The Margin of Safety: Why most books flop and how to survive anyway
Build creative resilience, raise your income floor, and protect your writing career from the unexpected while planning for long-term author success.
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Hi,
If you’ve been around the publishing block, you’ve probably seen or lived through this experience. An author pours their heart, soul, and bank account into a book. They believe in it. It’s the one. They do the launch, the social media tour, the ads, the newsletter, even the prayers.
And then…nothing more than a handful of sales, maybe a spike that lasts a day or two, followed by silence.
Worse, the author doesn’t just feel disappointed, they feel broken, like the failure of their book means they failed. It’s as if their dream of success just died in real time before it even had half a chance to flourish.
I want to say this is an uncommon fate, but unfortunately it’s shockingly normal.
Most books flop. Even for successful authors, only a small percentage of books are doing the heavy lifting at any given time. You might write twenty titles, and two or three of them will bring in most of your income.
Among even my most successful friends, this holds true. Roughly 20% of your books will generate 80% of your income.
It’s the Pareto Principle of Publishing. It’s not unique to publishing, though. This is how all creative markets work. Some ideas resonate deeper. Some books hit a moment. Some projects just keep selling for years while others fade.
You won’t always know which ones will take off, so your job is to create enough bets that a few of them hit.
It’s not about genius. It’s about durability. That’s where the concept of a margin of safety comes into play
A margin of safety is your buffer between you and catastrophe. It creates a built-in forgiveness that allows for failure without courting collapse.
In finance, it means not risking every dollar on one stock. In authorship, it means not staking your future on one book.
It’s the opposite of going all-in.
Instead of swinging for the fences, you build a foundation that can absorb failure because failure is inevitable. Rejection is part of the job. Launches will flop, algorithms will change, and trends will leave you behind, but if you build for resilience, not just results, you can keep showing up.
When you keep showing up, you give yourself more chances to win. More chances to win means the ability to take more gambles.
This is where most creatives get it backward. They think safety means playing small, but real, intentional safety lets you play bigger.
When you don’t need every launch to succeed…
When you don’t panic if a book underperforms…
When even your worst-case scenario still leaves you standing…
That’s when you get to experiment, make bold choices, try weird things, launch niche ideas, and maybe even take a month off without the sky falling in on you.
In publishing, staying in the game is the biggest advantage you can have, but it’s not just about widening your range of acceptable outcomes.
It’s also about raising your floor.
Imagine every book you launch earns $5,000, not because it went viral, but because you built a system that works with an engaged list, a sales funnel, some direct traffic, and, most importantly, a community that shows up.
Suddenly, you don’t need home runs. You just need steady hits and repeatable processes to create sustainable income.
Success isn’t about having one book blow up. It’s about making sure every book does something.
When you raise your floor, you remove the desperation from your launches. You remove the fear from your creativity. You stop swinging wildly and start playing like a pro.
Most writers chase money. They want six-figure launches, big contracts, and enough passive income to quit the day job.
No shade, those things are great. I’m not here to shame the hustle, but if you study the authors who are truly happy and fulfilled, they don’t have the biggest bank account. They have the most freedom.
The biggest predictor of long-term success isn’t money, it’s freedom.
Freedom to say no.
Freedom to pivot.
Freedom to take time off.
Freedom to write what matters or try something weird without worrying it’ll kill your career. Money helps. Of course it does, but freedom is what lets you use that money wisely. It’s what lets you build something on your terms.
And the best way to create that freedom? Having a margin of safety. It gives you a buffer from the stuff you plan for and the stuff you don’t.
Maybe Amazon changes the algorithm. Maybe a vendor goes under during fulfillment. Maybe your biggest marketing channel dries up overnight. Maybe you get sick, burned out, or even bored.
So how do you plan for the unplannable? By building a generous cushion to protect you when something goes wrong, because you know something will go wrong, even if you don’t know what will happen.
Here’s how to build a buffer into your business with flexibility baked into its operating system.
1. Build redundant systems
A system doesn’t break when a single tactic fails. It bends, re-routes, and learns.
Don’t rely on one platform to reach readers.
Don’t rely on one type of launch to generate sales.
Don’t rely on one kind of product (novels only, or courses only).
Resilient authors don’t memorize scripts. They learn instruments.
2. Design for downturns
Build your business so it still works when you’re tired, sick, burned out, or emotionally wrecked.
Can your marketing keep going even if you vanish for a week?
Can your income continue without a new release every 90 days?
Can you hit pause without the whole machine seizing up?
You don’t have to live in survival mode, but you should engineer for it.
3. Create optionality
The most powerful thing a margin of safety gives you is choice. It means having the ability to:
Cross-sell formats (print, ebook, audio).
Build direct access to your readers (email > social).
Invest in intellectual property you can reuse, remix, or relicense.
Freedom is the ability to move before you're desperate.
4. Set a baseline for survival
Not every season is for growth. Some seasons are just about not falling apart. You should know, right now, what “minimum viable effort” looks like in your business.
Ask:
What’s my minimum publishable schedule?
What’s my essential marketing stack?
What can I automate or delegate when energy is low?
Write it down. Make a checklist. That’s your fallback protocol when the world spins off its axis.
5. Assume you’re wrong
While you should try to remain optimistic, you should also have a contingency plan assuming your next launch might flop, your platform might change, and your brilliant new series might not connect. That’s not pessimism, it’s realism.
Success comes from being ready for being wrong.
When you stake everything on one book, one platform, or one launch, you shrink your odds of success. When you build a margin of safety, you create space that allows you to fail, try again, and grow.
That’s how a career is built. You don’t have to be the best. You just have to keep playing.
Before you go, don’t forget to check out ManuscriptReport.com for a personalized marketing plan designed to improve your book’s positioning. Save hours of research by getting comps, keywords, categories, target audience, blurbs, synopsis, and even unexpected marketing angles all in one place. Use code RUSSELL10 for $10 off.
What do you think?
Have you ever gone all-in on a book or launch that didn’t perform as expected? What did you learn from it?
What’s one area of your author business where you could build more margin of safety right now?
Do you agree that freedom—not money—is the biggest predictor of long-term author success?
Let us know in the comments.
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