Lies, damn lies, and statistics (or, what not to pay attention to as an aspiring writer)

Rant warning.

I’m going to say something, and if you’re an aspiring writer, you’re going to ignore me. I know this. I know this because you’ve heard it before, and you didn’t listen then. I know this because I have heard it a ton of times myself, and I spent most of those not listening. But I’m going to say it anyway, in the hopes that though you won’t listen, it might sink in a little bit, so that it will only take another hundred or so times of someone else saying it that it finally creates enough momentum in your eardrums so that it’s not ignored.

STOP FOCUSING ON STATISTICS.

Stop asking agents or editors what percentage of books they request from a query letter, or what percentage of requested manuscripts they make an offer for, or how many new authors they sign on in a given period of time. There is flood and drought. I only know of a few instances where someone has a “quota.” And their quota is never as high as the possibilities.

Stop asking what your chances are of getting published. This isn’t a lottery. They aren’t picking your book out of a hat. If you have a really good book, your chances are good. If you don’t have a good book, your chances are wretched. (stolen from Theresa Nielsen Hayden, but all the more true considering the source)

Stop looking for a secret handshake. There is no secret handshake. There are many doors. Don’t try to figure out the best way to write a book or sell a book. There is no best way. There’s only the best way for you. Stop studying. Start writing.

Stop thinking that if you chase a trend, you have “a better chance” to get published. You’ve got it backwards. It’s not about the trend. It’s about the book. If you have a great book, and it happens to be trendy, you have a better chance of it getting published than if you have a great book, but it’s not trendy. If you don’t have a great book, it almost definitely doesn’t matter whether it’s trendy or not.

Stop asking an author how many books they wrote before they sold, how many rejections they got before they got an offer, how many contests they won before someone requested something, how many years they worked at it before something happened. They are not you. Their writing is not your writing. The time that they first sold is not the time that you first sold. Even if it was a few months ago.

Stop asking how much a writer typically makes on this contract, that contract, the other contract. Stop asking which subgenre makes the most. Some writers make a lot. Some writers make a little. Most writers can’t figure out why. There is no standard. There is no typical. Some people’s first contracts are worth a hundred times some other people’s first contracts. For books of the same length. In the same genre. If people actually knew a foolproof way to make more money, this wouldn’t be the case. Your question is akin to asking how much a business typically makes. A child’s lemonade stand is not Microsoft.

Seriously. Just stop. You are trying to introduce controls on something that doesn’t have a control. Knowing how many queries receive rejections from a given agent is not going to tell you a single thing about the likelihood of your query receiving a rejection, unless the answer is “all of them, because I’m not taking on new clients.” And even then, not so much.

I understand the pain. Honestly, I do. I’m a very analytical person, and I like studying up on statistics as much as the next person. And I, too, find it frustrating that I can’t give you statistics. But I don’t think they mean anything. A few years ago, someone wrote an article in the RWA that was a statistcal study of Golden Heart finalists, and what happened to them after they finalled: how long it took for them to sell, whether they sold that manuscript, whether they got an agent, etc. Let me tell you, the answers were all over the map. And in the end, they didn’t mean anything. When you ask an agent what percentage of clients she takes, you not only have to ask her that, but yo have to ask based on the quality of your manuscript, the genre you are writing in, and how recently a particular editor called her to say she was looking for something just like you wrote.

Do you see how useless it is? Because this isn’t about numbers. It’s about words. And you just can’t quantify that.

So stop trying. Write. Write the best book you can, and you’ll see that the statistics don’t apply to you at all.