Speaking in Community

By What Measure Success for Self-Publishers?

by Stella Atrium
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The first book of my fantasy series titled SUFFERSTONE received a couple 5-star reader reviews on GoodReads (reported on Amazon).  Since I blog about female characters in science fiction, I was gratified that one reader (thanks, Frank Hicks) identified with the lead male character Brian Miller.

So, I had brief and troubling feelings of success. I immediately wondered what was next, so vain.

Joseph Heller said in an interview with Playboy (many years back) that he delivered Catch-22 to the publishers in 1961 and received a $2,000 advance (today’s equivalent is $20,000), then went back to adjunct teaching with few expectations.

Catch-22 went viral by word-of-mouth and was made into a movie.  Over the decades, Heller was a cult personality and hippies wore khaki jackets with Yossarian emblazoned on the breast pocket. The term catch-22 became a concept in the American mythos for frustration with a system stacked against the regular guy.

I would call that success.

So… there’s a lag time for the creative stage, the publishing stage, the famous stage, and the American classic stage. The writer must measure what stage she’s currently experiencing and how long is the wait.

Andy Warhol once told Jean-Michel Basquiat that the audience for his street art wasn’t born yet.

Basquiat famously said, “I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.” (Brainy Quotes) Of course, once he received some money for his work, he killed himself with drugs.  The starving artist stance has some benefits.

But, back to the writer. The creative stage counts.  Many writers once they start with promotions have the urge to push aside today’s work and return to the solitary gestures of creation.  Delicious.

I suppose the best approach is to tolerate each spike within each stage with patience, and manage expectations.

Art critic for Time magazine Robert Hughes in 2002 wrote a classic review titled "Goya’s Women" about an exhibition of paintings by Goya. As you know, as a young man, Francisco Goya was a portrait painter for the Spanish court in the 1780s. Later he was an impressionist who captured the horrors of war in his country.  Goya lived into his eighties and continued to paint and draw until his death in1828.

Robert Hughes pushes aside Goya’s long history with the leaders of Europe and focuses on the many images of women that Goya painted over the decades, and the artistic quality in those images.  The ART remains after the shouting subsides.

That’s success.

See Robert Hughes famous TIME article here.