The Odds Are Against Us

It’s famously said we all have at least one book in us.

But recently, I came across some troubling statistics:

• 81% of US citizens want to write a book in their lifetime.
• But 97% of people who actually bother to sit down and start writing a book never finish. (So for every 100 people that get started on a book, only 3 reach “The End”.)
• To make matters worse, 20% of people that finish actually manage to publish their work.

Statistics are a funny thing. They can be easily manipulated, and they are often used to manipulate you. Perhaps these numbers were paid for by oldpub and get floated around to dissuade would-be writers from even trying.

Or perhaps the odds really are that bad.

It’s not that writing isn’t hard. Completing a book is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. But at first blush these statistics make it sound like it’s harder to get a book published than it is to play for the NBA.

Are the Odds as Bad as They Look?

I’ve completed stories. Nothing quite novel-length, but I’m getting there. I’d take it a “book” is defined as any book, even a novella, so I guess I’ve already beaten the 97% subset.

Which just leaves that 20% sub-subset. I’ve not published anything yet. The plan is still to hold off until I have a larger body of work (for a rapid-release schedule).

Thanks to indie publishing, there’s no insurmountable barriers stopping me. Short of me dying before I can put together a cover and blurb, I plan to publish at least something before I leave this mortal coil. At the very least, I’ve left a killswitch in my will so that at least something of mine should get published even if it has to be postmortem.

But let’s get down to business.

https://www.census.gov/popclock/ claims there are 334,870,628 citizens currently living in the US.

According to the math, approximately 271,245,208 of them have or will have wanted to write a book at some point in their lives (ie: nearly everyone).

That’s believable. I know older folks who have expressed an interest in writing a memoir, and nearly every schoolmate I had at some point wanted to be an author when they grew up. It’s not uncommon at all.

Half of the population who wants to write believes that their book idea is good enough to sell to a publishing house and make a profit. (Most people don’t have the heart to tell their aunts their memoirs probably won’t sell, or that their uncle’s idea for a self-help book has been done a million times before.)

An Entirely Different Beast

But wanting to write a book versus actually sitting down to write are two different things. Sitting down that first time is a huge step many never take. But let me tell you, when I took that first step, it was emotional.

On further research, I found a poll that claims 15% of aspiring authors ever bother to start writing.

I’ve spoken about getting over the wall, but that’s a procrastination phenomenon, something I struggle with every time I want to sit down and begin another writing session.

But the very first time? That’s an entirely different beast.

Before that amazing moment when you decide to get started and you finally sit down and type–prior to the very first time you can officially call yourself a writer–you must face down and conquer something called resistance, and, while resistance and the Wall of Awful have a lot in common, getting over resistance is magnitudes tougher than climbing the wall.

Whittling Down the Population Further

So 15% brings us down to 40,686,781 (the people who at least sat down and got started).

And of those, 97% never finish writing their book. So approximately 3% (1,220,603) of the US citizens who sit down and get started have (or will have) finished writing at least one book in their lifetime. Keep in mind this stat probably includes children’s books, anthologies, collected poetry, technical guides, non-fiction, and everything in-between.

So that’s 1.2 million authors out there. A lot of competition…

…except that only 20% of those manage to publish a work. The rest either just share it with their friends and/or let it rot in a drawer until they die.

I knew a great, pleasant guy who wrote this thick fantasy yarn about a bard. But he kept it as an unstapled pile in a locked file cabinet. Hundreds, maybe a thousand, pages worth of writing, and yet he never let anyone read it.

I even once asked to read an excerpt and he politely declined. But I have no room to talk, since, to-date, I also haven’t published any manuscripts. But I can’t help but think it tragic that his bard’s adventures will probably never see the light of day.

20% means only 244,121 people will actually write books that reach the public eye from the current population.

Even fewer manage to publish a second book, and fewer still write stories that actually sell well, putting in that extra effort to polish the manuscript from hiring a professional editor to marketing, etc.

So any published writer who has more than one book out there and has sold well is absolutely in an elite class. Practically mythical. Way rarer than 1% of the US population. One percent is 3,348,706 people. So to be a writer that’s even reached “The End” once (1,220,603), we’re already rare birds at half a percent.

Does everyone have a book in them? Maybe. But precious few have what it takes to bring their vision to the world.

A Quick Update

I’m fresh off of completing that trading card game I mentioned quite a while back. Somehow, I ended up doing 80-90% of the work. I did most of the art, the layouts, many of the card designs/concepts, and most of the card redesign/fixing/troubleshooting. Not to mention the exhaustive amounts of playtesting. It’s basically done, now, so here’s hoping it sees some success.

Two years in the making, but I think it turned out great. Looks like a professional, salable product, and, as usual, completing something feels good. I’m not sure how much of the game I can share with you since it’s based on someone else’s IP, but contracts are being drawn up as I speak. We’ll have to see what kind of leeway I get.