On Bucking Trends and Being Great: Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday

I have a confession to make:

I’ve been putting my life on hold. I’m guilty of doing this from time to time. But last year was my worst (and longest-lasting) experience.

What do I mean?

I’ve adopted the terrible habit of tying my sense of well-being to external metrics. Worst of all? Because they’re external, they’re beyond my control.

It took reading devouring Ryan Holiday’s excellent book Perennial Seller for the epiphany to deliver its cold slap just in time for the new year.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean…

I entered 2017 with a big, bad, audacious goal of making $X a year selling my fiction. I had a different number in mind for my freelance work. I wanted to be 165 pounds with 12 percent body fat.

(And on and on. You get the idea.)

While I wasn’t exactly the paragon of productivity last year, what I lacked in efficiency I made up for in hard work.

Which made it even more maddening when I closed out the year without hitting some of those marks.

If it sounds like a less than blissful way to live, that’s because it is. When your entire life is defined by striving for external metrics:

• Happiness is delayed
• Every morning you wake up without being there makes you feel like a failure
• You deprive yourself from savoring small victories

I tend to put a ton of pressure on myself. (Are you the same way?)

Bottom line: I got so wrapped up in the metrics last year that I started mistaking them for success.

Failing to hit everything I wanted forced me to step back and reevaluate.

No, I didn’t make $X with my fiction in 2017…

But I wrote five books and a handful of short stories. I even got some promising feedback from editors at a few magazines I respect. When you throw in freelance work, that’s a hell of a lot!

Reading Holiday’s book, Perennial Seller, during the week between Christmas and New Years couldn’t have come at a better time. There I was again, on the verge of plowing into 2018 with a new list of metrics to aim for.

The insights in Perennial Seller made me scrap them and start fresh. Reading it at times, the text mirrored my own so closely that I assumed Holiday had been listening in on my internal dialog during the tough times of last year.

If you create (or want to create) anything – businesses, books, movies, art, etc. – I can’t recommend the book highly enough.

Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday: Biggest Takeaways

Here are some of my biggest takeaways from the book:

1. Focus on Quality and Nothing Else (at Least in the Beginning)

I’m alarmed at how many creators gloss over creating. They fritter away their time on Twitter and Facebook — not killing time, but believing that they are building up followers to be the recipients of their unremarkable work.

We have to ask ourselves why we’re making this stuff anyway.

That’s where it all begins. If your answers are wrong, it’s where it ends too!

How many wannabe writers, musicians, and other creative types got into the game to make a lot of money? Get laid? Say screw you to their bosses and sleep in?

Those things are awesome. But Holiday’s position is this: If anything besides making great art is in your head during the creation process, you’re going to have a bad time.

This makes me think obsessively about craft and quality. How can I make my sentences .0001 percent better than they were yesterday? Becoming a master is the most fulfilling reward you could ask for.

All the other stuff – fortune, fame, status – might follow. But for now, keep your eyes on the work itself.

2. Don’t Worry about the Fads, Study the Greats

People claim to want to do something that matters, yet they measure themselves against things that don’t, and track their progress not in years but in microseconds.

Fads come and go. A lot of writers chase them. They want to see what’s popular and finds to capitalize. (I’m looking at you, young adult dystopias with a female protagonist!)

Some people do amazingly well with this. More power to them. I’m in no place to judge. But for me personally, I just can’t write like that.

Some of the superstars featured in Perennial Seller (like legendary music producer Rick Rubin) urge artists not to sweat that stuff. Instead, they recommend you study the best.

This was a big mindset shift for me. It really emphasized the importance of going back a few decades and giving a little love to the books that have lasted.

3. You Are Your Own Marketer and Platform Builder

The idea that you won’t have to work to sell your product is more than entitled.

This one stings for us writer types. We just want to be left alone to play with our imaginary friends. Send our work to publishers, have them take care of the rest and send us a check.

It very rarely works out like that. It’s up to us to think about: 1) who the work is for, 2) how to position it for the best chances of success, and 3) how to get it out to as many people as possible (outreach.)

These days, even major publishers expect writers to come into the game with a platform. They want to hear about your marketing plan. If you’re going the indie route, you’ll have to become a master at paid advertising, promotions, and tweaking Amazon algorithms.

To be a successful creator these days is to also be a businessperson. We can either cry about that and try to ignore it. Or take responsibility and do the best we can here.

4. The Best Stuff is Polarizing

Far too many people set out to product something that, if they were really honest with themselves, is only marginally better or different from what already exists.

I loved this part. I hadn’t really thought of it that way before, but it immediately rang true to me.

Even the greatest piece of art ever created can’t ever be for everyone. Probably as many people hate Monet as those who adore his paintings.

One of the biggest elements of perennial sellers: they don’t look, sounds, or feel like anything else in their field. That’s what makes them so polarizing.

This got me thinking about which boundaries I’d like to push in my stories this year. Now I’m working on a horror novella that’s a radical departure from anything I’ve done before!

5. Don’t be Afraid of Free (or Cheap)

Although it’s hard to turn fame into money in the arts, it’s impossible to turn obscurity into money in the arts.

I spend a lot of time creating my stories. Daydreaming, drafting, revising, and drafting some more. By the time everything’s said and done I end up emotionally attached. I’m sure every creative person feels this way.

Being so emotionally attached, I’m hesitant to hawk my stuff for lower prices than I think it’s worth. I might be tempted to submit to one magazine that pays a little more – even though the other has a larger readership.

(Yes, I know how stupid that sounds, but it’s the brutal truth.)

Perennial Seller got me rethinking this. I realize now that I was mired in short-term thinking. Obsessive focus about making sales now was blinding me to the potential of long-term games.

Writing is a long-term game though. I’m inspired to push myself in 2018 here. I want to stop worrying so much about making a sale… and focus on finding more readers.

Even if a reader finds your book for free, he or she might buy the second one. Or tell all their friends about it. That’s the kind of long-term thinking I hope to adopt!

How I’m Moving Forward in 2018

I’m not a big resolutions guy. But I’m planning to adopt some of Holiday’s advice from Perennial Seller as I pursue my writing in 2018. Many of these realizations I was crawling toward on my own, slowly, painfully, through the barb wire of firsthand experience.

A few things I’m changing up for this year:

Ditching the External Metrics

I’m not abandoning goals completely. I’m simply re-framing them so they’re within my control. Instead of trying to make a specific dollar amount, I’m striving to write for a certain amount of time every day. I’m sticking to a word quota and building a writing habit, which will allow me to celebrate small victories every time I succeed.

Not Getting So Hung up in Self-Pub vs. Trad Pub

The indie vs. traditional publishing debate is like politics or religion. Not exactly something you’d want to bring up at the dinner table (among writers.) I started out with indie publishing, but I’ve heard enough now to see the benefits of both sides.

In 2018 I’d like to focus less on the method, and more on telling the best damn stories I can and delighting readers. Hybrid authors (people with traditional publishing contracts and self-publishing titles) like Chuck Wendig and Adam Nevill are fascinating. I hope to emulate them.

Getting Lots More Feedback (and Writing Friends)

One of the major thrusts of Perennial Seller is that a work will never last unless it’s great. That’s why one of my biggest aims of 2018 is to expose my writing to a lot more feedback and criticism. Editors and agents excel at this stuff, which is encouraging as I plan to submit more short stories and novel queries this year.

My knee-jerk reaction was to despise “the rules” and “gatekeepers,” but now I’m starting to see how valuable they are for quality control. I also want to start a speculative fiction writing group where we can chat, hang out, and workshop stories here in Austin. (Let me know if you’re interested!)

Building a Platform

One of the biggest challenge budding authors – or any creatives, for that matter – face is discoverability. Writing something remarkable isn’t enough. Zillions of titles were published on Amazon last year. The market for awesome stuff is never saturated… but the problem is people’s time. There are way too many books to sift through and find the gems.

Because I want to focus on the long haul and build something truly sustainable, my one of my biggest priorities for 2018 is building a platform. That sounds so corporate and gross. But it’s really nothing more than making a conscious effort to connect with people (writers, readers, interested onlookers) and try to get my stuff into new people’s handles as often as possible.

Studying the Greats

We aren’t just competing against titles released in our genre this year. We’re competing with those and all the classics that have stood the test of time. Reading Perennial Seller induced an “oh shit” moment when I realized that I’m competing with Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Fitzgerald. Whether I like it or not. So I intend to read more of the classics, try to dissect them and figure out what makes them so timeless. This goes for works in different forms (poetry, plays, etc.) and genres.

Focusing on Quality (Results Will Come)

Making six figures indie publishing on Amazon doesn’t necessarily indicate quality. (Believe me, I’ve seen some stuff out there that will make you shake your head.) This is a tough mentality for me to grasp, but Perennial Seller forced me to confront this head-on. Plenty of Amazon bestsellers are awesome (paging Hugh Howey). Plenty of them are riding popular trends, propped up by constant ad campaigns, and won’t be around in 10 years.

Because I’m looking for sustainable career – a legacy – it’s time to get back to the basics. Writing every day, reading every day, pushing my limits, experimenting and remembering to have from. Quality is irreplaceable.

Enjoying the Grind

Just because I haven’t reached my writing goals doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the interim. If there’s one thing Perennial Seller taught me, it’s that creating unforgettable works takes time. The time is going to pass regardless. So I might as well enjoy it, and, like a craftsman, savor every incremental improvement in my technique.

Please don’t take this as prescriptive advice. My aim here was to share what I’ve learned. I hope you get a ton of value from Holiday’s insights… or they at least have you considering your goals from a different perspective.

If you want to find out more (with plenty of insights on craft as well as marketing), go check out Perennial Seller.

It’s a good one.