This is a great blog post but there is one teeny sentence which is, completely inadvertently, a bit misleading and will make you make worried noises:

"Over 80% of published authors quit within 3 books."

(thread) https://twitter.com/JaneFriedman/status/1258841596847677445
80% of published authors includes:

* people writing cookbooks
* people writing memoirs
* people writing the literary fiction book or a poetry collection that took them 25 years to finish
* people who are experts in their field and were hired to write a non-fic book
* celebrities
In other words, LOTS of genres where people publishing only one or two books is COMPLETELY NORMAL AND NOT A SIGN OF FAILURE. You just write your books and then you're done! nbd!
Now, of course there is going to be attrition in every genre for a HUGE variety of reasons -- people deciding it's not fun anymore, or that they told the story they wanted to tell, or no one's buying their new MS, or health issues got in the way, or they died--
But for all my SFF peeps who are hyperventilating a little bit, I think it's worth remembering that we kind of have a really *different* approach to the work than 80% Of Published Authors do.
Someone publishing a memoir almost certainly only has one book in 'em. Like, that's the nature of the memoir, right??? And nobody can churn out a cookbook per year, or an entire poetry collection. An expert wants to get back to their dayjob. Celebrities only hire one ghostwriter.
Statistics can be a bit misleading. 80% of published authors don't make it past book 3, and the average life expectancy in the 1400s was 25, right? Except once you filter out how many people died in infancy... See what I'm saying?
I would be really fascinated to see the 80% Of Published Authors statistic broken down by genre -- what's the big attrition point for romance authors, who write TERRIFYINGLY fast? SFFH? True crime? Mystery? Cookbooks?
But at the end of the day, no matter what the numbers say, the moral of that blog post holds ABSOLUTELY correct: All you have to do to survive in this industry is be a stubborn motherfucker who refuses to die.
Maybe your publisher doesn't want to buy another book from you. That's ok. Find another publisher. Maybe NONE of them want that book. That's ok. Write another. Evolve, adapt, and learn. You have a career in this industry until the day you decide you're done with it.
And if you decide you're not done with it yet? Dig your teeth into its flank and lock your jaws, dig in your heels into the dirt. Write another book. Refuse to die.

That's it. That's the big secret.
And for those of you who decide that you're done after one book, or two, or three? You're valid! I hope you had a fun time and made a bit of pocket money. You don't *HAVE* to commit to a Lifelong Career, you're not failing if that's not a thing you're aiming for.
And if you're in group 1, it's easy to assume that EVERYONE is in group 1 and panic.

Don't panic. If this career is the love of your life, nobody can ever, ever take that away from you. Just keep writing. That's it. That's it. That's it.
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