What does success mean to you?

1st October 2026

Any writer who says they wouldn’t want to be a Sunday Times bestseller (or receive a six-figure advance (or any advance for that matter in these straightened times) is lying to you.

Writers who want to be published also want to be read. To have the time to build a writing career you need to earn money to pay the bills, and the more successful you then the more you’re likely to earn.

A quick reminder about the money side of publishing: you may be offered a royalties-only contract, where you are paid when your book is published per copy sold; or you may receive an advance payment with which you will only receive royalties if you have ‘earned out’ the advance - i.e. your publisher has made back in profits what it has already paid you.

Here’s the thing though, there are only fifty spots each week in the Sunday Times bestseller charts and it covers both fiction and non-fiction. Considering around 3,800 to 4,000 books are published each week (!) that’s a heck of a lot of competition. Many paperbacks/hardbacks will never make it to the shelves of your local chain or indie bookshop who simply just haven’t got the room and have to curate what they sell.

In an August issue of Grazia magazine the TV presenter Maya Jama, well-known to anyone who watches Love Island, said in an interview that “consistency separates those who make it from those who don’t”. She has a point to a certain extent. If you don’t complete a novel, don’t write and edit to the best of your ability and put your heart and soul into finding and agent and a publisher then you won’t be in the game to have a best-selling book.

There’s a reason I called the industry a game. Nearly all the books that traditional publishers take on are excellent (give or take a few celebrity ones that are released to cash in on the celeb’s popularity). Publishing is a business and, whilst creativity matters, businesses need to make money to stay afloat. What books need to make it to the top is serendipity: luck, hitting the zeitgeist, or something else that gives them a heads up above all the rest. A large marketing budget can help but not even the publishers themselves can predict which of their books, if any, will be a runaway hit that become part of our culture. It’s all a bet, a game where no-one knows the ending.

 That’s why Jama’s ethos doesn’t quite hit the mark, because hard work and perseverance can’t mean Sunday Times success for every writer. It’s statistically impossible. Do you remember the 1990s TV series Quantum Leap (rebooted a few years ago) where Dr Sam Beckett was transported into a different time and place each episode? Every time he leaped he hoped it would be back home. It reminds me of writers hoping that their new book will be the one that takes off, giving them a leap into Sunday Times bestseller list, and if it doesn’t, well, that way melancholy lies.

For your health and wellbeing define what success means to you from the outset. Is it achieving your goal of having a book published, which is no mean feat? Is it knowing that that strangers have enjoyed reading your book? Is it praise from your peers and good reviews? Or is it trophies and big fat cheques?

If it’s the latter then a writer may find themselves very disappointed. That’s not to say they shouldn’t aim high and make the most of their opportunities, but to expect riches and approbation is to set yourself up for gut-punching failure.

Of course it would be great to receive a huge advance and hit the Sunday Times charts, but don’t write with that end, write because you love the process and there’s a story you’re itching to tell. Success is producing the best book you can. Getting a publishing deal is a major success in itself, showing that others believe in your writing. An email or comment from a reader who loved your book is priceless. Yes, payment for authors is an unfair system, something which I’ll be writing about here in another post, but for your own health and wellbeing, let go of the idea that if you’re not in the charts then you’ve failed.

You haven’t.

You’ve written a book, a copy of which will remain in the British Library forever. No-one can take that success away from you.