Poof!  Bestsellers all over the place!  You blink and you got another J.K. Rowling on your hands.  But is it really an “overnight success” or just a matter of becoming aware of the product?  Definitely none of the former and more than likely some of the latter.  Kristin Nelson talks about the pure fallacy of “overnight success” in the publishing world and how such successes actually work.

An overnight success in the publishing world is as oxymoronic a term as jumbo shrimp.  That’s why when people say they want to get into publishing to “make a quick buck,” I try to smack some sense into them.  And just outright laugh at those that “know” what they’re doing and are too pig-headed to learn right.  *snerk*  That can be a whole ‘nother rant.

First, just think about how long it took it write that first novel.  Meyer doesn’t count because she put absolutely no care into the craft, just focused on telling a ridiculous story.  Lets use Rowling.  Much better example.  She started writing Harry Potter in 1993, I believe.  Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was first copyrighted in 1997.  That’s when the book hit shelves.  Give it at least a year prior to that to get into an editor’s hands , so 1996 it was sold to publishing.  Not to mention the time to find an agent.  Lets be generous and use 6 months.

But were there insane Potterheads right from the beginning?  Certainly not like there are now.  The fandom didn’t pick up until the second book, at least.  And that’s not even when Rowling hit the mega-insanity that she has now in the publishing world (and, really, the world in general).  The first movie based on the books was released in 2001.  So lets say a good year range for the mania to hit was somewhere between 2000 and 2001.  That would be 7 to 8 years after the writing started and three to four after the first book hit shelves.

Does that sound like “overnight” to you?

Then there’s Dan Brown with his insanely popular DaVinci Code book.  Angels and Demons was his first, not DC.  No one really cared for the first one until the popularity for the second became huge.  So that’s one published book under his belt before becoming a “success.”  At least one year from the selling date to the stock date.  That kind of spits on the definition of “overnight.”

A think it’s a matter of realization as well.  A lot of people aren’t aware of certain books until they become immensely popular.  Then they look back at their lives without those books and see them as just appearing there one day where they never used to exist.  Unfortunately the publishing world moves way too slow for such phenomena.

I have an actor friend that wrote what I would call a roman a clef and he’s pulling his hair out at the pace the publishing world moves.  I guess in the movie world, you can have instant gratification and you can have overnight success, nearly literally.  Not so with books.  It takes a very patient person to trod through the gears of publishing in order to see their book in print.  And even then many more don’t make it than do.

Agent Kristin gives some good examples from her own agenting books in terms of success.  I guess it would all depend on your definition of success.  For me it would just be seeing my book on a Barnes and Noble shelf (corporate, I know, but we’re lacking by the way of independent bookstores around here, B&N eat them for dinner, I had one I loved whenI was younger, B&N ate it, along with people not giving a crap).  That would be the ultimate success for me.  Developing a fandom and hitting lists would be beyond my scope of reason and expectations but I think it would also mutate my definition of success as well.  Once you’re at the top, you don’t really want to fall.

So next time to see an author pegged as an “overnight success,” take a minute to think about the process that churned behind getting that book to where it is.  I can safely bet, from the first word on the page to the first book on the shelf, it took no less than two years to get there.  And that’s if the author’s lucky enough to hit it big on the first book.  Two years.  Hardly overnight, don’t you think?