Authors are too eager to exchange sales, profits for this

“A traditional publisher just offered me a contract!”

“I got contacted by a marketer who says he can make me a bestseller!”

“Wow! I got a five-star review!”

“Hey, I just won a literary award!”

Authors love being recognized, and they hate it when they aren’t. It’s a jungle out there in the publishing world, and the market—especially for novels—is saturated with titles. A lot of good writers never get the recognition they deserve, which makes them (understandably) eager for approval.

That eagerness, which too often morphs into desperation, makes them primed for exploitation by scammers. Some offer worthless marketing “help,” while others are vanity publishers posing as traditional houses. If you pay someone thousands of dollars to publish your book, they’ll be the one making money.

If you’re publishing a memoir or autobiography, chances are you won’t attract much interest beyond your immediate circle. The only folks who make money off memoirs are celebrities, political figures, and (if they’re very lucky) people with unusual humorous or fascinating stories. So if you’re looking for a gift to offer family and friends, you may be OK with a vanity publisher, but don’t expect to recoup your costs. It’s just not a moneymaking proposition.

A matter of vanity

There’s a reason they call them “vanity” publishers: They appeal to authors’ egos, which is, in my opinion, our Achilles’ heel. Even if we want to make money, we can be talked into taking recognition as a substitute—even if it does little or nothing to generate sales and may even distract us from taking steps that actually will.

It doesn’t help that most authors have been conditioned to believe that a traditional publishing deal is the gold standard when it comes to getting your work out there. It’s been drilled into our heads to such an extent that many authors refuse to accept anything less. They’ll go through a thousand query letters and submissions that end in rejection as they chase the dangled carrot of “acceptance” by an agent or publisher.

Such acceptance is, of course, no guarantee of sales or financial success. An agent may agree to represent you, then put you on the back burner. Even if they do work actively to find your book a home, there’s no assurance that they’ll be able to do so. If they do, will they find a publisher willing to put effort and energy into developing, releasing, and promoting your book? If you go through this process, you might end up waiting around years for your work to see the light of day. And when it does, you’ll have to do much of the promotion yourself… all for royalties that are far less than what you’d have earned publishing it yourself.

But many authors are so eager for acceptance—that seal of approval that comes with a traditional publishing contract—that they’ll overlook all that in the quest for what they see as the Holy Grail.

This is not to say that traditional publishing is all bad. If you’re offered a good deal with a Big Five publisher, by all means, take it. And if you land an agent with a reputation for placing authors with major houses, I wouldn’t turn that down either. But there are more than 1,000 literary agents and more than 3,000 publishers in the United States, some good and others… well, not so much. The problem comes when you get too excited about any old agent or any old publisher sniffing around and showing interest, as though merely “having an agent” or “having a publisher” means you’ve made it.

It doesn’t.

The same thing goes for reviews and awards.

Overrated accolades

Reviews are notoriously hard to come by, and authors can easily get pulled down the rabbit hole chasing them. But although they can be helpful (15 percent of readers listed them as their biggest consideration in a 2020 survey), reviews by themselves don’t mean you’ll have huge sales, and if you shell out a ton of money on book blog tours, Kirkus reviews, and the like, you might wind up getting an ego boost… but losing money in the process.

Reviews aren’t nearly as important as a knockout cover or word-of-mouth recommendation. And readers would rather decide for themselves whether a book is worth buying: They’re more influenced by reading a preview or “Look Inside” segment than by anything reviewers might say.

Then there’s the downside to reviews: Unless you have a very thick skin (and I encourage you to develop one) negative reviews, like rejection letters, will dampen your motivation. You’re likely begin doubting yourself and write less; this loss of confidence and productivity will probably hurt your sales as much or more than any positive reviews would have boosted them.

More than 8 in 10 awards contests carry an entrance fee, with the average being around $89. Of course (if the contest is reputable), paying your money doesn’t guarantee you’ll win—and since most entries don’t, it’s not a very good return on your investment.

But say you do win. You might receive a small cash prize or a trophy, and a few major awards (Pulitzer, Nobel, Newberry, etc.) will boost your sales significantly. Sure, if you’ve won an award at any level, you can use that as a marketing tool and even slap a cool sticker on the front of your book. But if readers have never heard of the award you won, they’re unlikely to care.

That 2020 survey referred to above found that genre was the most important consideration for roughly 4 in 10 readers, followed by familiarity with the author at 23.2 percent. Where did awards fall? They’re not even on the list. Another survey, conducted a few years earlier, didn’t include genre but asked readers to rank a range of factors as “extremely” or “very” important. The top answer was author familiarity, followed by the book cover, a personal recommendation, and the book description—all at 35 percent or higher. Of the 15 factors listed, literary awards ranked at the bottom of the list at less than 1 percent.

In 2016, Glenna Collett asked authors whether contests were worthwhile and received an interesting response:

“We asked several book award winners whether they thought entering contests was worthwhile. Most agreed that they noticed no increase in sales (emphasis mine). However, it was unanimous that the awards reception, the medal, and the ability to put a sticker on their book was worth the entry fee, but not more.”

In listing the benefits of entering contests, you can probably guess what topped Collett’s list: ego.

Ego vs. sales

But ego and sales are two entirely different things. Sales are quantifiable, which means you can measure whether various steps you take influence your success. If someone offers you a marketing program, representation, or a publishing contract, you can investigate whether that marketer, agent, or publisher has been successful boosting sales in the past.

Ego, by contrast, is not quantifiable. If you’re writing purely for the rush of getting noticed or receiving “attaboy” reviews, that makes you vulnerable to scammers and opportunists willing to exploit your desire for validation. If that’s what you’re looking for as a writer, and you’re willing to spend money to achieve it, that’s fine. But if you want to make money, ego is your enemy.

In fact, it may be the biggest enemy an author faces. 

Stephen H. Provost is the author of more than 50 books, both independently and traditionally published. He is the publisher of Dragon Crown Books and founder of the ACES of Northern Nevada online book hub.