Writing Is One Big Gamble

As I said yesterday, we all wish we could predict the future in publishing, but we can't. As agents, we cannot predict that your story can sell. Heck, we can't even predict if we can get a publisher to like it. editors cannot predict if sales will be there for your book after they invest in your project with that advance. We simply hope for the best.

As authors, you can't predict your story will do well. You have been writing away for months on that project and even then, it is a gamble. Is the story even good? Is this something that will even be marketable? We don't know.


I have an author right now who is in just that situation. We sent a story out to an editor who likes her voice but the story just isn't quite right. The story was rejected, but the editor did provide some great revision notes and said that she would be happy to look at the revised project. So the author is going to "roll the dice" and gamble with this. She is taking the time to go through the revisions and see what happens. This may be time well spent, or time she will simply not get back again.


We can put a lot of time and energy into our writing and do all of the "right things" to get that project in great shape, but we can never be certain.


So, if things don't work out the way you planned, don't panic. Learn from the experience and keep moving forward.