Most people grow up in a competitive environment. The cutthroat nature of life is pounded into us from an early age through everything from sports to games to curved grading scales to college applications. It doesn’t get better during adulthood, either. Although we may be more mature about handling it, our experiences vying for promotions or buying a house teach us that life is a zero-sum game. That in order for us to win, someone else has to lose. And that can make it hard to cheer for the success of others.
But I have good news for authors—writing isn’t a zero-sum game.
Reading is a form of entertainment. It competes for people’s free time against things like television, board games, and other leisure activities. It’s true that when someone selects a book, they’re choosing it over other options, but that isn’t the whole story. Reading a good novel builds a further love of reading in people. It encourages them to devote more time to reading in the future—to choose books over alternate leisure options—and that expands the market. In other words, one author’s success can create more opportunities for the author community as a whole by increasing the total number of hours spent reading.
So in an intensely competitive world, let’s find a way as authors to go against the grain and root for each other. Because when an author succeeds, that means they’re building a love of reading that all can benefit from. And that might just make you successful one day down the road.