By The Way...

Tuesday, December 19, 2006
4:19:00 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment.
For all of you working on your first novels, here's an interesting bit to consider: author Tobias Buckell recently polled 150 authors (including me) to find out how many of them sold the very first novel they ever wrote -- that is, who sold that first novel first, rather than selling another novel they wrote, making that later-written novel their first published novel. Turns out that most writers don't sell their first novel first: nearly two out of three sell later novels first, and may not ever end up selling that first-written novel. The details, and some author commentary, are here.

As for me, I sold the second novel I wrote, and then sold and wrote another novel after that, and then my first novel got published. And that second novel I wrote was actually my fourth novel published, because I sold another novel that was slotted in for publication before it was published. So, in order of publication-to-written, my novels were 2,1,4 and 3. My 5th novel will actually be the 5th written and published -- but will actually be my 7th sold, because I have two other novels I've sold but haven't yet written. Confused? Welcome to the world of publishing, my friends.


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This entry has 6 comments: (Add your own)

• #6 Comment from lclc2u 
  12/20/06 4:13 PM | Permalink

  First Novel; would that take into consideration that the budding author wrote for 10 years prior to their *first novel* being published? My question is how long  does it take an author to work up to that first published novel? Ballpark??
• #5 Comment from lurkynat 
  12/20/06 2:11 AM | Permalink

  oh
  http://journals.aol.com/Lurkynat/Interface/
  "home of the writer John Scalzi's fan club"
  nudges Bea, Mavarin, Monponsett, Dan: all charter members
• #4 Comment from lurkynat 
  12/20/06 2:06 AM | Permalink

  Dear John,
  How fascinating! I love your books! I have " Old Man's War", " Agent to the Stars" and "The Ghost Brigades". I never realized that later books get sold before earlier ones! You are very talented and wonderfully zany and original.
  Sincerely,
  natalie
• #3 Comment from johnmscalziEntry Author 
  12/19/06 10:03 PM | Permalink

  The average first novel sells for about $6,500, so if you can get that or above, you're not doing too badly.
• #2 Comment from monponsett 
  12/19/06 9:55 PM | Permalink

  If one of us had a novel to sell, how much $$ should we settle for? I'm assuming that the one of us mentioned is unknown.

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