Some numbers from a moderately successful writer of literary fiction and poetry.¹ From when I started submitting work again after about seven years of not submitting, it took six years and about 200 rejections before I had my first acceptance in 2013. I’ve had at least one acceptance every year since then, with the most I’ve made from a story being $200 and the most for a poem $55.34.²
My overall rejection rate for poetry is 99% and for fiction 98%.³ On a year-by-year basis, my highest acceptance rate for fiction was 4.2% and my lowest (after those early years of rejection) was 0.5%. For poetry, my acceptance rate has ranged from 0% to 3.3%.
I’ve been pretty resilient with respect to rejection. I credit my love life (or lack thereof) in my teen and young adult years for that.
2. The odd number being caused by the fact that it was an Australian publication and this was my net after bank fees and currency conversion. The nominal pay was AUD75.
3. My MFA was in fiction and I feel much more confident in prose than in poetry—I could teach a fiction workshop, but would be at a loss to try to lead a poetry workshop.
So much of being an author these days is about marketing, I suspect publishers look at either your track record or your twitter followers before making decisions to sign you up or publish.
Unfortunately, with so many people publishing books these days, the chance of your work standing out of the crowd becomes effectively zero, and one bad initial review will stop a book sale dead even if totally unjustified, (we are in a five-star review or nothing culture).
I don't know what the solution to this is except persevere and if you don't succeed feel good in knowing you have a legacy.
There’s a 50/50 there actually. Most editors aren’t going to look at a random persons social media to decide whether to accept a short story or a poem (except maybe to make sure they’re not posting offensive screeds or something before choosing to accept a piece that already made it through several rounds of selection). There simply isn’t much time in an editors day to be fretting about picking the writers with the biggest followings.
However, some editors will ask certain writers to submit to their venues, and as you become more famous editors will (despite what they try to say) become positively biased towards you when they see your name in their queue. But that’s very different from looking you up on social media; more likely, you got talked about in the editors social circle and if you have 500 or 5000 followers didn’t matter then…
How much is improving as a writer and how much the fact that I have a growing list of publications is hard to identify but it does seem that after that first publication, subsequent publications have come more regularly.
I read an interview a few years ago where a reporter asked a writer what was the difference between authors who made it and authors who didn't. The writer said that the ones who made it stuck with it. They just kept on writing despite years and years without strong sales or recognition.
If you're going to stick with it, there has to be something there beyond a desire for sales or widespread praise.
Success, too, has its downsides. My wife is a painter--and if you think it's hard to make a living at writing, try painting. She met another painter who makes a huge income, but that painter complained, "My first sales were paintings of boats. And for years now, everyone comes to me wanting a boat. I'm bored to death of them. I want to paint other subjects, but this is what pays, so I keep doing it, as frustrating as it is."
Look into fiction writing, and you'll find few writers whose publishers will let them write outside their genres. Those writers may want to explore, but the publishers know what has sold in the past, and they want more of that. The only major author I can think of who sells big in multiple genres in Stephen King.
Self-publishing has been a godsend for those who like to explore. You can write anything you want and push it out at will. You might not make money at it, but you can do it.
At bottom, you have to choose your definition of success and failure. If you define success as being accepted by editors and critics, receiving praise and prizes from the publishing community and hitting the bestseller lists, all of that is beyond your control. It's like fishing for likes on Instagram.
If you define success as getting better at your craft, writing something that you and the few people you really respect like, then you can find fulfillment. I often think of gardeners who pour hours into their roses, not to get rich or to receive recognition, but just because it pleases them and fulfills a deep inner appreciation.
One of my MFA mentors, Tibor Fischer complained about that. His debut novel, Under the Frog was shortlisted for the Booker prize and his publishers wanted more of that, but he wanted to write different things (and did). His later books tend towards darkly comic crime fiction. I recommend The Collector Collector as a good starting point.
I know we’re not supposed to have positive opinions about MOC around here given those blog posts he wrote about venture capital but his recent take on the matter is worth reading.
It does seem like commercial art and literature are in for a tough ride, though high art and literary fiction may stay secure. The question and problem is that the two segments may be more interdependent than anyone wants to admit.
"Michael O Church", who, for some reason, people act as if he's famous or important enough to be identified via an acronym, which isn't true even among HNers...
>...you have to choose your definition of success and failure
I think this is wonderful advice. Perhaps in the same vein as existentialists arguing that you get to define the meaning of your life, I like this sentiment that you get to choose whether you've succeeded or not.
Thats my definition, I spent thirty years reading and thought I could do a better job. There is a real difference though between thinking this and doing this.
I finally published my first book last month, I don't care if it sells any, I think it is good and it will still be there long after I'm gone. I'm certainly going to continue now the dam has broken.
In the words of a great writer, Philipp Kerr, who unfortunately died way too young: "“In a war staying alive is a bit like playing tennis. It looks a lot easier when you’ve never had to play yourself."
From Greek Bearing Gifts, part of the fabulous Bernie Gunther's cycle.
Self-publishing has been a godsend for those who like to explore. You can write anything you want and push it out at will. You might not make money at it, but you can do it.
Yeah, anyone can write anything they want. That's what a diary is. Writing something that people want to pay for or optioned off to publishing house, is obviously way harder. Money is pretty important when it comes to paying for things that are needed in life.
> Self-publishing has been a godsend for those who like to explore.
Exactly this. I tried "living the writer's life" 15 years ago ... but it didn't work out. The rejections hurt. When I discovered self-publishing (first lulu.com, then Smashwords) I went all-in: having the work available to whoever wanted it became more important to me than daydreams of wealth and acclaim.
I've never made money from self-pub (I give my books away), but it's nice to know that my work is being downloaded and (I assume) read across the world - even if it's only in small numbers[1].
Author John Michael Greer said that for you to make a reasonable living out of writing you have to end up with a large back catalog. This can take well over a decade to accumulate.
Mind you this coming for a fellow that has a very weird catalog of occult/spirituality, peak oil stuff and politics/economics things. But over 80+ books, there seems to be just enough residual income that it is working out for him. But as he said, there was a very long time where living on the poverty line was the only way through.
I've now self-published one book and have started a second. I haven't made enough money to even pay for the cover art! But I'm doing this for myself and if it results in a back catalog that generates income, cool. If not, then also cool.
One of the best Sci-Fi books I have ever read was by an author who had one five-star rating from me for about four years, he went on to write another two books and left the series open without an end which was a real disappointment. I guess his perceived lack of success was part of the reason for stopping. I also wonder how many other books are not turning up on the Amazon radar because of their silly filters you can't seem to shrug away.
If I had the money, I would love to build a public library of nothing but unpublished works, printed and bound in books, where every book you pull from a shelf is something that was never widely circulated, from authors you never heard of. Could even print whole blogs and comment histories of writers from around the internet.
The academic life is also full of failure and rejections, but thanks to government funding not as extreme as the artist, musician, pr writer life.
Some of the ones who stick through all the failure make it. Although that path long and uncertain.
It’s also why sometimes people who excel academically before phd can get shocked when they encounter a life full of failure and rejections once they enter phd.
I’ve seen some writers have great success on Substack serializing their books. Though I’m not sure how many have done it from complete obscurity.
I’m running an experiment myself to see how successful a normie with no large social media presence can be writing a programming and technology blog on Substack. Check back in 7 months to see how it went
I wrote two books in the last couple years. Are they great? No. But I figured that it would take a dozen books to start to be recognized as an “overnight success”.
I’ve made a decent amount of money from self-publishing so it isn’t all for naught. While I don’t need the money, it helps validate that my writing is helping somebody out there. Or that my ads are targeting the right people although I don’t have a mass audience.
There are so many under appreciated books out there that fall into the same sea of irrelevance as my books. But there will be a time in my life where one of those books will ride a trendy wave so long as I keep writing a book each year.
Can you talk about your two books? Fiction, non-fiction? Genre. I'm always curious to know more about successful writers and what they did - even if I'm not wired to do the same.
I self-published one book and am working on a second. I have done zero marketing as I wrote the book primarily for myself. Those who have read it really enjoyed including people who are extremely blunt about their opinions.
I wrote a novel (action / psychological thriller). Second book is again a thriller but with time-travel, but it isn't sci-fi.
I haven't tried writing science fiction but enjoy reading the genre - currently reading Dust by Hugh Howey. Thus, I tend to stick to the current world as I understand it better.
Even Sylvia Plath got rejected. Her success was a small part of talent (a skill which she refined magnificently), but mostly a fanatical work ethic and she didn't let rejection by publishers get her down.
Its basically a slice of life piece from someone whose last project didn't go like they expected.
I guess writing is a bit like coding. It's hard to judge what will actually be good, what actually works, why and who is any good and for similar reasons.
If you build a bridge, anyone can see if it works. It's a lot harder to judge if writing or coding "works."
What work was done? How well did it do that work?
Inferring from proxies is always dicey and tends to not inspire confidence.
I agree that we often don't hear about the 'kept failing' path of, presumably, the majority of would-be writers.
For me, writing is a very frustrating drive...
I've been writing novellas and short stories fairly seriously for about thirteen years now. About a year ago, when evaluating what I want to do in life, I decided to finish a novel. I've started quite a few over the years, but they always peter out in the drafting phase, so I decided this time to approach the task with a "finish it no matter what, no matter how bad the finished product is" approach.
The trouble is – I still dream of getting published, of becoming a published novelist, despite my rational side knowing: (1) I'm not that good at writing, and (2) even if I were, it's very difficult to succeed (not just financially) as a writer.
This is why I say writing is frustrating. I can't really give it up – not the activity of writing itself, nor my unrealistic dream – and yet I know it's essentially a lost cause.
The one time I published through a publisher was ridiculously stereotypical. Had a dinner at an industry event where I was sitting next to the managing director and acquisitions editor and then finalized an outline with the acquisitions editor over coffee in London when I happened to be there. Even got a second edition but it's still just been a few thousand dollars overall.
That said, it's been a huge benefit professionally well in excess of direct money with book signings at events etc.
Print-on-demand and LLMs being on the cultural scene makes me think we’ll see a renaissance of writing. It’s not too far of an imaginative leap to seeing all of us putting a premium on 100% human generated content
What's the more desirable outcome for society at large, one thousand books each read by a million people or a million books each read by one thousand people?
I'm convinced that anyone can make a living writing by having a stockpicking substack. Hear me out.
Picking stocks is simple. All you have to do is take a course on accounting, read up on valuation, and find a niche (endless variety here) to focus on. Research stocks carefully. Document your analysis and publish regularly. Syndicate on podcasts and fintwit. There are many people that will pay $100/mo for this sort of research if you do it well.
To me at least, being human-focused and sensitive enough to be a novelist is contrary to being a web personality selling questionable financial advice... If the research is actually valuable, shouldn't your advice to the novelist be to exploit it directly?
> To me at least, being human-focused and sensitive enough to be a novelist is contrary to being a web personality selling questionable financial advice
These 2 things are completely unrelated; and btw, lots of people have done completely unrelated things and been successful at both of them. Einstein was a patent clerk. Samuel Clemens/Mark Twain was a scientist. TS Eliot a banker, ACDoyle a doctor. And who said you need to be a web personality? And why is the financial advice questionable?
> If the research is actually valuable, shouldn't your advice to the novelist be to exploit it directly?
No. Doubling your money at 100k invested is worth 200k. Doubling your money at 100M invested is 200M. Who is more likely to pay $100/mo for good stock research? The percentage is the same, the absolute value is massively different. And someone with 200M doesn't have time to sit around leafing through 10Qs, but they do have to time to read your executive summary analysis, particularly if you do well and get a name for yourself.
Uhh somewhat confused about where they’re going to find time to do the research about niche accounting interested and also time to write a novel, often multiple novels at a time.
You have a point, but I recall reading an article recently that argued that weather forecasting is far more accurate today than it was, let’s say, ten or twenty years ago. But it also seems to be harder to predict for other reasons. I spend a lot of time watching my local weather in the Ventusky app, and I’ve noticed a lot more instability in the last several years.
My overall rejection rate for poetry is 99% and for fiction 98%.³ On a year-by-year basis, my highest acceptance rate for fiction was 4.2% and my lowest (after those early years of rejection) was 0.5%. For poetry, my acceptance rate has ranged from 0% to 3.3%.
I’ve been pretty resilient with respect to rejection. I credit my love life (or lack thereof) in my teen and young adult years for that.
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1. I have an MFA and have published 20 short stories and 11 poems over the last nine years. (https://www.dahosek.com/publications/).
2. The odd number being caused by the fact that it was an Australian publication and this was my net after bank fees and currency conversion. The nominal pay was AUD75.
3. My MFA was in fiction and I feel much more confident in prose than in poetry—I could teach a fiction workshop, but would be at a loss to try to lead a poetry workshop.