The Scalability of Your Craft & Your Voyage
June 4, 2018
A common discussion point in the project management world is the scalability of a process or operations or technology. For example, if you’re installing an email system for a company with twenty employees, will it still work if the company balloons to two hundred? Not only does its technical platform need to be sufficiently robust, but you have to consider whether the functionality will be appropriate for a wider range of user roles, whether the user interface will be appealing to a users with differing degrees of tech savviness, and so on.
The concept of scalability extends to our nautical metaphor as well. If you start out with a bass boat and then decide you want to run an ocean fishing charter, you’re not going to be able to do it with the boat you have. It’s not that the bass boat is bad and the saltwater fishing boat is good—it’s that you can’t transition the one craft for use on a completely different voyage.
Scalability is also an important consideration to you as an author when you are designing your craft (your work) and your voyage (your career) since some topics and approaches are more scalable than others.
For example, if you write a non-fiction book based on an event that took place in a small town a few decades ago, that book might primarily appeal to people living near that town, and even more specifically to people who were alive when the event took place. It might be very successful within that demographic, but once you’ve exhausted that pool of readers, it will be difficult to replicate that success to a younger audience living a few states away. If you want to write a follow-on to this non-fiction books and bring forward some of the readers who enjoyed the original, you will probably need to carry forward some aspects—for example, another historical event that took place in that area, or that took place in a similar timeframe.
In contrast, if you you write a fantasy novel set in a world you create, that topic is almost infinitely scalable. Consider Harry Potter—the astronomical popularity of that series indicates that it is scalable to any age group, any gender, any country, any culture. And since you are creating the world, you can provide the fodder needed for expansion (e.g., Pottermore or Harry Potter fan fiction).
As with the boat analogy, it’s not that the local history is bad and fantasy fiction is good—it’s that you need to target your craft and plan your voyage (and set your expectations) appropriately. An obvious example is that if you want to design your author voyage to enable you to make a living with your writing, then fantasy fiction is going to be a better bet that the local history book because the potential reader base is much larger.
Similarly, the scalability of your book will also suggest different methods of getting it in front of readers. You could make the fantasy book available on pretty much any online platform and, assuming it’s well constructed, it will find an audience. For the local history book, a book fair held in the town where the event took place is the perfect venue, but a book fair a hundred miles away will generate fewer sales.
Less obvious impact is that the issue of scalability can also impact how you approach your relationship to your fellow authors. I believe that the indy author should approach that relationship on the basis of it being a world of plenty, not a zero sum game. If your book is sufficiently scalable, then a book sale lost to the author at the next table at a book fair is far less important that the potential benefits you can get from cultivating a relationship with that author. However, that position is easier to take when that book fair sale is just one part of a more scalable business model, and harder to take if the majority of your author earnings are based on book fair sales.
The reason I call this out is not to encourage you to write a fantasy novel if you have a great idea (or draft) for a local history book. Rather, you need to keep in mind that, if you are looking to other authors for advice, you should assess whether the approaches they’re following and recommending match the level of scalability of your own desired design. If they’re selling locally based non-fiction, it’s not the best path to follow for fantasy.
The concept of scalability extends to our nautical metaphor as well. If you start out with a bass boat and then decide you want to run an ocean fishing charter, you’re not going to be able to do it with the boat you have. It’s not that the bass boat is bad and the saltwater fishing boat is good—it’s that you can’t transition the one craft for use on a completely different voyage.
Scalability is also an important consideration to you as an author when you are designing your craft (your work) and your voyage (your career) since some topics and approaches are more scalable than others.
For example, if you write a non-fiction book based on an event that took place in a small town a few decades ago, that book might primarily appeal to people living near that town, and even more specifically to people who were alive when the event took place. It might be very successful within that demographic, but once you’ve exhausted that pool of readers, it will be difficult to replicate that success to a younger audience living a few states away. If you want to write a follow-on to this non-fiction books and bring forward some of the readers who enjoyed the original, you will probably need to carry forward some aspects—for example, another historical event that took place in that area, or that took place in a similar timeframe.
In contrast, if you you write a fantasy novel set in a world you create, that topic is almost infinitely scalable. Consider Harry Potter—the astronomical popularity of that series indicates that it is scalable to any age group, any gender, any country, any culture. And since you are creating the world, you can provide the fodder needed for expansion (e.g., Pottermore or Harry Potter fan fiction).
As with the boat analogy, it’s not that the local history is bad and fantasy fiction is good—it’s that you need to target your craft and plan your voyage (and set your expectations) appropriately. An obvious example is that if you want to design your author voyage to enable you to make a living with your writing, then fantasy fiction is going to be a better bet that the local history book because the potential reader base is much larger.
Similarly, the scalability of your book will also suggest different methods of getting it in front of readers. You could make the fantasy book available on pretty much any online platform and, assuming it’s well constructed, it will find an audience. For the local history book, a book fair held in the town where the event took place is the perfect venue, but a book fair a hundred miles away will generate fewer sales.
Less obvious impact is that the issue of scalability can also impact how you approach your relationship to your fellow authors. I believe that the indy author should approach that relationship on the basis of it being a world of plenty, not a zero sum game. If your book is sufficiently scalable, then a book sale lost to the author at the next table at a book fair is far less important that the potential benefits you can get from cultivating a relationship with that author. However, that position is easier to take when that book fair sale is just one part of a more scalable business model, and harder to take if the majority of your author earnings are based on book fair sales.
The reason I call this out is not to encourage you to write a fantasy novel if you have a great idea (or draft) for a local history book. Rather, you need to keep in mind that, if you are looking to other authors for advice, you should assess whether the approaches they’re following and recommending match the level of scalability of your own desired design. If they’re selling locally based non-fiction, it’s not the best path to follow for fantasy.
