Well, I did it again: led the Seven-Sentence Short Story workshop (created by science fiction and fantasy author James van Pelt) at a writing conference, this time, Wordbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. Here’s the story I …
It’s time for this year’s Kickstarter to fund Shapers of Worlds Volume V, the fifth in the series of anthologies featuring science fiction and fantasy by authors who were guests on my Aurora Award-winning podcast, The …
It takes money to publish books, and most of that money flows out the door before the book is released and sales begin, so my publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, is turning to Crowdfundr to help …
Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, the fourth anthology featuring authors who were guests on my podcast, The Worldshapers, is now available everywhere, including directly from Shadowpaw Press. Here’s a handy universal URL with links to …
My publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, has three great titles coming out in the first two months of 2024, all of them science fiction or fantasy. The first two, The Good Soldier by Nir Yaniv and …
Here’s another seven-sentence short story! I ran the workshop again at Ganbatte, an anime convention in Saskatoon. It went well, and here’s the one I created, again with the instructions, created by noted SF short-story …
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How many novels do you have to write before you sell one?
To find out, SF writer Tobias S. Buckell ran an entirely unscientific but still illuminating poll at his blog, and has posted the results.
Here’s the core:
32% wrote one novel
13% wrote two
11% wrote 3
8% wrote 4
9% wrote 5
3% wrote 6
13% wrote 7 or more novels
6% wrote some short fiction first
5% wrote a ton of short fiction first
I took part, and although I think the first book I sold was the fifth one I’d written (that’s what I put on the survey), that was the fifth one I’d written out of high school–throw in the three novels I wrote in high school and Soulworm, my first, actually put me in that “7 or more novels” category that 13 percent fell into.
An interesting survey, which you can still take (if you’re a published novelist) here.
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2006/12/how-many-novels-do-you-have-to-write-before-you-sell-one/
