This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
You can listen to Anna’s podcasted novel over on her website www.annabellwrites.com and follow her on twitter @annabell_writes.
The Numbers Game
Not that I obsess about how difficult it is to get an agent or to get published, but recently I’ve been trying to play the numbers game. Just how many chick lit authors and wannabe chicklit authors are there out there?
My last column was me whingeing about not getting on to the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme. I cheered up loads when I current members commented and said I could still go to the events. But then I started thinking, there are 250 unpublished aspiring romantic novelists, that got on the scheme in the first week. Which means those 250 people will be sending out their work to agents and publishers.
Then there all those romantic novelists who, like me, didn’t get on the scheme. Which makes me wonder just how many of us there are out there.
And then you’ve got to add into the mix that most agents don’t seem to specialise in romantic fiction, but fiction in general. I’m guessing that there are equally as many aspiring authors of thrillers, crime and science fiction which means there must be hundreds of hundreds of wannabe authors all competing for the few coveted places on agents books.
And if all that wasn’t bad enough to deal with, you add into the mix the already huge numbers of successful chick lit authors already out there producing more and more books each year.
Now I’m not so good with the numbers, but I’m sure if I was I’d be able to work out the miniscule odds of getting published, or finding an agent. But as much as I might obsess with just how many wannabe chicklit authors there out there, I won’t give up.
I am such a stupidly optimistic person that I believe that I am that probably 0.2% (or whatever statistic it is) of those aspiring authors who actually gets published. After all, I’m sure if all published authors were put off by playing the numbers game then there wouldn’t be any books. And if they can do it, so can I.