How does a writer determine their success?

If you are a publisher your first instinct might be to say that sales determine the success of a writer. If they write a book and it sells well then they are a success, and if it doesn't sell then they are considered a failure. Others might argue that the success of a writer is not determined through sales but through reach, defined by the estimated or actual number of people who have read their work, there are plenty of ways both legal and illegal to freely access published works that would not contribute to sales, at least not in proportion to their reach, a library for example will buy a copy of a book that will be read by many different people.

All of these attempts to determine success revolve around metrics, that is to say any statistic that is quantifiable and comparable. Metrics exist today as part of our culture, perhaps due most of all to social media. Posts are made and their success is determined by many by the number of likes, comments, replies, shares, tweets, retweets, and favourites among others. Taken together these metrics serve as public facing data points that usually anyone can see. On the other side of the screen there are many more that are only visible to some people, usually the content creator, but in some cases only the site that hosts the content sees these back end data points. Front and Back combined we refer to simply as Analytics.

Even this blog has a dashboard that presents these data points, number of visitors, number of views, source of the traffic this site receives, country of the reader, and with the aid of Google Analytics much more than this. Which piece of data would you use to determine success therein? Perhaps you could choose page views, but that choice is analogous with defining the success of a writer by their reach - again the problem arises when you consider the accuracy of the information supplied. If you do not allow cookies for instance most of your activity is not tracked, browsers also have 'do not track' features to prevent some data collection scripts like Google Analytics. Just as a library book may be read by many more than the single purchase would imply, there may be many more views of a website than is actually reported. Having direct access to the server makes that easier to refine but still complicated.

The invasion of our lives by metrics also misses out on perhaps the most important factor, that is the human element. Whilst all of these data points can be used to define commercial success or failure, they do not measure the impact on a reader that the writer's work has. Not only that, unless the work itself goes on to become incredibly popular, it can be hard to determine what impact it has on society. Some might argue this framing is egotistical, borne of a desire to change the world and a delusion that you will be the one to do it where all others have failed. A work doesn't have to change the whole world though, it can have an impact on just one person enough that it could change their entire world.

This ultimately brings us to the realisation that you are not only shaping the lives of the characters you create, but that you are also shaping the lives of the people who read your work by creating an experience. Storytelling takes many forms, it can be written on paper and bound and sold by tradition, or it can be be typed and uploaded and distributed online, but it can also be incorporated into different types of media, from movies, TV shows, podcasts, and video games through to radio and even theatre productions. These open up new avenues and through interaction they provide the opportunity to connect with the consumer on a much deeper level. I use the word consumer here because at this point the person you are engaging is doing much more than reading a story.

Video games like Undertale or Stardew Valley create immersive worlds filled with characters who each have their own back story and it is left to you how much of those you want to explore. Patience, determination, and a meticulous attention to detail will allow you to consume every detail that is written into these experiences. I use these two games as examples because they both have extensive communities associated with them, they both had commercial success that has now arguably passed their peak long ago; although with the former, the creator Toby Fox is now working on a follow-up game called Deltarune, and the with the latter, the creator Eric Barone is still producing new content as free updates for Stardew Valley. Both of these games are considered successful but ask why and you will receive a myriad of answers. Some will argue based on sales, whilst others will argue the sales figures are irrelevant that both contributed to video game culture and told stories that drew the player in. You also have the unusual if not the unique situation where gaming combined with the internet enables secondary consumption where for example a YouTuber will buy a game and play it on their channel for viewers, enabling the game to reach a wider audience than the one determined by sales alone, akin to the library scenario described above. This extended reach and deeper impact created by the story itself without actually playing the game for yourself reinforces the focus and the importance of the shared experience that is created. The experience itself in the end is what the majority of fans would regard as defining the success of both of these games.

If you take this logic and return to our original question of how a writer determines their success, I would argue the true measure of success is the experience that your readers have, whether it is read by one person or by a million, or even a billion, the impact can't be measured in metrics. This extends beyond writing into any creative field, the act of creation arguably has to focus more on what is being created than the reach that it may have. In other words to become a successful writer you must write for the love of writing and the joy of creating experiences for others, not for the sake of metrics, fixation on the latter will likely hinder you more than it helps.