Super Fantasy
Archmage
How much success have you had completing/promoting/selling your novels?
-
Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!
Career success?
- Thread starter Super Fantasy
- Start date
- Thread starter
- #2
Super Fantasy
Archmage
As for me, I currently simply enjoy sharing my works with whoever is interested on mythicscribes.
It depends on one's definition of success. We know our genres, and we treat this like the business it is. And there's nothing limiting about that. It just means that I get to play with my invisible friends all day, and I get snacks! lol We're not selling as much as I would like, but a Hugo and a New York Times Bestselling Author title are on my list for Santa. In Urban Fantasy, recognition and enthusiasm for a series usually happens around Book 6 or 7. We've only got three put right now, but that's just us getting started. An ad budget might help, but Word of Mouth still reigns.
Gurkhal
Auror
I'm pretty much in the same, theoretical, boat as you.
- Thread starter
- #5
Super Fantasy
Archmage
How many novel sales is considered alot?
pmmg
Myth Weaver
I think I would consider it a success if my book/s start getting sold to ppl I did not have to give it away for free too, or were not ppl I knew. So far, they are few and far between.
Again, depends on the genre. 1000 books sold is sexy for Literary Fiction or Academic Non-Fiction. Not so much in genre fiction. But it really depends on what a writer wants out of this. And it doesn't take as many sold copies to get a Bestseller title as you might think. Think closer to 10k - 20k.
The reality is that there are something like 20 million books on Amazon. 95% of those books will never sell more than 200 copies. Maybe 2% - call it a few hundred thousand - will sell more than 5000-6000 (which is counted as a success even among traditional publishers.
We have something on the order of about 30 published authors here at Mythic Scribes. (New ones appear, and old ones vanish.) While there are a few who went the traditional route, most are self-published. A few have attained success, with well over 5000 sales. Most, though, have only a few hundred sales total - if that. Me? D2D tells me I have a little under 1200 sales (a third of them freebies) spread out among 12 titles, with just one having more than 200 sales - after three years. I made about $150 in 2025.
I suggest you read the last few pages of this thread.
Just this year, we've really gotten to the point where people we don't know, know our name. That feeling is very trippy.
- Thread starter
- #10
Super Fantasy
Archmage
Has anyone here sold a very high number of novels?
What is a typical price of a novel?
Does a longer novel sell for more?
What is a typical price of a novel?
Does a longer novel sell for more?
I encountered a few quasi-relatives and old friends from work at my grandson's birthday party on 12/30/2025. Two of them were impressed that I was an author. I gave one three books...and the other took a whole set. (I am almost out of Author copies.)
Read my earlier post. Check out the thread that I linked to.
Yes.
Depends on the publisher. Ours average $3.99 to $4.99 in Kindle and $15.99 to $17.00 in paperback.
Yes. They also cost more to make and can sometimes intimidate the weak.
pmmg
Myth Weaver
A lot of my family has gotten a copy of my book, but honestly, I would prefer they did not. I don't want people reading the story unless its something they would choose on their own. My story is dark, I don't think most of them will like it. So far though...no one I have given the book to for free has left a review. So...
I dont think I am going to tell them when book 2 is out.
minta
Sage
That is perfect. Sharing where people genuinely care is underrated. If it brings you joy, you’re doing writing exactly right.
>How much success have you had completing/promoting/selling your novels?
There are three items in the list. Completion, promotion, and sales. It's important to be clear on each.
Completion is easy. How many stories (any length) have you completed? And by completed I mean not merely finished but ready to publish. How much "success" (I heartily dislike that word) gets reduced to a simple number. If you define success as 1, then if you have finished one, you've succeeded. If it's 100, you've got a bit of work ahead of you.
Promotion is the trickiest, as there's not really an objective measure. There are multiple ways to promote, including word of mouth, posters, online ads, even a table at a book fair. Promotion is just telling people about your book. So how might "success" be measured here? Emphatically not number of sales. You can promote a lot and sell little, but sometimes sales just take off. Also, promotion happens even as sales happen (or don't happen). It's open ended, endless. I don't think "success" is a useful way to look at promotion.
Then sales, which is what most people think of when using that word, success. Here again it's easy. Just pick a number and that's your goal. But be warned: this is a pernicious line of thought. If you say $1000 in a year is your goal, and you make $900, then you're a failure. You did not achieve success. Worse, if you hit a thousand, the natural human tendency is to move the goal post. Next year the goal is $2000. It sets a person up to become haunted by never getting to where you *could* get.
Another measure I often see is, I can quit my day job. I want to be a "full-time writer". Everyone's dream, right? A couple of observations here. One, you're still in the position of being forever a failure until you're a success. Moreover, it's possible to keep moving that goal post, too. Yes I quit my day job but now I want to be able to pay off my house, or buy a second one, or get that Maserati I've "always wanted". And once again I've created a treadmill for myself.
Two, being a full-time writer isn't a static thing. You're forever at risk of not making enough sales this year to cover your current lifestyle. The market changes. You change. What had been thrilling at first turns into a grind. Your art becomes just a job. And yes, it's possible to be wonderfully fulfilled while knocking out a novel every year or two, all the way into old age, but the more likely road will have bumps and turns and even dead ends. So, what you once would have called success might soon enough feel like something else.
I learned long ago to adopt this maxim: to be sure of hitting the target, just shoot; whatever you hit, call that the target. With writing, all I wanted was to get a story told. That in itself was a decade-long project that entailed multiple steps and false starts. That was success. Once written, I had to share it, so I started through the publishing process (a confusing path through deep jungles), which included finding editors, cover artists, and blundering my way through formatting. But at the end? Hey, another success, though I prefer to just call it a project completed. And then came diving deep into the mysteries of marketing. The big revelation there was that whatever I had learned with this book was not immediately transferable to the next. The terrain keeps shifting.
And by the end of all that, I found I was completely content with selling even a single copy. But it was not long before I wanted to see another sold. And then I wanted a review. Then I wanted more reviews. I concluded that a writer's career is one of occasional joys and griefs dotting a harsh and lonely landscape, from which the only sure escape was to start in on another story.
Success? Good grief.
There are three items in the list. Completion, promotion, and sales. It's important to be clear on each.
Completion is easy. How many stories (any length) have you completed? And by completed I mean not merely finished but ready to publish. How much "success" (I heartily dislike that word) gets reduced to a simple number. If you define success as 1, then if you have finished one, you've succeeded. If it's 100, you've got a bit of work ahead of you.
Promotion is the trickiest, as there's not really an objective measure. There are multiple ways to promote, including word of mouth, posters, online ads, even a table at a book fair. Promotion is just telling people about your book. So how might "success" be measured here? Emphatically not number of sales. You can promote a lot and sell little, but sometimes sales just take off. Also, promotion happens even as sales happen (or don't happen). It's open ended, endless. I don't think "success" is a useful way to look at promotion.
Then sales, which is what most people think of when using that word, success. Here again it's easy. Just pick a number and that's your goal. But be warned: this is a pernicious line of thought. If you say $1000 in a year is your goal, and you make $900, then you're a failure. You did not achieve success. Worse, if you hit a thousand, the natural human tendency is to move the goal post. Next year the goal is $2000. It sets a person up to become haunted by never getting to where you *could* get.
Another measure I often see is, I can quit my day job. I want to be a "full-time writer". Everyone's dream, right? A couple of observations here. One, you're still in the position of being forever a failure until you're a success. Moreover, it's possible to keep moving that goal post, too. Yes I quit my day job but now I want to be able to pay off my house, or buy a second one, or get that Maserati I've "always wanted". And once again I've created a treadmill for myself.
Two, being a full-time writer isn't a static thing. You're forever at risk of not making enough sales this year to cover your current lifestyle. The market changes. You change. What had been thrilling at first turns into a grind. Your art becomes just a job. And yes, it's possible to be wonderfully fulfilled while knocking out a novel every year or two, all the way into old age, but the more likely road will have bumps and turns and even dead ends. So, what you once would have called success might soon enough feel like something else.
I learned long ago to adopt this maxim: to be sure of hitting the target, just shoot; whatever you hit, call that the target. With writing, all I wanted was to get a story told. That in itself was a decade-long project that entailed multiple steps and false starts. That was success. Once written, I had to share it, so I started through the publishing process (a confusing path through deep jungles), which included finding editors, cover artists, and blundering my way through formatting. But at the end? Hey, another success, though I prefer to just call it a project completed. And then came diving deep into the mysteries of marketing. The big revelation there was that whatever I had learned with this book was not immediately transferable to the next. The terrain keeps shifting.
And by the end of all that, I found I was completely content with selling even a single copy. But it was not long before I wanted to see another sold. And then I wanted a review. Then I wanted more reviews. I concluded that a writer's career is one of occasional joys and griefs dotting a harsh and lonely landscape, from which the only sure escape was to start in on another story.
Success? Good grief.
