How Authors Can Build a Healthier, More Productive Career Mindset

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Authors, here is but a tiny sampling of complaints and concerns I hear more and more often from writers about the publishing industry:

• The current publishing market is crowded and hypercompetitive; yet publisher advances and royalties are historically low.
• Only the big-name bestsellers get a marketing push and sell significant numbers of books.
• Publishers want shiny new debut authors and no longer invest in helping build an author’s career.
• You can’t break out without going viral on BookTok, but all influencers pay attention to is romance or romantasy—and social media doesn’t sell books anyway.
• It’s all algorithms.
• It’s all advertising.
• AI is taking over the industry and threatening to render writers obsolete.

Add in the relentlessly grim headlines and a national outbreak of explosive diarrhea and, to steal a wonderfully bad pun from one of my favorite newsletters, it can feel like a bit of a shit show out there. Authors face burning out or giving up amid what can seem like an impossible publishing landscape to navigate—or even enter.

But changing your perspective on the publishing industry can help you overcome negativity about publishing, stay motivated as a writer, and develop a happier, more satisfying writing career.

Building a Healthier Relationship with Publishing

I often joke that the secret to a happy and sustainable marriage is to keep your expectations low. But what I really mean is keeping them realistic: taking a clear-eyed view of the realities of coexisting in an ongoing relationship between complicated and infinitely complex beings who are constantly evolving amid an ever-changing environment and circumstances.

If you’re seeking a happy and sustainable career as an author then you are similarly choosing this business, for better and for worse, for as long as you both shall live (or as long as you shall want to pursue it). And just like any other committed relationship, if you were expecting it to always be easy or smooth sailing you’re going into it with ridiculously unrealistic expectations.

As in any other long-term relationship, in your publishing career there will be moments of joy and reward and moments of challenge and difficulty. It’s how you approach and navigate the latter, not the former, that dictates the course of your career and your satisfaction within it.

Negative framing is an easy trap to fall into, fueled by our anxieties and fears at life’s uncertainties…which are plentiful. The root problem of that, though is that it can narrow our perspective on the world and become a self-fulfilling prophecy—like couples who perpetually find fault or focus on the negatives in their relationship and then wonder why they feel disappointed or unhappy within it.

Telling ourselves it’s futile or impossible to make a mark in our industry is nearly guaranteed to ensure you won’t—or worse, keep you from trying. As we have chosen this business, might it not be more productive and healthier to approach it with the same sense of respect and appreciation and constructive problem solving that makes for any other satisfying partnership?

That means reframing some of your attitudes and your actions:

Assume goodwill

This idea comes from one of the best pieces of marriage advice I’ve ever heard: to engage with your partner in the spirit of mutual goodwill.

If you’re pursuing a professional career as a writer, then the publishing industry is your partner, not your opponent. Despite the rejection, indifference, and unfairness that can feel rampant in this business, no one is out to get you. In fact for the most part every agent, every publisher, every reader is rooting for you, fervently wanting you and your work to be good.

“Good” is a shifting target from person to person, of course, so not every person may find you their cup of tea. That’s not right or wrong, just the reality of being human. Understanding that goes a long way toward easing the impact of some of the harsher elements of our industry—and can remind us that it’s based on complex, varied, subjective human beings just like us.

Approach with curiosity

If you come into a relationship prejudging a person, making assumptions about them, or painting them in black-and-white brushstrokes, you’re pretty much guaranteed to close yourself off to new information and opportunity for growth.

I’ll admit to feeling occasionally overwhelmed by how lightning-fast the publishing industry seems to be evolving, and I don’t always love having to relearn new systems and technology and business processes or adapt to the constant changes.

But it helps if I can take the attitude that these changes are interesting. That they may open up fascinating new avenues of exploration and endeavor that might push me and my business and my creative work to grow in directions I may not have otherwise. It helps to remind myself that I actually like learning new skills and stretching myself—and that that’s how you develop new ones and stay current, fresh, and engaged.

See the positives

Just like any other situation or relationship, there are pluses and minuses. Which one you choose to dwell on often dictates your mindset, attitude, and results.

You chose this industry, and presumably for reasons—of which there are legion. In what other career is a big part of your ongoing training to read books, which I’m guessing is probably, if you’re anything like me, one of your favorite things to do? In what other career do you work in a market that may remunerate you for things you make up in your imagination, a grown-up game of make-believe with a potential payday?

In what other career do you get to surround yourself with people who love what you love as passionately as you do? To choose your own hours, choose what you get to work on, even choose the path you take in pursuing your career and sharing your work? What other career will let you practice it for as long as you choose to, never worrying about becoming obsolete or pushed to the side for a younger model or forced into retirement?

If despite all those wonderful aspects of our business you’re still miserable within it, why are you doing this? No one’s forcing you. No one promised you an easy ride all the way to the top. Choose another path.

And if you can’t, if the idea of pursuing anything else is unthinkable to you, then figure out how to construct an existence within an admittedly challenging field that allows you to find satisfaction within it independently of whether it behaves exactly as you want it to. (JUST LIKE A SPOUSE…just kidding, honey.)

Roll with the punches

Not literal punches, obviously—but just as in relationships, change happens in our careers whether we want it to or not. I recently learned about a coming shift in one of my favorite parts of my own business that’s going to cut off a significant source of satisfaction, pleasure, and income.

I don’t like it. It saddens me, and it forces me to consider how to adapt when I was entirely happy with the way things were. But that isn’t life. I can wail and rend my garments; I can stubbornly resist and fail to evolve my business model, but that’s not going to help me adapt or achieve what I want. It’s unproductive to just point out or dwell on problems; thriving means looking for solutions.

There are many things in this business (and in our partners!) that we cannot control, but it is entirely within our own control to take responsibility for our own actions and attitudes. I spent a day getting all up in my feelings about the coming change in my business…and then I started to strategize: reexamining my priorities and exploring possibilities, and weighing the two against each other to determine what I can do to find new ways to pursue new goals that meet my needs and wants.

Read more: “Create the Career You Want”

Consider personality and fit

On the face of things, my husband and I are very different. He’s a die-hard introvert; I’m far more outgoing. He’s reserved and cautious and emotionally guarded; I take a more “jump in and learn to swim” approach to many things and am what one therapist tactfully termed “very emotionally expressive.”

We share relatively few interests and hobbies: He likes rap, hip-hop, and scream metal; loves all things technological and mathematical; and thinks the only necessary food groups are meat and dessert. I…very much do not.

But we share many of the same worldviews and values. We are both practical, realistic, and levelheaded. We can be extraordinarily silly, share a similar and ready sense of humor, and are quick to “play” in our interactions. We’re both inordinately attached to dogs (particularly our own), love travel and new experiences, and share similar ideas of what we want for our lives and our future. Our personalities suit each other—we’re a fit in all the most important ways.

You may love writing, but if you hate the business of writing, then you have essentially embarked on a partnership where you’re guaranteed to be miserable. The work of actual writing is only a portion of creating a successful writing career, and the daily realities of it will quickly take a toll on you if it’s not a good fit for your personality.

That doesn’t mean don’t write. It doesn’t even mean don’t publish your work. But it does mean perhaps reconsidering your definition of what you want out of your career. If you’re looking to be a renowned bestseller, or even just to make a living from your writing, you might have to devote much more of your energies to the business side of things than you are comfortable or happy doing, and that may swiftly undermine the enjoyment you get from the writing itself.

In that case, it can be much more productive and logical and satisfying to simply pursue the parts that you love. Write your stories, make them as good as you can, and then share them in whatever way is palatable to you, recognizing that this approach may keep your writing at a different level than your best-case-scenario goals and dreams for it, but long-term is likely to result in far more sustainable satisfaction.

Publishing is not the enemy

I’ll be straight with you: Publishing is an incredibly challenging industry. I’m not suggesting a Pollyanna approach or an unrealistic view of the realities of our business, but approaching it with a more expansive, productive mindset allows you to not only navigate its (many!) challenges, but to build a happier and more satisfying career and thrive.

Read more: “The Happy Harsh Truths of a Writing Career”

Bemoaning the state of the publishing industry yet staying in it is the definition of insanity. Even if you love this business—as I realize over and over I truly do—constantly negging it is the equivalent of those relationships with a couple constantly argues and bickers and fights, yet stay miserably together.

Just as in any other partnership we enter into, creating a healthy, growth-nurturing long-term relationship with the industry we’ve chosen to work in rests on a solid foundation of respect and partnership and a constructive attitude toward working through the hard parts. A pessimistic outlook is neither useful nor productive, and it undermines the many real pleasures there are to be had in this business and career.

Read more: “Reassessing Your Writing Career”

Authors, what’s your view of the business we’re working in? Do you catch yourself falling into negative thinking, parroting bleak statistics, and feeling hopeless and cynical about the industry? How do you maintain a healthy, productive attitude toward your career, and remember that it’s a collaboration, not combat?

FoxPrint Editorial helps writers strengthen their manuscripts through developmental editing, education, and practical writing guidance. Explore more articles on revision, storytelling, and the publishing process.

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