Melodie here. In my May post, I quoted good friend and colleague Lisa de Nikolits.
Today, I'm pleased to host Lisa on Sleuthsayers, who wrote this wonderful post - possibly one of the best I've ever read on here (and I rather like my own, so that is some praise!) I particularly like the comparison of writers to elite athletes! How true. Not to mention, ego-inspiring <smile>
How to Win the Toughest Game
Five Ways Not to Lose the Plot—Including Your Own
by Lisa de Nikolits
Writing. Surviving (and thriving) as an author has never been easy. And right now, it feels tougher—and often more bizarre—than ever.
Let’s go back to the iconic opening line of Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
I bet Mr. Dickens couldn’t have imagined AI, social media, the price of paper and shipping, or the increased number of players on the field, all jostling for real estate and their name in lights.
Add to that, cuts in government funding to the arts sectors, tariffs and a world that feels chaotic with war and disaster.
How can we cope? Even more importantly, how can we thrive?
My strategies are simple, and I sum them up in Five Ways Not to Lose the Plot—Including Your Own
1. Think Like a Sports Pro
2. Be Judicious with Social Media
3. Have Realistic Expectations
4. Revisit Your Slush Pile
5.
Celebrate the Wins
1. Think Like a Sports Pro.
This is one of my favourites. I found these fridge magnets a decade ago and I’ve used them as writing mantras ever since. They sum up the dedication, discipline, relentless hard work, single-minded passion and blinkered focus that’s necessary to be on the field, never mind succeeding on the field. Athletes get injured, grow old, adjust to change, fail on a global stage in front of millions of people, encounter rivals, face scorn and derision from analysts, failed former players and couch potatoes who all think they could do it better. They are vilified on social media or held fleetingly aloft as gods. None of this is dissimilar to writing. So, train your brain to think like an athlete because as an author, you are an athlete. Protect your mental health, improve your stamina, do the rehab (in our case, the rewrites), accept the losses and never lose sight of your end goal.
“Super successes” of indie romance, crime or cozy
bestsellers are realistically more likely to be extraordinary
outliers, and not typical outcomes, in the same way
that Fifty Shades of Grey is still cited to “prove” that self-publishing is the fastest route
to commercial success. What it actually represents is something far more rare:
a highly unusual trajectory that became visible precisely because it is not
typical. Both ideas—high output as a necessity, and viral success as a model—belong
to the same category of publishing mythology. They describe what has happened,
not what can be reliably reproduced.
I feel it’s important to talk about this because it ties into the sporting analogy. There are phenoms in every sport, but their meteoric rise is theirs, rather than a strategy for most athletes to follow.
So, ask yourself, who are you on the sports field? Where do your specific talents and strengths lie? We’d all like to be phenoms but sometimes we’re just the hopefuls on the bench, training our hearts out, and hoping that our game day will come. One thing’s for sure; the harder you train, the more consistently you show up, the more chance you’ll have of being not only being on the playing field but succeeding in delivering your personal best.
2. Be Judicious with Social Media.
Social media is a series of black holes within black holes. And the big question is always, does social media even sell books? The answer, unanimously, is “indirectly.” In other words, social media rarely sells books directly, but it can create visibility, credibility, and a sense of urgency that might lead to book sales.
Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Reddit, Threads, Bluesky, Substack, Goodreads, Wattpad are just a few, some of which are already on their way out.
I recently attended a webinar titled “Promoting Books Without Social Media” by author brand/marketing expert Andréa Guevara. 1,600 authors showed up, proving that I wasn’t alone in wanting to find alternative avenues of book promotion.
My takeaway was that instead of chasing daily visibility across an (unrealistic, unreliable) ever-expanding list of platforms, we need to shift to systems that endure—libraries, book clubs, podcasts, interviews, festivals, and word-of-mouth ecosystems where a single meaningful appearance can generate momentum over months rather than minutes. In this model, marketing isn’t about feeding algorithms; it’s about becoming findable in the right places, at the right time, for the right reader.
However, even in an approach like this which rejects social media dependency, there is a strong caveat: social media still plays a role as a discovery layer. Several irate authors indicated their discontent in the sidebar chat of the webinar: “I thought this was about NOT using social media” and I understood their point. I too was disappointed because the webinar demonstrated that we have to use social media to get off social media. Social media points readers towards alternative avenues such as events, and direct relationships but it’s the unavoidable first step.
Another caveat is that we live in a world where it’s increasingly tough (and expensive) to get invited to festivals as an author or even just attend them. The reasons for this are myriad and would take an entire post in and of itself to delve into. Book tables can be costly at festivals even when shared. The cost of memberships can mount up.
And one could spend 24/7 hours a day and countless dollars on mentorships, coaching, paying for giveaways, book tours, Facebook ads, Google ads or book software programs that promise the world—and the list goes on.
I’ve always likened social media to gardening. I dedicate an hour a day, no more, to posting, liking, commenting, swiping, supporting, and seeing what’s out there. Then I walk away from my garden, knowing there are countless weeds I didn’t get to pull but I did what I could, in my allotted time.
3. Have Realistic Expectations
As authors, we’re not entering a small pool of books. We’re
entering a flood.
The scale of publishing today is difficult to overstate. Globally, estimates suggest around 2.2 million new books are published every year, and when self-published titles are included, the number can climb to nearly 4 million new books annually.
Self-published books now make up a substantial share of total annual releases—often estimated at well over 40% of all new titles, and in some datasets, outnumbering traditionally published books by a wide margin.
But volume does not equal reach.
Across both traditional and self-publishing, most books sell very few copies. Industry analyses and sales data consistently suggest that:
· the majority of books sell fewer than a few hundred copies in their lifetime
· only a small percentage ever break into significant commercial success
·
self-published books tend to
have a wider spread of outcomes, from zero sales to occasional high performers,
but most cluster at the low end of the scale
Traditional publishing offers distribution, editing, and credibility—but not guaranteed sales. Self-publishing offers control and speed—but not guaranteed quality, discovery or sales.
For small press and debut authors, the reality is even more sobering: most titles receive modest attention unless they benefit from sustained marketing, series momentum, awards recognition, or unexpected and uncontrollable external amplification. In other words, “being published” is not the milestone it once was. Visibility, not publication, is the scarce (and most valuable) resource.
Going back to my sporting analogy, we’re on a very crowded playing field.
The expectation, then, cannot be “success as default.” Publishing is not a finish line; it is a game in motion, played across shifting ground where visibility has to be earned and re-earned.
In the older model of traditional publishing, the contract itself often carried an unspoken identity shift: I am now a success. To be published was to be legitimized. Writing and recognition arrived together, and the role felt, if not secure, at least clearly defined and established.
That equation no longer holds in the same way.
Now, publication is little more than a ticket to entry on the playing field and victories are scarce. The game continues long after the book is released, and the conditions of play have changed: there are more players, more noise, more competition for attention, fewer guarantees of being seen at all. And yet this is not a reason for disillusionment—it’s a reason for clarity.
Because once you understand the nature of the game, you stop mistaking it for something it is not. You stop expecting permanence from limited exposure. You stop equating publication with victory. And you start building strategies that match reality rather than myth.
The question is no longer whether a book is good enough to be published—because these days, almost any book can be published—but whether, once it is in play, it can be found. And from that more grounded place, success becomes not a default assumption, but something you can influence, recognize, and hopefully sustain.
4. Revisit Your Slush Pile
I recently went back to my slush pile, and it was a useful reminder about something important: writing is a long game, and I’m not the same player I was fifteen or twenty years ago.
Back to Think Like a Sports Pro: Athletes get injured, grow old, adjust to change, fail on a global stage in front of millions of people, encounter rivals, face scorn and the derision from analysts, failed former players and couch potatoes who all think they could do it better.
Visiting my slush pile felt like stepping onto an old playing field and immediately being aware of how differently I move now.
I feel more nimble, confident and dexterous. I used to overplay (overwrite) everything, overthink every pass (sentence), and try to hold the entire match (short story/novel) together with terrified caution.
Now I see the patterns more clearly. I trust myself more which means I trust the play more. And a huge difference is that I don’t panic when the ask shifts.
It was interesting to dissect the evolution of my writing—to see what my strengths were at the time, and to notice how clearly my weaknesses are visible to me now. I am, without question, a better writer in terms of dialogue, structure, pacing, and shaping a narrative from beginning to end. I no longer stack literary ideas like a Jenga tower and hope that no one breathes too hard near the table. Back then, I was afraid that if I removed one piece, the whole structure would collapse. I played as if stability mattered more than quality and that challenging the structure would result in complete loss. I don’t have that fear anymore.
And what surprised me was how much value was still there in the earlier work. Concepts, images and fragments of insight—sometimes there’s no more than a line or a few words in a sentence, but those fragments aren’t games I lost, they were unfinished plays that, with my years of training and focus, still have potential. I learned that three or four concepts/sentences/ideas could be welded together and forged with new beginnings and new endings. I could, by experience, diligent studies, faith in my imagination, age and wisdom, create a different formation with a different outcome and end up with a piece of work I’m really proud of.
What I understand now—and I didn’t understand then—is that the slush pile isn’t evidence of failure. It’s my own personal archive.
But what I also realized is this. I used to think that a story was finished when really, it was 8% done. Only 8%. That’s not a lot. Now I know I have to work harder—a lot harder. It takes more time than I thought it would. And not because I’m older and slower but because I recognize all the requisite nuances, and I know how long those nuances can take. I can spend more than an hour on a paragraph and sometimes a paragraph can take an entire day.
Younger me was in such a hurry to get published. Being published was everything. And don’t get me wrong. Nothing beats the thrill of having your story or novel in print or online. But I realize now that there’s much more to it. Once my first draft is complete, I have to go the other 92%. And that’s the hard work. Those are the reps. That’s what sculpts. The rewriting, self-edits, the line edits, the stepping away, the coming back, the asking for input and then trusting myself to deliver.
Now I am not afraid of collapse because it’s part of the game and better players don’t run away from facing their mistakes in the hopes that no one else will see them either and that somehow, the world will embrace the half-finished play as magnificent.
Better players study their plays and pick them apart.
Instead of relying on flashy sleights of hand to fake a play, better players
get into the mechanics.
5. Celebrate the Wins
Let’s go back to where we started: Writing. Surviving (and thriving) as an
author has never been easy. And right now, it feels tougher—and often more
bizarre—than ever.
And let’s revisit the iconic opening line of Charles Dickens’ 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities one more time: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
And, given Be Judicious with Social Media as well as Have Realistic Expectations, one might feel discouraged at this point.
Which is when I go back to Think Like a Sports Pro. Have you ever watched the winning locker room after the championship is won? The champagne showers are so crazy the players have to wear goggles.
And it’s never been more important to celebrate our wins. The grass is always greener on the other side and there’s always someone (or a crowd!) doing better than you and winning that accolade you hoped would be yours.
Remember the fridge magnets. I’d love to know which one appeals to you the most. I think I’d go with Billie Jean King. “Champions keep playing until they get it right.”
Thank you for reading this post. If you enjoyed it, please visit my website, lisawriter.com, and order a copy of one of my books, sold wherever books are sold. Or ask your local library for a copy. And if you’d like to go one step further, leave a rating or review. It all counts and it’s all appreciated.
Now available at Amazon, and all the usual suspects! (I've ordered my copy - Melodie)
