Managing Expectations

It’s not easy to be an author. In addition to all the writing and rewriting we discuss on this blog, there is a whole separate world that a lot of people downplay – acclimating to the publishing business. I’m not talking about getting an agent, or working with your editor, I’m talking about being a published author and having to manage expectations about what that means.

Here are some things new authors might think will happen as soon as they sell their first book:

• They’ll get a big marketing and publicity plan from their publisher
• Every bookstore will carry their book, and will carry it indefinitely
• The phone will start ringing with offers of school visits and paid speaking gigs
• Big media will review the book and ask for interviews
• The book will win awards and get a lot of buzz online
• People will have heard of your book, or you

In reality, these things happen to very few debut authors. Thousands of children’s and teen books are published every year, and publishers have to promote sometimes forty or more books per age group per season. Yours is not always (or maybe ever) going to be their lead book.

If you aren’t prepared for the reality of being an author, which often means working for many years on several books, slowly building an audience and a name and relationships with booksellers and librarians, and stomaching a lot of disappointments as you watch other new books come out and get more attention than yours, then you need to ask yourself if you really want to be a writer, or if you just want the cache of being published.

My first book has been out for over a year, and I have another coming out in the fall. And I feel just as new and inexperienced in this business as I did when I started graduate school. Sure, I know a lot more now, but the more I learn about how books sell and how authors build a name, the more I realize authors are running a marathon, not a sprint.

And for those that have only warmed up for a sprint, it’s going to be a tough one.

*caroline hickey