One weekend nearly two years ago I wrote a short story. I wrote it Saturday and Sunday, formatted it Sunday night, designed a quick cover, and uploaded it to Amazon before Monday morning came around. I edited it myself (barely) and didn’t read it through again until I purchased a copy on my Kindle the next day.

Everyone will tell you this is a bad idea. Even the biggest (maybe especially the biggest) advocates of self-publishing will tell you that professionalism is important and you can’t go it alone. Hire someone to design your cover, hire someone to properly format the book, and for God’s sake hire a decent editor to make sure your book isn’t full of typos, grammatical errors, and other embarrassing mistakes. Every ounce of my intellect tells me this is true.

But less than a month later my weekend book was selling five copies a day. It quickly became my best selling book, going on to sell over five thousand copies in the first year, earning me about ten thousand dollars. Most publications pay $50 for a short story. And yet, I pumped out ten thousand words in a few days, edited it myself, and made ten grand. This is not what is supposed to happen.

But after publishing nearly twenty short stories in about a years time, I can tell you the quality of editing had nothing to do with my book sales. I hired an editor for some things, I asked friends to do it on others, and on far too many I did it myself. Some books sold and some didn’t. While the content was important, the one thing that didn’t seem to matter at all was how many typos I had per page.

So, what’s going on?

Should we just ditch the editing process, publish as much as humanly possible, and see what hits? Is there some ineffable thing that makes one book successful and another fail to sell? The answer to both is a resounding maybe. But those questions also make us think about why we’re writing in the first place.

Most of us write for a whole number of reasons that vary as much as we do. If the goal is to improve as a writer, then a great editor is probably the most important thing on the list. If you want to write better, make readers turn pages faster, and publish something you can tell your family about, then the choice is clear: hire an editor and a designer and make the best damn book you can even if you only sell fifteen copies. It’s your book and it represents who you are.

But if your goal is to sell as many books as possible, then I think you have a wide variety of options when it comes to quality control. If you write fifteen thrillers, edit them yourself, and make them super compelling, it’s not unreasonable to think you might produce a bestseller. As much as we like to argue for quality, integrity, and good old fashioned hard work, I haven’t seen any evidence to suggests those things lead to books sales. So, if you want to get drunk this weekend and write something crazy that you hope will tap into a cultural vein, then I say go for it. Publish it when you sober up Monday morning and keep me posted.

My current guess is that most readers care more about the story than they do about the details. I remember reading The Divinci Code when it came out and being shocked by the number of typos and errors I found in the book. But I kept turning the pages until I was done and so did everyone else in the world. The story never stopped, it kept us guessing (at least a little) and the action was constant. It wasn’t especially new, or original, but if nothing else the man can tell a story.

So, is the general wisdom wrong? Probably not. An editor is a good idea. Ridding your books of typos is a good idea. Is it the most important factor when it comes to book sales? Probably not.

I’m definitely curious to hear about your experiences.