Op-Ed: The Sixth Thing · 6:28pm May 4th, 2017
It figures. Barely a day after the original Five Things Non-Writers Should Know About Writers and Writing went up, I was hit with the epiphany that I'd left something out. And I had. I'd left out a very important bit that, for whatever reason, didn't occur to me while I was putting together the original post.
Oh well. We all know that "Five Things" feels a bit snappier than six. Humanity is odd like that, but it's true.
Still, this realization left me with a conundrum. The first post was already up and being read; had been for over a day. So I really didn't want to go back and awkwardly shoehorn in a sixth entry. But I still wanted the issue I'd thought of to be addressed. Hence, we come to this: a follow-up post.
Just a quick refresher before we dive in. Tuesday's post was all about breaking some common misconceptions about writers, writing, and being an author, summarizing things into five core points. This post is going to add a sixth. The original post is found here, and I highly advise reading it beforehand if you haven't already, just to get caught up. And I'll be going back to it and adding in a link to this post as well once it's up and ready for viewing, so the two will be forever linked.
So, all that said, let's get down to business. The sixth thing that non-writers should know about writers and writing.
A published book is a published book. In your opinion, does publishing in a place like Fimfiction count as publishing a book, or are we looking strictly at books meant to be sold?
4520003
Strictly books meant to be sold, though there is definitely a measure of accomplishment that should not be ignored where fanfiction is concerned. I tend to say that I've written seven ... Well, eight now books, and published four for sale.
There should be some standard, though, right?
I'd say you've published a book if you've sold at least 1 physical copy to someone you don't know.
4520535
That doesn't hold either, however, as The Martian, Wool, and many other ebooks have sold hundreds of thousands of copies before ever being printed. Considering that 2,000 sales is called a success at most major trad pubs, that metric doesn't work.