Th' brutaliciousness!

Hey, remember when I said it was brutal out there?

You don't?

It was yesterday. Pay attention!

Anyway: now there's data! About the brutality!

Fantasy author Jim C. Hines has compiled data from 246 authors to, in his words, "learn how writers broke in and made that first big novel deal, and to use actual data to confirm or bust some of the myths about making it as a novelist." The data is heavily weighted towards the SciFi/Fantasy end of the spectrum, but the results are still interesting. Read the whole thing, because it's a good read. For the impatient and click-finger challenged, here are a few highlights:

• Of 246 authors, 116 sold their first novel with zero short fiction sales.
  
  
• The average age at the time they sold their first professional novel was 36.2 years old.  The median was also 36, and the mode was 37.
  
  
• Writers worked at their craft for an average of 11.6 years before their first sale.
  
  
• More than half made that first professional novel sale with no connections to either the publisher or the agent.

This is actually a slight lessening of the brutality for me, He Who Cares Not A Whit For Sales At The Moment, because I've been writing for much longer than the average (giving me time to develop a voice) and am at the right age to make a sale (making me...uh...at the right age). But, as Hines says, this data is correlative, not causative. Don't mean a thing if you ain't got that awesome story that knocks 'em dead.

You can also check out Steven Saus’ Analysis of the Survey Data for more statistical geekery if you wish.