[Link] After a Splashy Book Deal, I Got Dropped By My Publisher, But I Kept On Writing

Why stubbornness is the most fundamental skill an author can have

by Rob Hart

This is the thing I’m probably not supposed to write. But I tried to write it six different ways without telling the truth, and I couldn’t do it, so here goes:

My career has not been the success people think it is.

My first book came out from a small press in 2015. The advance was just enough for a fancy steak dinner after taxes. I wrote four more books in that series, and while I was getting some solid acclaim in the crime fiction community, I wasn’t anywhere close to quitting my day job.

And that was fine. I was doing the thing I loved.

Then I wrote a book called The Warehouse, which was pre-empted by a Big Five publisher for a ridiculous amount of money. I thought the book was unpublishable because it was essentially a fuck-you to Amazon. Then I thought it would never appeal to foreign markets, but we sold it in twenty languages. It generated enough heat to be optioned for film by an A-list director.

All told I made enough money off that book to become a full-time writer.

And I thought: This is it, I made it through the door; the rest of my career is going to be sunshine and smooth sailing.

It was not.

Read the full article: https://opensecretsmag.substack.com/p/rob-hart-writing-career-publishing-struggles