 60 days. That was the game I created, and I’m on my way to winning, because I decided it was going to happen. I wanted the story of that. And I’ve gotten it.
For your next goal or challenge, how can you create a new way to break the rules of how it is played?
Unorthodox Success, Secret Shame update: The manuscript is complete, has received a final edit, and has been handed off for Typesetting. There’s nothing more for me to do at the moment except wait for it to come back to me for approval.
