Flying Solo: On Finding Success As a Writer Without the Help of an Agent

By Anna Scotti

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When a writer lets slip that there's a novel in the works—or a story, or a collection of stories—the first thing people want to know is whether you have an agent. And from there, we writers start to dream. 

Agents do all the hard work of submitting material. They hook you up with advances, royalties, movie deals, foreign rights, video game rights, maybe a TV or streaming deal. Along with their first cousin, the book publicist, agents are the key to success, fame, and fortune. Right?

One of the biggest book deals on record is Michelle and Barack Obama's mega-deal with Penguin - 65 million bucks for four books. Okay, you say, but that's a former president and a first lady. Let's be pragmatic. What can we, as mystery writers, expect?  Well, Lisa Scottoline has a net worth upwards of 25 million dollars following a fat deal with Grand Central a couple of years back. Dean Koontz is worth 150 million, and James Patterson is halfway to a billion, having landed what is arguably the most lucrative multi-book deal in history. These deals were brokered by agents. But we're being pragmatic, remember, so you might expect your first book deal to net you well less than a million bucks. Fifty grand sounds about right. Not enough for a condo in Hollywood, but more than enough for a low-end beemer with cash left over for gas. Sure, fifty grand.

 Well, no.

 The average traditionally-published mystery novel nets its author five to ten thousand dollars. And that's of the books that find traditional publishers, which is a slim percentage of the books that are actually completed and shopped around. And that percentage is itself a slim fraction of the books that are begun, tapped out on laptops before school or after work, dreamed up over lattes in coffee houses and hashed out in writers' groups, paragraph by sweaty paragraph. It's hard to write a book. It's really hard to finish, edit, revise, and polish a book. And it's near impossible to land an agent.

Sure, writers do find agents. Depending upon the source you consult, there are between 300 and 1000 agents currently active in the United States. That's maybe six to twenty per state - not a lot. Each agent has 20, maybe thirty, writers currently signed to their roster, so they are able to be extremely selective about whom they sign. Agents exist because it's extremely difficult to get your work in front of major publishers without one. But it's also extremely difficult to get your work in front of an agent to begin with! Conferences definitely help—quite a few writers have found representation after meeting an agent at Killer Nashville, for example, or at various "pitch conferences."  Networking and persistence help, too. But there are hundreds of articles available about how to find an agent, and most of them are accurate, realistic…and discouraging. It's like a game of musical chairs where instead of one person getting left out, everybody but one person gets left out. Somebody is going to catch that agent's eye—but this time around, it might not be you.

So what about getting your work in front of publishers without an agent? Is it possible? Absolutely! In fact, I can tell you exactly how to get your work seen by Gina Centello at Random House, or Ben Sevier at Grand Central. It's simple—just invent a time machine, go back several decades, and get born into their families. Or save their dog from getting run over and create a life-long debt, something along those lines. But what if your scientific and metaphysical skills are not as strong as your mystery-writing prowess?  You will probably not be publishing your first book with Harper Collins, but it is entirely possible to land a contract with a reputable house. 

The first step is to be realistic. You may end up as big as Lisa Scottoline or James Patterson someday, but you are not there yet. You may end up sipping Stellas at the White Horse Tavern with Gina or Ben someday, but you're not there yet. You've got a book, and it's good. It's been polished to high shine, and you want to see it between two covers. You've made the decision to seek a traditional publishing house, rather than to self-publish, or you wouldn't be reading this craft article. And here's the good news—a trade paperback published by a reputable indie or a university press is eligible for all of the same awards, honors, prizes and reviews as a hardcover book published with a lot of hoopla by any of the Big Five. 

Really?

Really. The most prestigious honor in the mystery world is probably the Edgar Allan Poe Award, familiarly known as the Edgar, and you can submit your own book to the Mystery Writers of America! Longing for an Anthony Award, or perhaps a Claymore? You don't need the publisher or an agent for that—you can submit your own work. You can even submit your own book for the Pulitzer Prize! Books released by university presses and small independent publishing houses—"indies"—routinely nab prizes, awards, honors and the press that leads to sales and builds a writer's reputation. 

But it's not always easy to get your book in front of those smaller, less prestigious publishing houses, either. They can be just as selective as Simon & Schuster or MacMillan. Maybe, under some circumstances, even more so. The big dogs can trust that a book by a bestselling author will move copies, even if it's not particularly riveting or well-reviewed. A book released by a brave little indie relies on word of mouth, professional reviews—usually in small publications and regional newspapers—and reader reviews on Goodreads and Amazon to spark interest and rack up sales. True, an indie house doesn't need to move 10 to 25 thousand copies to avoid Monday-morning regrets. A thousand copies may be considered a success, indeed—and may turn a tidy profit for the house. But because it's expensive to acquire, edit, copy edit, design, register, and distribute a book, small houses have to be careful; they can't afford a lot of misfires.

So as you prepare your novel or collection to make its way into the world, be meticulous. There are a million free sources at your fingertips to show you how to format your manuscript, but the basics are pretty simple. Use a 12-point serif font (Times New Roman will never let you down).  Double space and use one-inch margins. Paginate.  Put your name, address, phone, email and website addy (if any) on page one. Read any special instructions the publisher may have noted on their website. Then proofread, edit, copyedit, spell check, set the manuscript aside for two weeks, and go back and do it again. 

Many publishing houses read year-round. Others have reading periods—just check their websites. But don't be too quick to go over the transom or through the portal. I've had more than a few editors respond to an email letting them know I'm regularly published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. That credit opens doors in the mystery world. Even if they then ask you to submit through their portal, they may remember your name or keep an eye out for the manuscript. If you don't have a significant, impressive credit in the genre in which you are submitting, don't bother with the personal email. But if you do—a book previously published by a traditional publisher, stories in prestigious markets like EQMM or Alfred Hitchcock, or a well-known prize on your CV—send a brief, friendly email and ask for "permission" to send the manuscript. If you're directed to the plebian portal everyone has to use, nothing's lost. But you might get that much-coveted "please send your manuscript to my attention" email!

Competitions are another way to get your book read by a publishing house. There are a kazillion contests out there, some legitimate, and some not. The good news is, it's pretty easy to tell the difference between the two. First, consider the sponsor. Most book competitions are sponsored by small publishing houses, so check the site. Does it look attractive and well-maintained? Are winners from previous years listed? Google a few of them. Are their winning books in print? How do they look? Where can readers obtain the books? Distribution is the bugaboo of indie publishing—love it or not, many readers want to purchase their books online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. If your book is available only through the publisher's site, is it easy to use? Actually log on and look. All the self-promotion in the world won't help your thriller if the publisher makes it hard to find or hard to buy—and some, inexplicably, do. 

Most competitions charge an entry fee, and that really seems to bother some writers, but the fact is that entry fees help small presses pay the cost of publishing and distributing their winning manuscripts. The same is true of contests that run without a book contract attached.  You may get a juicy credit for your resume, a banquet, a plaque, a sticker for your book cover, or even a cash prize, and the sponsors use entry fees to pay for those goodies. However, if you are truly hard up, there is often a fee waiver available—if you don't see one offered, ask. 

If you do place a book with a small publisher, whether through a contest or simply through open submissions, you may need to do a significant amount of marketing and publicity yourself. That sounds daunting, but it's not, really. You'll make a press kit of digital ARCs (advanced reading copies), a bio, a synopsis, and other materials the publisher will provide - things like an ISBN number, a link to pre-purchase, and some kind of announcement on the publisher's site and social media. Where will you send this press kit?  Everywhere you can think of, from local and regional newspapers, to magazines that publish reviews, to your alumni association and neighborhood groups, and to local bookstores and libraries. There are a lot of resources available that will show you ways to promote your own book, and if you have a good publisher, they will welcome your efforts and do all possible to help you. 

What about short stories? Even well-known writers usually submit their own work to magazines and anthologies. There simply isn't enough of a cut available to interest an agent (though an agent may perform this service as a courtesy to a big-name writer on their roster). The top magazines in our field—Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, The Strand, Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and Black Cat Weekly, all pay—and all accept submissions without a "reading fee." And don't forget big-money fiction markets like The New Yorker and The Atlantic. Publishing in one of those can kickstart a career. It's a long shot, sure—but submitting to these and others of their ilk is free, and miracles do happen. (Really! Your girl here had her first New Yorker poem pulled out of the slush pile nearly ten years ago and has published five times with them since.) 

Literary journals are great in one regard—not so hot in another. They tend to be beautifully produced, carefully edited, and packed with notable work. Whether in paper copy or online, you'll be proud to show off your work in a lit journal. However, their circulation rates are generally low. Further, a few literary prizes are open only to work that has received payment from the publisher. That's why some markets offer a token payment. For example, if you place a story with The Saturday Evening Post's "New Fiction Fridays" you'll receive a check for twenty-five bucks. Why bother, you ask?  Because The Post produces your story beautifully, it's accessible online without a paywall, and the magazine is widely recognized and well-respected. Publishing in the Post online is a reputation-builder, not a money-maker. And it may give you a step up into the hard-copy magazine, which pays significantly more. Plus, that token payment will allow you entree to contests that would not otherwise be open to you. Less commercial journals have smaller circulations than The Post, but their stories make their way to various contents and "best of,"s too. One of my favorites of my own stories, What Anyone Would Think, was published in The New Guard Literary Review and made barely a ripple in the pond—but it is the centerpiece of a collection that was a finalist for the Claymore Prize, and is currently under consideration by several publishers—and agents!

That's right, I'm presently un-agented! Sure, I'd like to find someone great to handle my next book, but I can't say I regret flying solo for the collection from Down&Out Books in June, It's Not Even Past. Working closely with the publisher on layout, book cover copy, cover design, editing and copyediting, and publicity has been an incredible learning experience; I know how to get a book into the hands of reviewers, how to post social media announcements strategically, and how to set up cover reveals, interviews, guest spots on blogs, readings, and signings. Being sans agent has never held me back. It's Not Even Past is a compilation of "librarian on the run" stories from Ellery Queen and includes ten of the twenty-two stories I've sold to the magazine since 2018 without an agent. You can also find my work—a good amount of it—in Black Cat Weekly. In the past few years, I've been a finalist for the Macavity, the Derringer, the Thriller, and twice for the Claymore Prize! I've been in the running for an Ellery Queen Reader's Choice Award a number of times, I've had work selected for various podcasts and reprints, and my stories have been selected three times for Best Mystery Stories of the Year (Mysterious Press). I've lost count of the readings and signings I've done, and—oh, yeah. Did I mention that I'm also a poet and young adult author? My poetry collection, Bewildered by All This Broken Sky, won the inaugural Lightscatter Prize in 2020, and my young adult novel, Big and Bad, was awarded the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People the same year. Many of these honors and awards came with nice checks attached, and every single one was achieved without the help of an agent. Now, that's quite a brag fest, but boasting isn't my purpose here. I want you to understand that many working writers are flying solo and finding success, and you can, too—if you're good enough, persistent enough, creative enough, and willing to put in the hours. Good luck!

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Learn more about Anna Scotti - and about publishing books and stories without an agent, garnering publicity, and teaching as a side career - at Anna K Scotti.  It's Not Even Past is available now from the publisher, from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and by order from your local bookstore. It's Not Even Past

Drop the Pen! What Every Writer Should Know About Real Police Work: Traffic Stops, Part Two

By David Lane Williams

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Last month, we discussed traffic stops, focusing primarily on how police officers stopping vehicles based on relatively minor offenses can lead to the detection and arrest of violent criminals. Even if you’re writing a detective procedural, it’s important that you understand the constitutional and tactical considerations of a legal and safe stop in the grand scheme of policing. This month, I want to continue with the traffic stop concept, expanding on best practices. Traffic stops are performed thousands of times each day, and writers of crime fiction and true crime need to have a solid understanding of how they are performed to show they’ve done the research and know this subject better than the average Joe Citizen. There is a procedure taught at most academies nowadays, and I think it is enlightening to understand the way these things should be done. Let’s take it step by step. 

Determine Reasonable Suspicion or Probable Cause

Let’s say your fictional officer needs to stop a car because the driver matches the description of a bank robber from the previous shift. Your officer needs to make the stop in a legal and safe manner. The first thing he must decide (and be ready to defend) is the legal reason for the stop. Officers in the U.S. can’t just go around stopping every car they pass. We’ve all seen the awful ramifications of such an approach. There are basically two ways to make a legal, constitutionally sound traffic stop: Reasonable Suspicion or Probable Cause. 

Reasonable suspicion that a driver or occupant of a moving vehicle has committed a crime or is about to commit one is an acceptable reason for stopping a vehicle. It is, however, the least resilient tactic to the scrutiny of a defense attorney, judge, and/or jury. The officer must be able to swear under oath that, based on his training and experience, he suspected the occupants of a vehicle of doing or about to do a crime. Reasonable suspicion stops are done with less frequency than even a decade ago, because of the inevitable attack it will receive from the person’s attorney if the case ever goes to trial. Most officers will wait until they notice an infraction, such as making a turn without a signal or weaving in and out of lanes. Delaying a stop for actual probable cause—AKA evidence— instead of relying solely on suspicion, puts the officer in a better position to defend his actions if the case goes to trial.

Thus, you may opt to have your fictional officer stop a car based on a “gut feeling,” but you’ve placed him in a legally precarious situation that most veteran officers wouldn’t actually choose. It can still work, but your character is in a better position if he is patient and waits to spot an actual infraction about which he can testify under oath. (Go back and read the previous month’s article if you need more detail on the difference between a Reasonable Suspicion stop and one based on Probable Cause.)

Prepare for the Stop

Preparing for the stop means calling the license plate, description, and location to the Dispatch Center so other officers will know where you are and what kind of vehicle they should look for if the officer making the stop gets attacked. The Hollywood version of a cop stopping a car in a dark alley and not letting anyone know is macho hooey and should never happen in real life (or your fiction unless you want to show a police character performing at a level of incompetence or recklessness).

Parking the Patrol Vehicle

Safe parking of the patrol vehicle calls for turning on the emergency lights and pulling in behind the stopped vehicle. At night, a patrol officer will also use a car-mounted beacon-style light in such a way that it reflects in the side mirror of the stopped car. This adds an additional layer of protection because the other driver has limited visibility due to the glare. Officers know the glare is irritating, but it is designed to give them an edge if the occupants are intent on doing them harm.

The officer will then park the squad car at a slight angle with the engine block canted to the left. This has two advantages. First, the officer can cover behind the engine block if the occupants of the other vehicle come out shooting. Second, the parked squad car will careen to the left instead of straight into the officer if another car hits it from behind. 

Approaching the Vehicle

Approaching the vehicle can be done by either stepping up to the driver’s door or around the back of the stopped vehicle just behind the passenger door. I preferred the second method when I worked at night. Most people will be watching for the officer to approach from their left. Coming up on the right side of their car allowed me to be beside the vehicle and use my flashlight to see if the occupants were holding a weapon before they even knew I was close. 

Either way, officers will touch the trunk compartment door as they pass the rear fender. This action marks the suspect vehicle with the officer’s fingerprints and DNA. Should the suspect “rabbit” (flee), his car will carry definitive evidence of the encounter. It also lets the officer make sure the trunk is fully closed in case there is anyone in the trunk intent on doing him harm. 

Once the officer is near the car, he should identify himself and his agency right away. This has a proven effect of calming concerns from the driver that the officer might be corrupt. Corrupt cops don’t tend to give their names, and this small detail can make all the difference in terms of keeping the tone polite and professional. 

I am also a big believer that officers should clearly state why they pulled the car over, e.g., “I pulled you over because you were speeding through a school zone.” Again, this has a dampening effect on any driver revving up to argue. The officer should be clear, forthright, and professional, which is what it will sound like to jurors listening to the officer’s body camera recording if this thing ever goes to trial. 

Positioning At the Vehicle

I roll my eyes at cop shows where the police officer is talking straight down into the window of the suspect vehicle. The problem with standing right beside the driver’s window is that this position puts you in the line of fire should he turn homicidal. Bullets go through car doors like toothpicks through those little Christmas party sausages. Don’t let your fictional officer stand right by the door. I’ll surmise he was poorly trained or that he is about to get shot in the groin.

Instead, officers are taught to stand adjacent to the thick metal door frame behind the driver’s seat. This space has the tactical advantage of keeping the driver in sight while also making it more difficult for him to accurately fire a weapon backward and over his left shoulder. Try it next time you’re in the driver’s seat. Point your finger like you’re a kid playing with a pretend space phaser and see if you can “photon blast” someone standing back there. You can, but it’s slow and clumsy—the advantage in a split-second attack goes to the officer.

Remember: Officer survival is part tactics and part practice, but all mindset. A well-trained police officer will be thinking about these concepts as he approaches the car. 

Background Check

By now, your officer has collected pertinent paperwork, including the vehicle registration (not all states require this), proof of insurance, and the driver’s license. The officer has conversed with the occupants, determined what, if any, violations have occurred, and retreated toward his own car to increase the safety distance. Now the officer will either type in the occupants’ identification into a mobile computer or call it out to the Dispatch Center. 

I preferred to keep my eyes on the car by calling Dispatch on the radio. Oftentimes, I would do this while standing behind the trunk of my own car, again so that I would have the protection of my vehicle should occupants in the stopped car come out firing. The last place I would want to be in that event would be sitting comfy—and trapped—in my driver’s seat.

Once the cop has determined there are no outstanding arrest warrants for the people in the car, he’ll decide whether to issue a warning or a citation. Once this is done, the officer needs to make a formal announcement along the lines of, “You’re free to go.” 

This is where things might get tricky. Once the person who was detained has been informed he is free to go, he is…free to go. But, this is also when the officer may ask if there is anything illegal in the car. If the driver says, “No,” but he does it in a less-than-credible manner, the officer might follow up with, “So, you wouldn’t mind if I did a quick search, then?” 

Why then? Why not ask to search before the officer has lifted the detention? Here’s the thing: any search of a vehicle (or anywhere considered private from the prying eyes of government) done while a person is in custody is likely to get thrown out of court. In simplest terms, a person in custody may not feel they have a choice but to let that government agent search their car. Thus, any search during the stop could, and probably should, be considered involuntary. You can’t volunteer to allow a search if you don’t believe you have an option. The case is likely to be dismissed, even if you were to find a severed head and a bloody axe in the trunk. 

Officers who are looking to make lots of drug-related arrests use this tactic often. Mentioning to the driver that he is free to leave, but following up with a request to search the car is a workaround, and defense attorneys everywhere just groaned. I can’t say I blame them. This strategy pushes the limits of the Fourth Amendment, and I’m not an advocate for using it during most traffic stops. That said, this is a standard drug interdiction technique, and you may decide to use it to propel your storyline forward. 

Bloody axe, anyone?

A Word on “Do you know who I am?” 

I don’t care if you’re a minister taking her family out for a picnic after church, Senator So & So’s aide, or a rookie attorney who just passed the bar; cops don’t know “who you are,” and they don’t particularly care. They know they’ve stopped you for a reason, and they expect to speak with you and investigate further. 

You wanna make a cop mock you long after the traffic stop? Say, “Do you know who I am?” when he approaches the car. You’ll be the belle of the squad room when he tells his buddies about it later. 

That’s it for this month. Until then, be safe…just not too safe. You’ve got a job to do, after all. Onward.

This Crazy Writing Life Performs Killer Nashville Post Mortems

By Steven Womack

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As I write this, it’s been almost three weeks since the 2025 Killer Nashville conference concluded. I intended to sit down and very quickly dash out some thoughts on what has become over the last couple of decades a major international writing conference.

The only problem is I was so overwhelmed by it all that it took me a few days to recover, then another week or so to gather my thoughts and wrap my head around what it all meant. While I’ve been to Killer Nashville many times as a panelist or a guest speaker, this was the first time I’ve ever gone full tilt on the conference (I was supposed to go total immersion last year, but I got an unexpected visit from Mr. Covid).

So this was the year when I went all-in on KN. I was on three panels, plus the wonderful Jaden (Beth) Terrell and the equally wonderful Lisa Wysocky and I did a master class called “Setting, Sidekicks, and Secrets” that took all of Thursday afternoon. I also attended a half-dozen or so panels. It was both intense and simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting.

After all this, what’s the takeaway?

First—and this is not a particularly brilliant observation—Killer Nashville has evolved from a small regional conference first conceived by its founder, Clay Stafford, twenty years ago to a major national mystery conference. I’d go so far as to say its eclipsed just about every other conference of its type. The program booklet alone is 100 pages long. The number of sponsors grows every year, and its two awards—the Silver Falchion and the Claymore Awards—have become major mystery awards, as evidenced by how many winners are now including the award on their websites, social media, and C.V.s. Major figures in the mystery and crime arena—like this year’s Guest of Honor appearance by Sara Paretsky—now show up at KN.

Second observation: Killer Nashville celebrates mystery and crime fiction, but its over-riding focus is on writing crime fiction. Aspiring writers come to Killer Nashville to learn about the craft and business of writing crime fiction. A great deal of the conference concentrates on putting writers together with agents and editors. Panels covered topics like “Steal Like an Artist: Learning from Other Author’s Novels,” “Writers and Taxes,” and “Writing Intimacy: From Fade to Black to Open Door.” These are all craft components and business components of the writing life.

While there’s plenty of stuff at Killer Nashville to interest readers, and readers certainly seem to be welcome, writers and aspiring writers are going to get the most out of the weekend.

This separates it from other conferences like Bouchercon, which remains the largest mystery convention in the world. Bouchercon brings together fans and creators of crime fiction on an equal basis to celebrate the genre. Fans go there to meet their favorite authors, and authors go there to be seen and to maintain a presence in the mystery community. While there are panels on craft (although after attending a number of Bouchercons, I can’t remember any), people mostly go to Bouchercon to either meet their heroes or to network and do business. I was introduced to my longest running literary agent at the Toronto Bouchercon in 1992.

At the 1995 Bouchercon in Nottingham, England, I met Anne Perry, which was a great thrill. We had the same editor at Ballantine Books, and he introduced us. For writers, that’s the great benefit of attending conventions and conferences. Once you’ve been multiply published, you probably don’t need a panel on writing compelling dialogue. But to meet your own literary heroes or make friends with a fellow writer who will introduce you to their editor or agent is a real plus (and obviously, you can do the same thing for other writers as well). I’ve met people at Bouchercon and other conferences who’ve remained lifelong friends.

Third observation: Killer Nashville has grown to the extent that it is, in some ways, busting at the seams. The conference sold out, and it can’t grow any bigger without relocating to a larger venue (you know how those pesky fire marshals are). More importantly, the schedule is jammed from morning ‘til night. I realize that the event schedulers have to try to accommodate every author who wants to be on a panel, and that’s a truly noble objective. But when you’ve got a moderator and five panelists speaking on a panel that only lasts 45 minutes, then by the time everyone’s introduced and you leave ten minutes at the end for Q&A, each person has maybe five-to-seven minutes speaking time. This precludes any kind of really deep dive on any subject.

Final observation: Despite its growth and evolution from a minor regional conference that nobody’s ever heard of to one of the 800-pound gorillas in the mystery world, Killer Nashville remains one of the most cordial, relaxed, friendly conferences out there. There’s very little competition among authors for attention (in fact, I saw none), and the people who run the conference, all the way up to founder Clay Stafford, remain approachable, helpful, and easy to work with.

So what’s the final takeaway?

Writers tend to be introverts. Given our druthers, most of us would probably stay home in our jammies and pound away on a keyboard while our coffee sits there getting cold. Unfortunately, that’s not the way This Crazy Writing Life works. Writers, publishers, editors, proofreaders, everyone who occupies a place on this long journey is a human being and humans need connection. Publishing is an industry built on connections. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to break out of our shells and comfort zones and get out there in the world, get our work out there into the world. I hate the term networking; it seems so mercenary. I’d prefer to think of it as building relationships based on mutual affection, goals, and aspirations.

And speaking of which, I’m off next week to St. Petersburg Beach to attend the annual Novelists, Inc. conference. I’ve mentioned Novelists, Inc. in previous columns. This is a different kind of conference. It’s all business and lots of hard work, but it also takes place on a gorgeous beachside resort, and the sponsors compete to throw the best dinners, parties, cocktail hours, and other goodies.

I know, I get it. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it.

Thanks for playing along. See you next time.

This Crazy Writing Life: Some Random Reflections On The Reality of This Crazy Writing Life

By Steven Womack

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A couple of weeks ago, I did a Zoom panel for the Middle Tennessee chapter of Sisters in Crime called Indie Pubbing Mistakes And How To Avoid Them. Chapter President Beth (Jaden) Terrell moderated the panel, and Lisa Wysocky, Jenna Bennett and I had a very lively and engaging exploration of how to survive this crazy business. As I was prepping for the panel (an hour or so before we were scheduled to go on), I came across a couple of statistics that left me kind of gobsmacked.

For some reason or other, I started pondering how many books were published around the world every year. I wondered if it were even possible to find an answer to that question. More importantly, did I even want to know how many books were published every year? I feared that the number might be even more daunting than I expected.

So I cranked up my local internet search engine and wound up going down a rabbit hole that I haven’t managed to pull myself out of yet…

The first step was UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. I don’t know much about UNESCO and have no connection personally to the organization beyond dim childhood memories of collecting money for them at Halloween back in elementary school (oh wait, that might have been UNICEF). One of UNESCO’s missions is to compile statistics and information on the number of books published because it’s an important index of how world literacy is progressing and our level of education, which is directly related to the standard of living.

According to their best estimates, 2.2 million books were published around the world last year.

Let’s all take a moment to get our heads around this.

Two-point-two million published books a year means that, on average, 6,027 books are published every day, seven-days-a-week, around the clock.

So if that doesn’t make your head spin, let me add their disclaimer: this doesn’t include self/independently published books. While I can’t imagine there’s a completely accurate way of determining how many indies are released every year, UNESCO estimates that adding these to the mix raises the number to nearly four million books a year.

That takes us up to nearly 11,000 books a day.

I don’t know what else to say beyond Holy Crap…

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Continuing on down this rabbit hole, I turned to one of the best Substack writers I’ve found in the past couple of years. . . Elle Griffin. Elle, based in Salt Lake City, writes The Elysian, a newsletter that examines the world and the future through the eyes of an essayist and fiction writer trying to stay centered in the shifting sands of publishing, culture, and life. Her stuff is top-notch, and I highly recommend tracking her down and subscribing (her March 2021 essay No One Will Read Your Book, is essential reading).

In April 2024, Elle wrote an exhaustive and fascinating essay on the publishing business—called No one buys books—set against the backdrop of Penguin Random House’s attempt to acquire Simon & Schuster. The merging of these two publishing houses—who between them make up nearly half of the entire market share of American publishing—would have meant the Big 5 would now be the Big 4 (along with Harper Collins, Macmillan, and Hachette Livre).

The Department of Justice brought an antitrust case against the proposed acquisition and a judge ultimately ruled that the 2.2-billion-dollar merger would indeed create a monopoly, thereby putting the kibosh on the deal.

This was no real big surprise, but what was an eye-opening surprise was the testimony of all the experts called at the trial. It was like in the middle of all the flashing lights, booming sound effects, flame jets, sound and fury, somebody pulled aside the curtain to reveal the shriveled up little mean-spirited man who was pulling all the strings. The truth about the publishing industry was stripped naked and exposed for all to see in its hideous ugliness.

And while what I’m putting in front of you now may seem negative and pessimistic in nature, I’ve always believed that in almost any of life’s endeavors, most of the time it’s better to know what you’re up against. And as Matty Walker said in Larry Kasdan’s great Body Heat, knowledge is power.

So some essential, if ugly, truths:

One expert called to testify in the PRH anti-trust lawsuit collected data on some 58,000 titles. Ninety percent of those titles sold less than 2,000 copies. Fifty percent sold less than a dozen.

Gulp…

The contemporary traditional publishing business model is more like a Silicon Valley venture capitalist’s model than the old myth of a small family firm publishing books they love. In this model, you throw a bunch of money at a bunch of projects and hope that a few of them manage to survive, and even fewer become unicorn breakouts. The ones that do become breakouts get even more money thrown at them. The very top successes get a truckload of money thrown at them. At this level, one consultant reported, this means about 2 percent of the published titles.

Celebrity authors—whether they’re real authors, athletes, movie stars, politicians, or just famous for being famous (Kardashians, anyone?)—get a big hunk of all advance money (and therefore, support) from traditional publishers. Franchise authors—the ones who show up on best-seller lists time after time after time—also get a huge share of the pie. Even then, celebrity authors don’t always sell. Fame doesn’t guarantee a best seller: just ask Andrew Cuomo, Billie Eilish, and Piers Morgan—well-known celebrities whose books flopped like freshly landed catfish.

In evidence provided during the trial, Penguin Random House produced an infographic that revealed for every 100 books they publish, 35 are profitable. Profitable might mean a huge success with truckloads of money coming in or it might mean $.01 over breakeven. As few as 2 of those 100 books account for the lion’s share of profitability.

A traditional publishing house’s backlist, however, is a constant revenue stream of profit. Backlist means all the books the house has ever published that are still in print. Classics—from Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to more recent contemporary books like Stephen King’s Carrie—are money machines that houses can count on. Popular children’s books can hang around forever as a new generation of young parents reads the books they loved as a child to their own children. Elle Griffin noted in her essay that Penguin Random House’s edition of Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been on Publisher Weekly’s bestseller list every week for the past 19 years.

But to get on that backlist, you’ve first got to succeed on the frontlist. 

So with all the discouraging news and mountain-high obstacles, what’s one to do?

For the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been writing monthly columns for Killer Nashville Magazine on independent publishing. If you take nothing else away from this, then understand that indie pubbing (and as I’ve yelled over and over again at the top of my lungs, don’t call it self-publishing) is not just a phenomenon or a ripple in the history of publishing. It’s nothing short of a movement, even a revolution. Publishing houses (and for that matter, literary agents) who acted as gatekeepers in times past are through; they just don’t know it yet.

Run the numbers I cited earlier. If 2.2 million books are published around the world by traditional houses, then you add in indie pubbed books and the number approaches four million, that means that nearly half the books published in the world are indie pubbed. We’re about to cross a Rubicon here if, in fact, it hasn’t already been crossed. In some genres—romance, for instance—it has already been crossed. The mass market Romance paperback is gone, dethroned by the eBook.

This is not, by any means, to suggest that indie pubbing is a panacea, or the answer to all our problems as writers. I turned to indie pubbing because I had projects or out-of-print trad pubbed books that no house would take. When you work that hard on something, you shouldn’t leave it lying in a desk drawer to yellow with age. So I stared indie pubbing and only afterward learned that I liked having control of titles, cover, editorial, etc. And I liked not having to wait years to see book come into print. But it’s an enormous amount of work and I’m still not making anywhere near the money I once hoped to make as a writer of commercial fiction.

So if one of the Big Five (or for that matter, a smaller house) came to me and offered me a sweet deal to publish a book of mine, would I take it?

Hell, yes.

That’s it for this month’s This Crazy Writing Life. Thanks for hanging in there with me.