Successfully Defining Success

Saying you’re a self-published author is just another way of saying you’re both an author and a publisher. If you’re like us, you don’t find those two occupations equally rewarding.

So, as a self-published author, how do you define success?

As we mentioned, we just got back from the Book Baby conference in Philly. There was a lot of good stuff there, starting with the opening keynote from Daniel Lerner on the topic of, yup, defining success. Daniel’s talk was excellent — energizing, moving, and thought-provoking. If you get the chance, definitely check him out.

On the drive home, we dug down into how Rune Skelley defines success. It was an exercise we hadn’t gone through previously, to articulate our aspirations. We had a strong sense that we wanted mainly the same things, but this was laying it out raw in a moving vehicle. It could have gotten tense. But what we confirmed is that we do agree on the definition of success.

For us, the quality of the writing is paramount. We measure quality by our own standards, and we strive to set that bar high. And, we believe that quality writing will find an audience. (This belief seems to verge on mystical, but we’re trying to become more realistic.) We have no desire to chase trends in search of a hit, we’re certainly not going to change how we write in hopes of broader appeal, but we do want to help our work find its audience. We have to figure out how to be as good at being a publisher as we are at being an author.

Watch this space for more reflections on the conference. To hear from us occasionally about our upcoming novels, subscribe to our newsletter.