Ten Books, Ten Years as a Published Author: The Top 10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming an Author
Author Career Rating: 10/10, would do again
Hello, Protagonists!
Welcome to another entry in Author Diaries—where we take you behind the scenes of publishing—querying, book auctions, cover design, how authors make money, book publicity, and more.
In this post you’ll find:
📚 What’s Filling My Creative Well—a book that is lighting up my brain
🕵🏻♀️ Behind the Scenes: Ten Books and Ten Years as a Published Author—the Top 10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming an Author
As always, thank you for being here, not just as readers, but as fellow story-lovers and co-dreamers of this beautiful, bookish life.
xo, Evelyn
📚 What’s Filling My Creative Well
Currently reading:
Writing, Creativity, Soul by Sue Monk Kidd — the author of The Secret Life of Bees tackles the mysteries, frustrations, and triumphs of being a writer. This is also our book club pick this month!
Reminder: Our Book Club meeting is on Sunday, May 31, 2026 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT. Discussion Qs and more info HERE.
Ten Books and Ten Years as a Published Author
This weekend is the 10th anniversary of the publication of my first novel, The Crown’s Game!
Wow wow wow. This is bonkers.
It’s hard to believe that time has flown so fast… Some of you have been with me since the very beginning, when this newsletter began as a street team called the Tsar’s Guard. Some of you found me along the way over the past decade, and some of you are brand new. But no matter when our paths crossed, GOSH I LOVE YOU ALL!
In these ten years, I have published ten books (#11—called Ideal Life—comes out later this summer in August), and I have learned a lot along the way.
So let’s go down memory lane and see what Baby Writer Evelyn might have known, if Present Evelyn had been able to tell her what the vantage point looks like from here.
The Top 10 Things I Wish I Had Known Before Becoming an Author
10. You will write books that flop but also books that surprise you with their staying power.
My first novel, The Crown’s Game, remains my biggest seller even today, and that’s not because it’s been out the longest. It flew high straight out of the gate and then kept going because of reader love and word of mouth. Then it got a little quiet for a few years. But then romantasy hit the book world and readers rediscovered The Crown’s Game, so it had a resurgence.
On the other hand, my kids’ series with Disney (Princess Private Eye) was supposed to be at least two books, but the sequel got canceled, even though I’d already written it and it was edited and there was cover art and we were close to going to print. Middle grade readers were declining, and sometimes you, as the author, can’t control what the market does.
9. You can change the genre you write.
An agent once advised me to write four books in the same genre (fantasy) before I switched to something else, if I ever wanted to do something different. Her rationale was that it’s good to build a reader fanbase first.
I think it was solid advice, but you don’t have to follow it. Because I also think that if you want to write something different, you ought not pigeonhole yourself. Accept that some of your previous readers might not like it as much, but also that you will find new readers who do.
At the end of a day, you are a writer. Not a fantasy writer or a YA writer or a contemporary upmarket women’s fiction writer. Just a writer, period. Write what sings to you at that moment, because that’s what will make your work great.
8. External success does not mean the author isn’t quietly carrying secret wounds.
As world-famous ice skater Ilya Malinin said after a devastating Olympic performance, “On the world’s biggest stage, those who appear the strongest may still be fighting invisible battles on the inside.”
This is also true of publishing. It’s a brutal field where art is pitted against art, and commercial sales and social media virality purport to determine your worth. You are literally able to compare yourself against the world’s best, and it is easy to come up feeling wanting.
If you want to persevere in the publishing industry, you’re going to have to develop a thick skin. But if you love writing and stories, it’s worth it. Ten years later, I would still do it all over again.
7. Nothing is forever, and that’s okay. Even good.
I have had three different literary agents. I have had six editors and five publishers (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Disney). Each one was the right one for that moment in my career.
It is not failure to part ways with an agent or a publisher. It is often recognition of where you are now, and therefore, growth.
So have faith in your talent and carry on, believing that you will land next where you need to be.
6. Book publicity can be super fun or it could be the bane of your existence.
Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Substack are wonderful because, unlike writers in the past, you can actually hear from your readers.
Those platforms can also be stressful, because what if you really just want to write stories, not become an influencer?
You will feel unspoken pressure to be online, sharing your life, all the time. You will think that this is something you must do to give your book any chance at all at success.
And then you might waste hours and weeks and months filming TikTok videos when you could have been writing your next brilliant book.
Instead, do the platforms you like and ignore the rest. That said, you should do at least one of them, or your publisher will probably be grumpy at you. For writers, Substack is often the most natural fit, because you can write here! (Feel free to ignore Substack Notes and video/audio posts if all you want to do is write. Really. Your job is not to become a Substack influencer—unless you want to!—it’s just to have a place where you can communicate to your readers.)
You can also consider hiring a freelance (a.k.a. external) book publicist. (If you’re curious, we interviewed my phenomenal publicist about what book PR firms do and how to find the right publicist for you.)
5. Writing can strain relationships.
Early in my career, I had a writer friend who complained that her spouse was not supportive of her writing. “He’s always whining about wanting to watch TV together, and he gets mad when I tell him I have to write.”
I understand why my writer friend felt that way. She had a full time job, and if she wanted any time to write, she needed to do it in the evenings after the kids had been put to bed or on the weekends. At the same time, I also understand why her partner was upset—if they wanted any time with each other in the busyness of jobs and raising a family, they also needed to do that in the evenings after the kids had been put to bed or on the weekends.
Writing is fun, it is fulfilling, it can be addictive, and it can also become all-consuming and destructive if you don’t set boundaries. You can forget to keep in touch with your friends. You might neglect your spouse. You might even sacrifice time with your kids for the siren song of writing.
The balance will look different for every writer, because everyone’s personal life is different. I just advise:
(a) be aware of this tension between the imaginary characters in your head and the real people in your real life, and
(b) know that there are rhythms to life. Some seasons require more focus on your personal relationships, and others are more amenable to deep immersion in creative pursuits like writing.
As long as you can see that, you’ll be all right, and so will your art.
4. Hollywood is nothing like the publishing world, and publishing is better.
When you get a book deal, it is 97% certain that your book will be published.
When Hollywood options your book, it is only 3% (or less) that your story will ever make it onto the screen. Hollywood is in the business of collecting ideas, not necessarily turning those ideas into something concrete.
These are rough percentages I heard from someone who had worked at a very senior level in both industries.
If you are lucky enough that a producer or studio wants to option your book, take the option money and celebrate and dream about seeing it on Netflix or the big screen. But then come back down to earth, knowing that Hollywood dreams are ephemeral, and focus instead of writing your next great book.
3. Celebrate every single milestone, no matter how “small”
When you’re just starting out as a writer, you might hold off on celebrations because you think you’re supposed to wait for a big thing, like getting an agent or signing a book deal.
Then something else happens when you’ve been in the industry for ten years and ten books—even those once-big things now seem mundane. You get tired of book launch parties (I know, I know. This is an incomprehensible concept from where you’re standing at the beginning of your career. But trust me.)
Anyway, the same advice holds true no matter where you are on the journey—celebrate everything.
Celebrate finishing a first draft, even if you don’t have an agent yet. You have accomplished something that a very very tiny percentage of people have done. They only dream of doing it—but you did it.
Celebrate sending your first query letter. Putting your heart and your work out there is a huge act of bravery.
Celebrate going on submission. Do this before you start hearing back from editors, because the celebration is about you and what you accomplished, not about their rejections or revision requests or offers.
Celebrate book launches, even if it’s your twentieth book and your introvert self doesn’t want to do a bookstore event. In that case, invite your best friends out for a nice dinner (or order in). Just treat yourself.
The publishing industry is wonderful but also unpredictable, and there are market forces you cannot control. But you can control your writing, and your courage, and you deserve to celebrate every single milestone you reach. You worked damn hard to get there. Be proud and be kind to yourself and pause for an hour (or two or three) and recognize what an amazing thing you’ve done.
2. Aim for a long career, not the Big Bang.
If you truly love writing, you will want a long career. That means some books will do better than others (see #10 above). And that also means you should not pour all your expectations into any single book, nor stress yourself out too much over the sales numbers of any single book.
You are not writing just one novel or piece of non-fiction. You are aiming to build a body of work over many years.
As one of my favorite writer friends once told me, “If you build a castle in a day or in a year, it’s still a f—ing castle.”
1. Your friends are the best part of an author career.
Dear Baby Writer, You don’t realize it, but you will meet some of your very best writer friends when you are all still nobodies.
You will find them at conferences, hungrily learning how to write first pages and lining up to talk to agents.
You will see them again and again in the audiences of bookstore events, and eventually you will strike up a conversation in a signing line.
You will meet them online, in communities like this one.
Years later, after the ups and downs and more ups and more downs, they will be the ones who know you best and who will never let you down.
In good times, they will preorder your books and come to your launch parties.
In bad times, they will scrape you up off the floor and growl curses at the anonymous internet jerk who dared write you a horrible, obviously idiotic 1-star review.
They will come to your wedding.
They will watch your kids grow.
They will visit your husband when he’s in the hospital, and you will hold them tight when their loved ones are sick, too.
They will love you no matter how many books you sell. They will love you when you tell them the industry is too hard and you’re going to quit. They won’t make fun of you when you quietly change your mind and decide to start writing again.
These people that you don’t know yet are going to walk beside you on this long, rocky, wondrous path.
And their company will make all the difference.
» This post is part of our Author Diary series. You can find past entries HERE.