Today, we wish a happy 125th birthday to the late British author Barbara Cartland, who died in 2000, just before turning 99. If you have never heard of her, it might be worth a minute or two to familiarize yourself with a very distinctive, flamboyant, prolific, and best-selling author. Photos of her and her home are alone worth a thousand words.
She wrote romance novels in the historical and contemporary genres for the broad, general market. To say she was prolific is an understatement.
During her lifetime, Barbara had over 700 books published and sold a billion copies worldwide. At her death, there were another 160 completed but unpublished works, all of which were published, at least digitally, by 2018.
Her most active year was 1973, when 23 of her books were published. Figuring they averaged about 40,000 words each, she would have had to write 2,500 words per day, every day for a year, to finish 23 manuscripts. So, maybe 1972 was her busiest year considering the publishing process.
During her lifetime, she wrote about 35,000,000 words. Her primary method of writing was to dictate the books verbally, and someone else typed them, a manual version of voice-to-text technology.
She didn’t have a single best-selling title, nor did she appear on bestseller lists. She sold over a million copies on average per book, with most copies sold through book clubs, other direct-to-reader sales channels, grocery-store bookstands, and global sales. She had a different success model than most authors of her day, or, for that matter, those writing today.
By the way, in a complicated relationship, she was Princess Diana of England’s step-grandmother. So there’s that.
There isn’t a direct application for contemporary writers that makes much sense, since few would want to follow Barbara Cartland’s path. Not to mention the publishing industry that would struggle to figure out how to handle her work, but would likely find a way if they sold a million copies each!
It might just be to be aware that there are dramatic exceptions to whatever rules exist in publishing, but trying to replicate them is impossible. Not just for how you write, but the markets for books, competition, or any other aspect where one glaring exception doesn’t cancel out conventional wisdom or the ways things usually happen.
Remember, when Barbara Cartland was working, far fewer books were being published, so the competition for readers, while still significant, was substantially less than it is today, and books were available for sale in many more places.
There are prolific, best-selling authors in the Christian publishing sphere, but they are few. A possible explanation for the rarity is that there’s significant appreciation among readers for time-tested best-sellers by Christian writers, greatly reducing the need to engage in as much rinse-and-repeat publishing as there has been in the broader market.
Still, every author is a little different than every other author. There’s no one way to succeed. Becoming successful and fruitful is a mix of doing the basics really well, perseverance, and then responding to the unexpected bolts of success lightning, just to remind you that someone else is actually in charge.
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose (Philippians 2:12-13, NIV).