Ah, the track record. One of the must brutal realities of publishing.

An author’s track record is essentially their sales record—how many copies they’ve sold of their books. This number used to be completely inaccessible, and only an author, agent, and publisher would know how many copies a book had really sold. But with the launch of Bookscan in 2001, anyone who subscribes to that service can look up the sales figure for any book and any author. This is both a terrible thing and an excellent thing.

Let’s start with the excellent:
So you’ve published a book, and you worked long and hard to make it incredible, and then you worked even longer and even harder to tell the world that it exists. And hey, people bought it! Lots of people. Now you’re in a very enviable position—you have proven to publishers that you know how to make a book successful and that you’re an author worth investing in. You are golden.

With your happy glow of success, you can have your agent negotiate a more favorable deal for your next book. A publisher will likely offer you more money upfront (in terms of an advance and royalties), while also devoting more resources to your book on the backend (in terms of both money and time spent on marketing, publicity, etc.).

With any luck, your second book will sell even more copies than your first book, and the cycle will repeat. Your career is on an upward trajectory, and suddenly doors are opening left and right for you. You’re happy, your agent is happy, your editor is happy, and your readers are happy and multiplying. Everything is right with the world.

But here’s the terrible part: what if your sales aren’t strong? What if the sales of your first book are lackluster, or what if your second book sells less than your first book?

Suddenly, your publisher isn’t sure they should buy your next book, when they have hundreds of books to choose from. Your agent isn’t sure you’ll be able to find a publisher for your work, and he or she may wonder if you’re living up to your potential.

That sales number stays with you, reminding others that you already had a shot, and it didn’t quite work. You’ll have to work harder than ever to overcome that number and to prove that you’re all in.

Thankfully, it is possible to overcome a weak start. There will always be editors, agents, and publishers who are willing to see the potential in your work and to be patient about your career growth. But the number of people who are able and willing to do that is shrinking. And even if you do find those people, you, the author, should still be impatient and relentless about improving your sales figures. Here’s why:

If you only think of sales figures as numbers and profit, then sure, it could be a questionable thing to obsess over. But sales figures aren’t just numbers. Sales figures are readers, and every single uptick in that number is one more person who is reading the book you labored over. And I don’t know any authors who don’t want more people reading their books.

So yes, a track record can sometimes feel like a ball and chain. And it can be difficult to feel the pressure to sell more copies of each new book. But, as a writer, it shouldn’t just be about keeping your publisher happy. It should be for you–for the satisfaction of knowing that you’re growing as a writer, and that your audience is growing right along with you.