Great Expectations by Katrina Spencer

In a society of, “I want it now,” it can be hard to develop patience. Patience for writers is like ink to a pen—you can’t survive in this business without it.

As a new author, it can be hard to be patient as you’re building your audience.  You go to a bookstore and pick up a book by a veteran author (insert name here) and think, “They have it so easy! They have readers clamoring to get a copy of their new book.”

While it is true that some veteran authors do not face the problems of gaining readers like us newbie authors, they do have the problem of expectations.

Readers can be very vocal about what they like or don’t like about your books.

“Your new book lacked the spice of your other novels.”

“This book was different than your other books. I like the older books better, why did you have to change things?”

When readers follow you, they grow with you. As such, they begin to expect certain things from you. If you write romance—they want you sticking with that genre. Write thrillers? Expect a lot of feedback if you choose to switch to romance. Readers want whatever made them pick up your book in the first place. The more experience you gain in writing, the more you have to remember your readers. Without losing you, you have to write for them.

Case in point. Beyonce’s latest album had two disks—her spicy, Sasha Fierce side, and the more personal, Beyonce side. Why did she do that? While wanting to reach out to do more ballads—a song that she could relate to—she had to remember her fans—the people who made her famous in the first place.

The expectations put on writers by their readers, editors, agents, critics, can be crippling. Many big-time authors have mentioned the stress of delivering a book that can meet everyone’s high—and sometimes unreachable—expectations.

So what does this teach us newbies? Well, we share a struggle to be heard, but with that struggle, we have something to be treasured.

Freedom.

We have the freedom to write without voices in our head, chanting about what our readers want. If we have never been published we have no readers. (Save for a few family or friends.) If we’re newly published, we are fighting to gain readers. With each book signing, tweet, or blog post, we are screaming to be heard.

“Pick me!” we scream as readers roam already crowded bookshelves. And several times we are heard when someone picks our book up. What though do these new readers expect of us?

“I hope this book is good,” they think as they walk to the register, our book clutched in our hands.

Hope. That is their only expectation—they hope that our book will be good. They hope that they haven’t wasted hard-earned money on our book. They take a risk on us, a gamble as it were. They do not pluck down their hard earned money with confidence. We have not earned that confidence, and that would require an expectation of us that we have not delivered yet.

So, fellow newbies, lets revel in this freedom. Don’t be jealous of the veterans—the ones whose work has been tested again and again and continue to live up to their readers expectations. Remember, they too were once in our position. And they remember fondly, when they were able to write with freedom.