When I first began writing seriously, many years ago, I dreamed of being published. That was the goal, the Grail, the thing all my effort was directed at. Then in 1988, I got \u201cthe call\u201d from Avalon Books. The editor wanted to buy a novel I\u2019d written. This wasn\u2019t the first novel I wrote. It wan\u2019t the second or third or fourth either. It was the sixth.\u00a0 I made a few small changes the editor suggested, and I got a contract.<\/p>\n
The book came out in 1990. By the time it was released, I\u2019d sold a second book to them. I thought I had it made. I\u2019d sell a few more books to Avalon and then I\u2019d move on to a bigger publisher with bigger advances and wider distribution. I did in fact sell a couple more books to Avalon, but then the editor I was working with left and the new editor wasn\u2019t as enamored of my writing.<\/p>\n
But I planned to move on to bigger things anyway. At least that was the plan. The reality was that I had four teenagers living at home and a full-time job. There was no writing time. When I finally did have the time, the publishing industry had moved on without me and I was basically starting all over again.<\/p>\n
It was hard. The track record I had was too old to impress agents and editors. I did eventually gain some traction just by my writing. Since then I\u2019ve sold books to three New York publishers. One of them shut down the line before my book came out; one of them was bought out by another company that shut down the line; and finally I sold a mystery to Five Star, which brought out the first book in my Market Center Mysteries series, then shut down the mystery line while the second book was in the editorial process. It\u2019s not an unusual story in this business.<\/p>\n
By the standards of an unpublished author, just starting out, I\u2019ve had considerable success in publishing, with something like a dozen or so novels and novellas published by companies large and small. I\u2019ve had books released in hard cover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, and ebook. I\u2019ve won a few awards and been a finalist in quite a few contests, including some fairly prestigious ones.<\/p>\n
Do I feel like a success? Heck, no. I\u2019ve never had a book go into widespread distribution. Meaning I\u2019ve never seen my book in an airport bookstore or the grocery store book rack. I\u2019ve never gotten a five-figure advance. I\u2019ve never made a bestseller list.<\/p>\n
And when I look at it objectively, it\u2019s pretty ridiculous. I\u2019ve had all those books published. I\u2019ve won awards. I\u2019ve gotten a lot of good reviews and positive feedback. I haven\u2019t earned a fortune, but I\u2019m made some money on my books.<\/p>\n
But what I have come to realize after twenty-some years as a published author is that success is all in how you define it. The business is like a ladder more than it is like a platform. There are lots of rungs and lots of levels. There are always some below you and some above you. Even for the unpublished who are trying to sell their book, there are the many writers who\u2019ve never finished one, who are below them on the ladder. Only you can decide which achievements spell \u201csuccess\u201d for you.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve decided to try to remind myself of all that I have achieved and how successful that looks to many others. I\u2019ve worked hard for that success. I\u2019ve shed tears for it and spent countless hours at the keyboard banging out stories I was never sure anyone else would read. But others have read them. Many have paid to read them. And that\u2019s good enough for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I first began writing seriously, many years ago, I dreamed of being published. That was the goal, the Grail, the thing all my effort was directed at. Then in 1988, I got \u201cthe call\u201d from Avalon Books. The editor …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-uncategorized","category-writing-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}