Novels Only Popular After Years or Decades of Publication

If you’ve been writing novels for sometime already or are just starting out, or are just about to start, or just thinking about it, there is a high possibility that you’re doubtful if you can make a career out of novel writing.

It is widely known that choosing novel writing as a career is not particularly popular. This is because there is already a long held notion spanning centuries already that writing novels as a career is a leap towards poverty and obscurity.

Of course, this has long been disproven by many authors like JK Rowling, Stephen King, James Patterson, George RR Martin and many other novel authors who’ve become multimillionaires and even billionaires by writing novels.

However, for the overwhelming majority of novel authors, even making minimum wage is a struggle and even almost an impossibility. This is because just like many other industry, there are only a handful of winners and the rest don’t make any money at all from their product.

This article is not intended to dissuade you from being a novel author, rather it would show you a somewhat anomaly in the industry, if you could call it that: novels that only sold or became popular years or even decades after they were published, some even after the death of the author only.

The Details:

1. Chances of Being Sold

It’s a sad reality that most novels published today, even self-published ones would never be sold and/or read. This is because the number of novels being produced today has exploded in numbers, leading many industry experts to believe that there is now a glut in the number of novels being produced.

This is the reason why the overwhelming number of novel authors today don’t write novels full-time. They have day jobs which supports them financially and they write novels on the side, if they still have free time to do it.

So don’t expect that just because you’ve spent years writing your novel it would sell and make you a lot of money. Novel writing is very subjective. The stories you like as an author might not be liked by your readers.

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2. Some Examples

Here are a few examples of now popular novels which initially didn’t sell for years and even decades after they were published. There are even instances where the author has already died before their novel/s became popular and sold well:

1. Stoner by John Edward Williams: Published originally in 1965, it only became popular around the 2000s.

2. The books of Kafka only became popular after he died.

3. The books of Lovecraft which only became popular years after his death.

4. The Great Gatsby: was a flop when it was published in the 1920s but became popular after it was given to World War II soldiers to read, which established its popularity.

5. Herman Melville had already died before his novel, Moby Dick, became popular.

6. Shaara’s novel, The Killer Angels did not become a commercial success until about 20 years after its publication. It won the Pulitzer prize but mostly remained obscure. It only became popular after the release of the movie Gettysburg.

Shaara also didn’t get to enjoy the eventual success of his novel because he died in the 1980s, way before his novel eventually became popular.

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3. It’s Honestly Sad

As you can see from the previous examples, a lot of the authors whose novels eventually became popular were already dead before they can enjoy the financial rewards and fame rightly theirs from writing their novels.

Unless your main agenda in writing your novel is for its fame and commercial success to outlast you, then it is really a sad reality that for many authors whose novels become eventually popular, their efforts from writing their novels were never rewarded in their lifetime.

So better take a deep thought before even writing the first word of your novel or it’s title. This is because there are other endeavour in life which promises faster fame and financial rewards than writing novels.

If fame and financial reward is your aim, then rethink your goal of being a novel author, because the two are rarely achieved by an astounding majority of novel authors. Many in reality are starving for their craft.

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4. Novel Writing Attitude

Are these disheartening examples a sign for you to just give up your dreams of becoming a novel writer? It is, if you’re the kind of person who is not actually writing novels because you love it, but more for fame and fortune.

This is because it is very evident that making money and finding fame by writing novels is very hard. A person who is not in love with his craft, whatever it is, like writing novels, would have given up long before they have achieved any semblance of fame and fortune.

I think that the best attitude to have in terms of novel writing is to treat it like a hobby, where you are doing it for the passion and not for the money and fame. At least, even if you fail at it, meaning you don’t sell your novels, you would have at least have the satisfaction of being able to indulge in your hobby.

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5. Be Consistent

But just because you’re treating novel writing as a hobby, it doesn’t mean that you should have a very relaxed attitude towards it that you forget the potential readers of your novel. For example, serious novel readers usually expect their favorite authors to produce a novel on a consistent basis.

Consistency can mean putting out a new novel every year, after a regular interval of months, or even on a monthly or semi-monthly basis. Whatever your schedule is, it must be consistent to what your readers expect from you and not from what you expect from yourself.

For example, the readers of horror novel master, Stephen King, are voracious readers of his book. That is why although King can afford to write only one novel a year and still remain a multimillionaire, he still regularly churns out several novels a year.

This is because this is the market demand for his books. Failing to fulfill the market demand for his mostly horror books means that his readers might read the novels of other authors instead, causing him lost sales and a possible plunge into obscurity.

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6. An Investment

Another attitude you might take when it comes to writing novels is to treat them as investments with little to no cost in investing aka creating, but with a probability of significantly increasing your returns from them after a few years.

This is unlike other investments like making videogame apps where you need to learn skills in videogame programming or must have the money to hire videogame programmers. You also need skills or hire professionals who would do illustrations or audio and video work for you.

A closer endeavour would be digital drawing where you sell the digital images you sell. This one might not require a lot of money, but it requires that you have good skills in creating digital images. Truly if you have no money but have a lot of time to invest, the simple art of novel writing is ideal.

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Final Words

Novel writing as a career is very hard. Although some succeed to eventually become multimillionaires and even billionaires, the astounding majority of novel authors generate very little and even no money at all from writing novels.

The sad part is, even if an author’s novels eventually become popular and sell well, it would have taken several years and even decades for this to happen. There are even many cases where the author has actually died before their novels become popular.

That’s why you need to think first before you even write the first word of your novel or its title. Because if you don’t have the proper outlook or attitude towards novel writing, you are more than likely to fail at it as a career.

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