Great Expectations.

Writing is delightful and rewarding hobby.

Writing is a brutal and heartbreaking business.

Some of you will be familiar with the eponymous Dickens classic in which Pip, our young hero, is without warning lifted from grinding poverty and brought into a life of luxury where his horizons rapidly expand. Only to be unceremoniously shoved to the kerb once more - all of it controlled by forces beyond his control or even understanding.

There are a great many writers hoping for a publishing deal. Many of those reading this blog post will be among those legions. It will be hard to stir among such frequently disappointed souls any measure of sympathy for those happy few who against all odds do pass through the hallowed gates of agent and publisher onto the shelves of bookshops.

But, in truth, the disappointments of the querying author are small beer compared to the Pip-esque journey that very likely lies ahead of them if they do get published.

The querying author is typically only built up by their own enthusiasm before their many rejections. The published author gets to fail believing a spotlight to be on them and themselves the vessel of the publishers' hopes and fortunes, not to mention their own. They've been given lightning in a bottle. Surely they won't let it slip through their fingers?

And here are the sad facts:

Publishers take on many more new authors each year than persist into long term writing careers. In fantasy if you sign with a big publisher you'll typically get a three book deal, these will sell disappointingly, fizzle, and you won't get another contract. That's not failure - it's the norm.

It's also not your fault. Success depends on a great many factors beyond your control, and writing a great book was the entry stake in the poker game, not the pot-winning hand.

Publishing is primarily a "throw it at the wall and see what sticks" game. Obviously they put as much thought as they can into choosing what to throw - but if people knew how to spot successful books then those people would own super yachts and Harry Potter would not have been rejected a dozen times.

The publisher expects most of what's launched to sink. They have faith in each book but know that the sea of statistics is a rough one.

The author isn't in charge of this ship's rudder and whilst the publishers may have set the sail, you're really at the mercy of unknown currents.

Your book needs to have whatever the big vibe is at the moment it lands or to light the already in place tinder for the next big vibe. It needs to be crack to those readers. It needs to find people with loud voices to sing its praises. It needs to be adopted by influential communities. It needs to make the reader not merely smile with satisfaction and reach for the next book but to trample their TBR pile in their rush to tell other people about THIS book.

I advise people to write as if writing were a hobby. If I enjoy painting minatures or crocheting stuffies, I will spend many happy hours doing so. I won't expect to make a living at it. I won't quit my day job. I won't look back and think of all that wasted time and failure. That's what a hobby is - an end in and of itself.

If the finger of some benevolent god stretches through the clouds to point at you and you get a publishing deal then your mental health and wellbeing will be best protected if you think of it as I did when it unexpectedly happened to me. It's a blip in the Matrix, I thought. If these publishers want to give me money ... hooray! I'm not responsible for what happens next. I fully expected my first book to sell a thousand copies, maybe three thousand since it had a big publisher behind it. The next two would sell successively fewer (and they did) and that would be my 15 minutes of "fame" over and done with. The kind of fame where nobody knows who you are and the only people who are impressed are a small subset of your friends and family.

This is the reasonable approach. It's in line with what is statistically likely to happen.   

It can go differently, but don't expect it to, and absolutely don't consider it to be a personal failure if that happens.

You'll probably feel better about it if you did all you could to move the needle. Do interviews, start a blog, post pictures on social media etc. But in the end, I don't think any of these activities amount to much more than rearranging the deck chairs. It won't help you avoid the iceberg. You might, by luck, evade the iceberg - but it almost certainly wasn't because you made a fool of yourself on TikTok (which I do occasionally).

The process of being published raises your expectations, and if you're not very careful about it they will soar skywards. The process of selling books will very likely yank you back down to earth. It's better not to have allowed yourself to float too high at that point.

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