Writers often worry about them: how many words did I write today? How many books did I sell this month? How many reviews have my books received? Even, how many “likes” or retweets did I get on Twitter?

Science is all about numbers, and business now emphasizes them too. In a sense, econ 101 for publishing doesn’t differ from econ 101 in general. Metrics! Everything is about metrics these days.

I contend that this focus on numbers is antithetical to good writing. We writers shouldn’t worry about numbers, especially fiction writers. We should just tell our stories and be done with it. But can we do that?

Consider word count. Do you have a plot or character idea and just start writing? Or do you fret about writing at least a certain number of words each day? The number of words doesn’t matter. What you’re writing will either turn into a short story, novella, or novel. That word count is a metric to be used in the end game to decide which, so how many words you write each day is irrelevant. (I only keep word count in mind for blog posts, aiming for about 500, but I don’t fret much if I go over that.)

How many books you sell is another metric, but the more important one is: How many readers have you entertained with your fiction? That’s hard if not impossible to measure (do we count all those pirated books and readers sharing our books with family and friends, an acceptable type of pirating?). I just measure success for a book by saying if each one entertains at least one reader, it’s a success.

I have the luxury of doing so because I don’t have to make a living writing. I love to spin a good yarn, and I strive to make each one exciting and entertaining, but I know the chances that readers even know it exists are small (that’s another metric we don’t have access to). If you’re starting out, I don’t recommend that you think you’ll become rich with your writing—not financially, anyway. And, if you don’t think writing is its own reward, I wonder why you’re doing it!

There are many places that review books, so counting those on Amazon is futile for buyers of books…and for their authors. In fact, a large percentage of Amazon reviews don’t have the quality one can find elsewhere. My reviews for Rembrandt’s Angel, for example, are spread around the internet universe—I know that because I query reviewers to do them in general, and not just Amazon reviewers. I mainly use reviews to extract excerpts for marketing purposes. The number doesn’t matter to me, only the quality. I only need a few good ones. (Amazon thinks otherwise. They treat books like shoes, so I don’t care what they think.)

What about those “likes” and retweets? They let me know that someone is reading what I wrote in 140 words or less (why do certain people get 280?), but I don’t count them, either how many or the words—Twitter tells me when I run out of characters, and I have better things to do with my time than worry about “likes” and such. Same for Facebook. I do try to be helpful to other writers and readers on these social media sites, though. That’s more rewarding than counting “likes.”

Writing ceases to be fun if we’re constantly worried about numbers. I’m having the time of my life writing my stories—finally I’m a full-time writer! And writing the next book is a lot more fun that fretting about numbers.

I don’t even worry about how much I spend—editing, formatting, cover art, and marketing are the major cost centers. I try to keep the total under what I imagine I’d spend playing golf (those equipment costs and greens’ fees up—so do the beers!). I still treat my writing as a third career, but I don’t fret the numbers. (Yes, tax time is a pain, and I do have to worry about them there!) You shouldn’t worry about them either. Just write your stories.

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Comments are always welcome.

More than Human: The Mensa Contagion. The apocalypse comes via an ET virus. The post-apocalypse has some positive elements because Homo sapiens 2.0 is created. What do these new human beings do? They colonize Mars! This is hard sci-fi with thriller elements, and it led one reviewer to compare it with Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars tales. Available at Amazon, Smashwords, and all the latter’s affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo etc).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2019 at 3:22 am and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.