When will I be considered famous?

Given that the title of this post could be taken several ways, I think an explanation is in order. See, sometimes when talking to folks online, the topic comes up on fame. Some people claim I’m already a little famous, and I don’t think I am. Fame is kind of tricky to define, since all it means is that people within certain social circles know your name. Steven King is famous with a lot of people, but I can still find people who don’t read who ask, “Who?”

But the thing is, for me, fame means having enough name recognition to start building on past successes. Movie stars are nobodies until that one role makes people remember their name, and then for a few years, they’re in everything. That’s the actor’s definition of fame, suddenly being the go-to actor for many roles, even if they don’t fit you.

For someone like me, the definition is a little more tricky. I have all sorts of measuring metrics at my disposal, allowing me to define what fame is. If I were to define fame simply as people knowing my name, then I can find proof of my fame through my blog’s statistics on search queries used to reach my site. A great number of folks find me using my name, or my name in combination with a topic. I could also use the number of reviews I can find online, or by the number of people on Goodreads who add a book to their virtual shelves as to-read or “have read.” And if I were looking for simple recognition, then I do have some small measure of fame already.

To my mind, these metrics are ego-driven, and they only reflect a small pool of people. It’s the act of comparison that diminishes my definition of fame and pushes me out of consideration for the term famous. I don’t have huge numbers coming to my blog, usually getting less than 1,000 visitors a month. I get perhaps 3-4 reviews in a great month, but some months there’s no reviews at all. It is nice that my average of good to bad reviews is still highly skewered toward the good side, but if there’s some saturation point where all the good reviews convert to better sales, I haven’t yet reached that point.

I think part of my problem is, I often compare myself to writers who have larger and more vocal fan bases. Some of these people are professional writers, so it can be pointed out that in their case, they have some advantages. They have an easier time with reviewers asking for ARCs of their books, with media outlets asking for interviews, or with past fans volunteering to do reviews on their stuff. But a lot of the writers I follow are fellow indies, and their sales numbers and fan bases make mine look like a raindrop next to a small lake. It is hard not to feel a little envy when an indie writer puts out a Kickstarter campaign for their latest project and gets two or three times over their requested goal in a few days when my attempts at fundraising usually go the whole time period without reaching the minimum goal. Comparing my lack of success to their good fortune is a kind of denial of of my fame status.

For me, fame means being able to use my name alone as a credential. It means putting out a fundraiser and meeting my minimum goal. It means doing a bit of ballyhooing for a new book and having that small effort produce a ripple of sales and reviews. Fame means that the vocal enthusiasm of others for my stuff produces their own ripples, sending my name outside my small social circle.

I do have some fans, and there are reviews. The last fundraiser netted $380 before fees, and since we used Indiegogo, my editor got paid without us meeting her minimum goal. I’m getting sales regularly for many titles, and every once in a while, someone ask for an interview or a guest post. To me, this says I’m on the cusp of having fame, but maybe at the level of a good web-comic artist. Which is to say, I am known by folks for my crafting skills, and that my name branding is effective enough to grant me some measure of financial stability. It means a steadily rising level of blog readers as opposed to tsunami-like spikes that come when I’ve posted a rant.

I’m not there yet, but I feel like I could be someday. And where I’m at doesn’t feel so bad. I’m not vain enough to say I’m famous just because someone searches for my name, but it does feel good to check the search query statistics and see that over half of the people who find my blog get here because they were looking for me by name. It feels good to find a new review I didn’t see before. (Although this is always a better feeling if the review isn’t negative.)

But it’s a bit like a drug. What I have is good, and is perhaps more than I should expect given my position in life. I’m a crazy lady who mostly lives in her bedroom. I can’t tour cons or do book signings, and thus far, I seem to be completely incapable of working with any publisher without it ending in some bad way. I step on the toes of other writers by being a loudmouth, and I burn a lot of bridges because I tend to say exactly what I’m thinking without giving consideration to tact or sugar coating. (This is not a good thing, and I’m not saying those other writers are too sensitive. I’m saying, I have a big mouth, and I say mean things sometimes.)

Despite my bad points, I do have this small dose of fame, and it’s never quite big enough. I want to discover a fan club I didn’t organize. I want to find out I’ve been nominated for a book award without asking for nominations. I want to make enough money from sales of my books to pay my editor for future projects instead of having to throw a fundraiser. For that matter, I’d like to send all my books to my editors instead of picking which projects will get extra polish. I’d like to see enough reviews come out on any given title that the combined sentiments result in new sales. And I’d love to put out print titles because there’s a demand for physical copies of my stuff. Put in simpler terms, I need more encouragement now than I did when I first got started pushing my stuff online.

Maybe it is greedy to want these things. I don’t really need them to validate my crafting skills, and even if I had less validation, I would still be a writer. But a writer with no readers or reviews is an unknown quality, even to themselves. I know now that I don’t suck as a writer only because I have spoken to hundreds of people over the years, and the majority sentiment coming from people is “You’ve got skills, so just keep going.”

And that to me is fame. It’s being good enough to earn a moment of encouragement, whether that be a gushing review or simply a blurb of encouragement passed along on Twitter. It’s little doses of validation that in turn make finding my motivation easier. Fame is the drug that makes all those hours with butt in seat and fingers to the keyboard worthwhile. And like most junkies, the little fixes I get aren’t quite enough to keep me bumped up. Will it ever be enough? I don’t know. But when I get a new fix, man, it’s a hell of rush.