Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Location: Books & Such Central Valley Office, CA
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I’ll bet my title caused you to scratch your head. How can writing the proverbial breakout novel be the kiss of death? Let me explain. . .
Whenever I hear a writer talk about writing his breakout book or, even worse, when he turns in his manuscript and announces that it is his breakout novel, I cringe. Bravado is a good thing, but an announcement like that borders on tempting fate–if we believed in such a thing.
By way of definition, a breakout book is the book that takes the author to a whole new level. Malcolm Gladwell might define it as the tipping point. (Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point is a must-read, by the way.) It’s the line between the “before” and the “after” of a writer’s success. Many writers never have a breakout book. Some because they seem permanently stuck at a certain level of sales. They might even be classified a solid-seller, and there’s nothing wrong with being a solid seller for a whole career. Others never have a particular breakout point because their upward sales trajectory and their career grow at an even pace. A writer couldn’t ask for more.
A few writers do achieve that breakout book, and it’s a wonderful thing to see. Lately a number of debut authors have hit the scene and broken out of the pack immediately. I think of J. K. Rowling with Harry Potter, Kathryn Stockett with The Help, and Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows with Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Other writers have written for years before finally hitting the breakout, like Books & Such’s own Karen O’Connor, who broke out with Gettin’ Old Ain’t for Wimps after decades of being a writer with “solid” sales.
So why do I have a problem when someone announces he or she has just written a breakout novel? It’s because a breakout book is an event. It can’t be orchestrated. It’s more akin to a miracle than to a marketing plan. Do you suppose that when Bruce Wilkinson turned one of his sermons into a tiny gift-sized book called The Prayer of Jabez, he announced that he’d penned his breakout book? Not likely. What happened with that book took everyone by surprise.
I don’t think we can plan our breakout, nor can we predict it. I suspect that when we announce this is the one–the breakout book–it probably isn’t. Call me superstitious, but that pronouncement might even be the kiss of death to the breakout book.
What we can do is write the best book we can possibly write, each and every time. Just as if it were our breakout book. That’s the part of the process we can control. Then we need to do everything we can do to get it in the hands of readers, but after that, it’s out of our control. The truth is, a breakout book just happens. And like a miracle, we watch in awe and fall to our knees in gratitude.
Am I right? Wrong? Does anyone have a system for making the wished-for breakout happen? What kind of breakouts have you observed?
Wow. If I had a system for making the wished-for breakout happen, I’d be bottling and selling that.
And then I’d write a memoir. 🙂
I don’t know about you, but I thought it was amazing to watch Rick Warren’s rise to success after “The Purpose Driven Life.”
You’re right, Wendy, that the ultimate reach of the book is largely out of our control. We writers have to concentrate on the page in front of us, day after week after year, taking everything we’ve learned from the past and pressing forward with our blood pumping. One way to guarantee a novel WON’T break out is to write without that pulse beat. If you’re not buzzed by what you’re writing, your readers won’t be either.
I think you’re absolutely right, Wendy. I’ve always thought writing is a little (actually a lot) like dating. You can’t plan when you’re going to meet “the one.” You just get to know different people and you cultivate the promising “stories” and then one day, you realize you’ve got “the one”!
Presuming you’ve written a breakout novel seems just that – a presumption. But with that in mind, if it ever happens to me, I’ll take it!
oh, please, God . . . please . . . .
please . . . .
Good advice! I agree with you and with James Scott Bell’s comment about writing with the pulse beat.
I just finished reading Donald Maass’s new book, The Fire in Fiction. It’ll take several more readings to absorb it all (if that’s even possible), but he also talks about writing with passion.
So we write with fire and leave the results with God.
Thanks for helping us to avoid that kiss of death. I’m loving your posts.
What a great way to put it in perspective for aspiring authors. As much as anyone would LOVE to have the next BIG thing, you just never know! Much like some books that have been out for a year or more before being “discovered” by the general public then becoming a runaway hit, you just never know what people want.
Great post. And James Scott Bell hit it right on the head too by saying, “If you’re not buzzed by what you’re writing, your readers won’t be either.”
So true.
I was editing one of my projects the other day and I was like, “Wow, this is a lame scene.” So yeah, I tried to fix that lame scene the best way I could.
It’s my opinion that once you do write the best book you can, it’s in God’s hands after that as to what will happen to it, if anything.
I’ve gotten to know some authors who were surprised when they broke out. The breakout book was more fun than work, so they feel like they don’t deserve praise. They feel like frauds. They would never have predicted that this would be their breakout book.
Their breakout books are different genres, different styles, different lengths. The common factors seems to be that the authors wrote for themselves first and didn’t worry too much about selling. They gave themselves permission to experiment and reach high. This is quite the opposite mentality from trying to break out, chasing trends, and playing it safe.
So I can see where thinking you had a breakout on your hands might be the kiss of death. Chances are that if we try too hard to break out, our books will feel labored and derivative.
heh heh What a business this is.
I like the way you classified writers into different groups: solid sellers and those who are steadily climbing upward. I think that’s where the majority of writers fit. As you said, very few have break out novels and the formula for creating one is nebulous, even if we use Donald Maass’s book and workbook! Would you say there is another category of writers who have published but are on the escalator down and eventually out of a writing career? It seems if book sales don’t stay steady or climb, then that could be the kiss of death too.
I think you’re probably right.
Makes me feel better too. 🙂
Jody,
You are right, sadly enough. If an author doesn’t work his way into the “solid” sales category or better yet, on the upward trajectory, there’s going to come a time when he can’t get that next contract. That’s why we work so hard to find our readership, keep those readers and add more.
And it’s not necessarily about the quality of the writing. It’s about connecting with readers. I hear people criticize writers like, say, Barbara Cartland (remember her?) and Danielle Steel. But guess what? They connected with readers like few others have done.
The truth none of us like to admit is that there are a limited number of slots for writers. If a publishing house wants to sign an exciting new writer and they’re not expanding the number of books published, someone has to go.
Jody,
You are right, sadly enough. If an author doesn’t work his way into the “solid” sales category or better yet, on the upward trajectory, there’s going to come a time when he can’t get that next contract. That’s why we work so hard to find our readership, keep those readers and add more.
And it’s not necessarily about the quality of the writing. It’s about connecting with readers. I hear people criticize writers like, say, Barbara Cartland (remember her?) and Danielle Steel. But guess what? They connected with readers like few others have done.
The truth none of us like to admit is that there are a limited number of slots for writers. If a publishing house wants to sign an exciting new writer and they’re not expanding the number of books published, someone has to go.
BTW I love your blog!
I love this series, so thanks. I’m trying to figure out why the presumption that I’ve written my breakout book is the kiss of death. I’m with you–I can’t go with superstition. Providence, yes, but not superstition. Besides, believing in superstition is bad luck…
Could it be that God brings down the proud?
Or maybe that the same blind spots that makes authors pre-announce their breakout books also makes them write books with holes…
Or maybe it’s just a numbers thing, one-in-a-million, so the presumption just seems like the kiss of death.
All I know is that my breakout book is sitting on the store shelves right now, just waiting for the truly smart people of the world to discover it.
Hi Wendy,
Thanks for swinging by my blog! I’m honored! One of my novels is centered around John Bunyan, so I themed my blog with Pilgrim’s Progress in mind! And I know that is a topic near and dear to you since you wrote The Tinker’s Daughter. (I have your Daughters of the Faith series and love it!)