Let me share something written by Kristine Kathryn Rusch:
Now, before I go too far here, let me clear up something. I do own a publishing company. WMG Publishing publishes all of my work. (Eventually, anyway. I do publish some things in anthologies and other venues, sometimes first.) The team there does a huge amount of advertising, usually on a budget, and always effectively. They’re refocusing their efforts because we have a new Shopify store. They’re slowly getting our 1,000 titles on the site.
Note that 1000 titles at the bottom. That’s a thousand titles put out by Kris and her husband Dean Wesley Smith. A thousand titles by two authors. And that’s not even fast.
And before you start thinking that those can’t be good books, let me tell you about the awards won by Kris and Dean. Multiple Hugos. The World Fantasy Award. The Endeavour. Scores of others. Also, I’ve read their books and some of them are amazing, and some are in genres or subgenres that don’t really engage me. They’ve written a lot. And they’re not fast.
Let me clarify that. Kris and Dean have published over a thousand titles in 30 years. That’s about 500 titles each (it’s not divided that evenly, and they’ve got more that are published by other companies, so let’s say 700 each). Asimov published 500 titles during his career. It’s still not fast.
Corrin Tellado was fast. She published 4 182 novels during her career, selling over 400 000 000 copies. That’s slightly more than one novel a week. That’s fast.
I don’t expect to be that fast of a writer. But then again, I don’t need to. All I need to do is write the best stories I can, as fast as I can, and try to increase my skill and my speed.
That’s all anyone needs to do. That, and spend your time writing. That’s the way you become prolific.
Luck and Persistence!
