Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about quality versus quantity in terms of writing and making a living as an author. If you’re self-published, the pressure is on to crank out books fast and get them to market quickly. New books have a shelf life of 30 to 60 days before sales start to drop off. The only way to pull your sales back up, other than costly book bub ads, is to publish another book. Each new offering enjoys new release status on Amazon and breaths some life into your backlist. Only it doesn’t last.

Sign up for any of the publishing courses online or visit Facebook groups for authors and you’ll find there is a ton of pressure to write faster. There are books that promise to teach you how to write 4000 words an hour. Some self-publishing experts claim you need to release a new book every three months if you want to be successful as an indie author. Most of the discussion among author groups centers around how to produce more words faster, so you can put out a book a month. These sources admonish you to write more, to discipline yourself to write 10k words a day. Anything less and you’ll never succeed as an author!

If you can sit down and crank out 10k words a day, more power to you. I envy your drive and creative spirit. The reality is, for most of us, that’s not sustainable.

Sure, I could sit down and hammer out 10k words a day. In fact I usually write my first drafts in about two months. If I really wanted to get down to brass tacks, I could produce six books a year. But that begs two questions:

First; would they be any good?

I could publish six books a year, but I promise you every single one of them would be a jumbled mess of poor sentence construction and plot holes with weak character development. Two months just doesn’t give me the amount of time necessary to fine tune my story, clean up the sentences, and add depth to my characters. For me personally, I need to write the first draft quick, and then set it aside for a month or two so that I can judge what I’ve written objectively.

quality versus quantity in terms of writing

So far I’ve been blessed. All three books in my Jake Noble series have done really well. Reviewers seem to agree (for the most part) that each new book is better than the last. If I started publishing a book every two months, I’d probably sell the first three, maybe four, but eventually the quality is going to catch up with me.

Evidence of this is plentiful. Spend some time researching series on Amazon which have ten or more books. Both the sales and the reviews start to drop off after book four. By the time the author gets to book nine or ten, the books are barely selling. The reason is simple, the quality of the books decline as the author rushes them to market and readers start to notice. Fans of the first book start to drift away as subsequent books in the series prove to be rehashed lukewarm clones.

Companies that start producing inferior products quickly lose their customer base and a new company soon steps in to fill the void. The same thing happens to writers.

quality versus quantity in terms of writing

And the second question; Is it sustainable?

I could produce six books a year if I really put my nose to the grind stone, but by the end of the year I’d be creatively exhausted. I might even be able to do two years at that pace, but by the end of the second year, I’d probably hate the series and all the joy would be sucked out of writing. I’d be going through the motions, building plots the way a McDonald’s employee slaps together burgers. The quality would be on par with a McDonald’s burger as well. You’ll take it if there is nothing else around, but it’s not your first choice. More importantly, by the end of the second year producing manuscripts at that frantic pace, I’d be thoroughly sick of writing. I’d probably also be in terrible shape physically. My eyes would be shot to hell and my back would be a mess.

(Check out my blog on word counts)

After two years, I’d be ready for a change. That is the most frightening thing of all. I love writing. As it stands, the worse day writing is better than the best day working any other job. I enjoy telling stories and I don’t want to lose my passion. And I know pushing myself to produce too much, too soon, will take all the fun out of it.

Besides, where would that get me?

Two years from now I’d be completely burnt out and my series, that I had worked so hard on, would be quickly relegated to the dustbin of history.

I’m reminded of the show Community. The first two seasons were really funny and very well put together, but it went downhill fast. The writing started to flounder in season three and by season four, most of the magic was gone. Now the show is mostly forgotten by all but a few die-hard fans. Compare that to a show like Seinfeld or The Big Bang Theory. Both of those shows ran forever. More importantly, they had staying power. Some of the later episodes are every bit as good as the earlier shows. There is no doubt in my mind the creators of Community made bank, but their legacy was short lived and soon forgotten.

As an author, do you want to produce a Community? Or a Seinfeld? Do you want to publish a bunch of books quickly and make some fast cash? Or do you want to write something people will still be reading fifty years from now?

quality versus quantity in terms of writing

I’d rather have a long running series of books known for superior quality. Ten years from now I want to be publishing books in my Jake Noble series that are every bit as good as the originals. I want future generations to be able to pick up my books and enjoy them. I’m committed to telling the best story I can. If that takes me eight months, then so be it.

And I firmly believe that by focusing on quality over quantity, my back list will still be selling respectful numbers in the years to come. Well written books have staying power. That’s why stories by Raymond Chandler and Arthur Conan Doyle still sell while lesser books slip into quiet anonymity.

What I see right now in the indie publishing community are authors making bank churring out rapid sequels, but their books are going to be long forgotten in a decade due to declining quality.

quality versus quantity in terms of writing

Don’t fall into this trap. You deserve better and so do your customers. You want your fans to remember you as a good author who consistently produced entertaining books. I’m willing to bet you got started writing because you love telling stories and you wanted to write a really good book. It’s easy to fall in the trap of writing fast to keep one step ahead of the bill collectors, but it’s unsustainable and will ultimately doom you as a writer. Writing great books takes more time, but it will pay off in the long run. You’ll still be writing when all the others have gone back to their day jobs.

Cream eventually rises to the top!

Bonus tip: The only way to get a contract with a traditional publishing house (if that’s your goal) is to prove you can produce consistent quality work. If you publish several books with rave reviews, publishers will eventually start approaching you. If you publish books that decline in quality, you’ll be passed over for authors who put more time and effort into their craft.