May 6, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode, Julie Satow and Alice Robb welcome five-time author Leigh Stein. From high-school dropout to memoirist, book coach, branding expert and BookTok enthusiast, Stein has experience with virtually every segment of the publishing industry. She talks about how she got hired by the New Yorker without a college degree; what she learned from her first flop; why she decided not to become an agent; and how authors can take control of their book’s trajectory—years after the pub date.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:05):
How Books Work, real talk with editors, agents, and publishing insiders.
Hosted by writers Julie Seitao and Alice Robb.
Leigh Stein is a writer interested in what the internet is doing to us.
She's the author of five books, including the critically acclaimed satirical
novel, Self-Care, which I read. It was brilliant.
(00:27):
And the memoir, Land of Enchantment. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in
the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker Online,
Air Mail, Allure, Elle, Poets and Writers, BuzzFeed, The Cut, Salon, and Plate.
Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you.
Impressive bio-ly. Yeah, so we were really excited to talk to you because you
(00:51):
have published in, like, so many different genres.
And it seems like you've just worn so many different hats in the publishing industry.
And I don't know, I'd love to hear just like a bit about that evolution.
Like what did you start out thinking you were going to do?
And what are you doing now? How do you spend your time now professionally?
(01:16):
I came into the book publishing industry from kind of an interesting direction.
I have a very unconventional educational background.
I dropped out of high school and I moved to New York City to be an actress.
So I went to acting school for a year.
And during that year, I was publishing poetry and short stories on my live journal,
which is like an early blogging website.
This was in the early 2000s. I had my first short story published.
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My experience at acting school led me to realize that I was the nerd that liked
reading the plays and like enjoyed theater history class while everyone else
was like copying each other's exams.
So I was like, maybe I don't want to be an actress. Maybe I want to be a writer.
So that first short story publication was like a signal to me that writing and
being an introvert was more of my path.
(02:01):
So then I just worked in restaurants and wrote.
I moved to New Mexico to write a novel. I was publishing on the internet this whole time.
And then through a series of events, events strange events
I ended up getting a job as the assistant to
Francoise Mouly who's the cover editor of the New Yorker magazine
she's married to Art Spiegelman through a friend that I had made on the internet
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I got the job as her assistant and the HR department at Condé Nast was like
where did you go to college and I was like oh I didn't go to college and they
were like oh okay they were like looking for a reason that that would mean I
couldn't work at the New Yorker but that really wasn't like,
it wasn't actually a rule. So I got in that way.
I worked for Francoise for five years, one year at the New Yorker and four years
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at her easy reader comic book company.
And ever since then, that was around 2008. Ever since then, I have been like
publishing industry adjacent. I've been a published author.
I've written five books. And now I work as a book coach helping other writers
with their careers and their book launch strategy.
So you're not working on new books now yourself that you're really focusing
(03:07):
just on this book coaching business?
Oh, no, I'm writing. I'm working on my sixth book now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is it a novel? Can you think about it?
And I guess, can you talk a bit, can you tell us a bit about,
I guess, like how your different books have come out and what you've learned about,
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I mean, how to promote them and how much that matters or how much we can control?
Strategy has changed through the years because I had a pivotal experience in
2016 when my memoir came out.
So for three years, I was the co-founder and executive director of a literary
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nonprofit organization called Out of the Binders that started from the Binders
Full of Women Writers Facebook group.
I did not start the Facebook group, but I started the conference and I led that
organization for three years, I sold my memoir in part on the size of my platform.
But my platform was that I was the leader of this organization that had 40,000
members in the Facebook group.
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I took it for granted that the members of the internet community would support
my memoir when it came out.
And this was a big miscalculation that kind of changed my career forever because
I didn't ever think of who my audience was besides other writers.
And I think a lot of writers make this mistake.
You see writers on social media kind of promoting their work to show off to
(04:33):
their friends and peers.
You see them doing a lot of bragging and announcements and speaking in the same
lingo, the same vernacular as other writers with MFAs. It's everyone just talking to each other.
And there's such a huge readership beyond other writers. So I sold this memoir to a publisher.
In part because of the size of my platform. And I had the unfortunate experience
(04:56):
of having my memoir come out in August 2016.
You might remember there were some other things happening in 2016.
I had one op-ed go viral in the Washington Post.
At one point, it hit the most read article, even above their Trump coverage.
But that didn't really do anything to generate book sales. And And my book was an absolute flop.
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To date, it has sold 1,400 copies. So you can imagine my disappointment as someone
running, leading a community of 40,000 women and working myself to the bone
running that organization.
I worked seven days a week. I was constantly being drawn into fights on the
internet that I was like the room.
I had to like moderate these arguments. I was just like working so tirelessly
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and so selflessly. And none of those people bought my book.
So after that experience, I learned my lesson and I was like,
I have to learn book marketing.
I didn't know if my next book would ever sell after that experience.
Like after having those low sales numbers, my agent had to resurrect my career from the dead.
And she did. She sold my next book, which was my novel, Self-Care,
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which has been my bestselling book to date.
Not a bestseller, but compared to my other books, it's a personal bestseller.
And I hired a marketing consultant 11 months before the book came out.
I worked so hard on the marketing for that book.
So I really learned a lesson from the experience with Land of Enchantment.
And self-care was a completely different beast.
It sold more copies in the first week than Land of Enchantment sold in its lifetime.
(06:27):
That's a great accomplishment. I wonder, you mentioned you're alluding to sort
of the difference between your viral op-ed, let's say, and book sales.
I know that publicity and And marketing are kind of two buckets that we often
put together, but they're really so different.
You know, us in the media, obviously, we have connections and publicity is one
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thing, but marketing and marketing to non-writers, as you say,
and actually the readers is a whole other beast.
So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that and how it's,
I mean, it's really changed, I think, in the last few years,
because I had a book come out five years ago go in 2019.
And it's like a whole other world now, you know, with this book.
So I'd love to hear what you think.
(07:11):
Yeah. So first I'll say something about viral articles and then I'll talk about
marketing and publicity.
So my memoir sold because I had an essay go viral in 2014.
So in 2014, I wrote an essay for BuzzFeed about my memoirs about an abusive
relationship I was in in my early 20s.
I wrote this article for BuzzFeed about the last summer of my ex-boyfriend's
life before he died in a motorcycle accident and he was manic that summer.
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That article went viral.
It triggered an editor to email my agent and say, is there a book? Can I see the book?
So my agent went on submission to all these editors.
So that was like the golden era of personal essays on the internet,
the 2010s, like the mid 2010s. This happened to a lot of people.
We've all heard stories about the writers that had a modern love essay go viral,
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and that led to a book deal.
So it used to be that a viral essay was like proof of concept.
It proved to the book publishing industry that there's an audience for this
story at a book length version.
So that helped me sell the book to a publisher, but my Washington Post op-ed
did not help me sell copies.
And I think it's because the readers on the internet, if they've read the article,
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they're like, why do I need to buy the book? I read the story.
And so I think some publicity departments in publishing are still behind.
Book publishing is just slow in general. So I think a lot of professionals are
still operating under the idea that these opinion pieces sell books,
these personal essays or these op-eds sell books, and they encourage writers to write them.
Writers are often writing these for free, for no money, just for exposure.
(08:39):
I don't think they sell books. I think TikTok sells books.
There's an author named Rose Hackman who has blown up on TikTok.
She wrote a book called Emotional Labor.
Her agent told me, like, there are more comments on that video saying,
what's the book? Where can I buy it? Than there would ever be on an opinion piece.
So I think TikTok is much more powerful. Now, the difference between marketing
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and publicity is that publicity can only happen once.
Your book only comes out on one Tuesday, that's it.
Your publicist is working tirelessly, I hope, to generate as much media attention
as she or he can for that launch week.
You're trying to get maximum sales, maximum coverage that first week,
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and then your turn is over.
It's someone else's turn. Unless something else newsworthy happens,
like it gets sold for TV or film, you get a little burst of publicity.
But the reason I decided to learn marketing is that marketing can happen forever.
I can still market my novel self-care. It's been out for three and a half years
and I can still market that book because marketing is just making readers aware
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of something and and showing them why they would like this. So I can market a book for years.
I can't publicize a book for years. It's only newsworthy at the time that it's new. Yeah.
What you were saying about how op-eds don't necessarily sell books reminded
me of, well, it's like what you were saying, though, writers think so much about other writers.
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And like as writers, we pay so much attention to bylines and we read the little
italicized sentence at the bottom that says this was drawn from a memoir.
But it's like most people don't even look at that, which I realized when I was
promoting my book about dreams that just come out in 2018. and I had an op-ed
in the New York Times that was drawn from the book.
(10:27):
And I also expected this to just be like a magic bullet.
And I was at a party like that week and I felt someone had written a book about dreams.
And they started telling me about this really interesting op-ed they had read
in the New York Times about dreams.
And they had no idea that it was related to a book. Yeah, that's so funny.
It's like a Rebecca Solnit moment.
(10:49):
Men explain my own book to me.
Yeah. So like I want writers to think when they people are so negative about
personal branding, I'm not negative about personal branding.
Personal branding is just what do you want to be known for?
You want to be known as the go to person on X. If there's an editor at the New
York Times, that's like, man, I wish we had an expert who could write about X.
I wish we had an expert who could write something about ballet.
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Who do we know who writes about ballet? You want them to think of Alice.
That's your brand. But but on in their Twitter bios and Instagram bios,
writers put their like literary magazine bio, which is like her short stories
have appeared in X, Y and Z.
But it's like, no, what do you want to be known for? You want to be known as
the writer who writes about this specific niche.
And for me, it's writing about Internet culture. That's what all my books have
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in common. And it's what I'm uniquely obsessed with.
So when when a writer is thinking about their personal brand,
it's like, what are you obsessed with that no one else is?
Yeah, I thought the name of this thing is hot. Yeah.
It's interesting to, like, tie together, tie together, to think of tying together
different themes, like, different genres, sorry, through a common theme,
which I guess is what you've done through, like, yeah, nonfiction and novels and...
(11:58):
Yeah, I mean, one of the things is I do think a lot of writers have sort of an innate,
you know, feeling that comes up when you think about branding and like,
you know, the idea of like publicity, like we were saying, it's much more like
understandable for writers.
Marketing and the idea of selling and branding yourself, it's so sort of not
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what the purpose of our writing is for.
So it's really hard, I think, for a lot of writers to make that transition. you've
been able to do it in such a like organic way that
doesn't feel like you sold out or it's super over cheesy or
whatever all the things that writers worry about when they're
trying to kind of push their products i do you have like advice or thoughts
about how or why you think your branding has sort of stayed really kind of genuine
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and doesn't feel sort of overly pushy or something that I think a lot of writers are afraid of?
I think what writers are uncomfortable doing is selling themselves.
They really resent having to do self-promotion on the internet.
But what you see me doing is not self-promotion. That's why it doesn't feel gross.
I'm not on camera telling you about my novel over and over again.
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That's what most writers do
when they get on TikTok. They create these video ads for their own books.
And it's cringy. So what I do when I'm online is I talk about the things that
I'm interested in that I think my audience is interested in.
So I so like, I keep I keep playing with my bio on TikTok.
I keep changing my bio. This is fun for me. It's like wearing a different outfit
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or something like tweaking my bio to try to think about what do I want to be known as on TikTok?
What do I what am I doing on TikTok that's different than anybody else?
And so this week, I changed it to aging millennial book talk creator account,
because I'm just kind of making fun of the fact that I'm like a crone. I'm 39.
I got a comment on a video recently that was like, wow, you don't look 35 and
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I'm 39. And I was like, God bless you.
So I think I'm self-deprecating. I don't take myself too seriously. And I'm not doing sales.
The other thing that I've done that I've been really successful at and that
I help my clients do is that I did a whole outreach campaign to book talk creators
so that they made the videos about my book.
That's what you want. You want the appearance of viral word of mouth marketing.
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You want to make it look like everyone else is talking about your book.
And I think writers do this because writers send advanced copies of their books
to their coolest friends.
They try to get the most famous writers they know to promote their book, which is a strategy.
But if those writers are only being followed by other writers,
again, we have this echo chamber where it's just writers telling other writers
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about new releases by writers.
You've got to reach the readers. So figuring out how to get your book to readers
that would actually like it, this is marketing.
It's figuring out who is your ideal reader? Who is the person that would love your book?
Is it a Gen Xer? Is it a millennial? Is it a mom?
Is it someone who doesn't have kids? Is it like a 26-year-old trying to make
her way in the big city? Like, who is that ideal reader?
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Where is she on the internet? How do you get your book to her so that she could
tell her friends about it?
I find that to be fun and less, I don't know, it's so emotionally fraught because
writers, we feel envious of each other. We feel in competition with each other.
We're, as Mary Carr would say it, like always checking to see where we are in the line.
Like, are we at the front of the line? Are we at the back of the line?
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Like, who's ahead of us in line?
And the Internet really exaggerates that because people are sharing their good news all the time.
And I just want to tell people, like, forget it. Like, don't worry about it.
Like, your job is to sell your book to readers, not to other writers.
Do you think that your background as an actor is helpful in this?
I've often wished that I could hire an actor to play me around my book releases.
(15:48):
That's funny. I don't I guess I, you know, because I was never really an actor like I just studied it.
Like I'm like I reached like high school level acting, but I taught it to kids.
I taught musical theater to kids for years.
I think it's my natural. It's my natural. What's the word? My knack for teaching more than acting.
I think people who are teachers do really well on TikTok because the audience
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on TikTok wants to learn.
So I think of myself more like in teacher mode when I'm on camera than an acting
mode. Also, I think it's funny.
Like I try to be really natural on TikTok. But whenever I watch my videos back,
I just sound like a bossy eight year old explaining something.
But I think that is my that is actually my authentic self. Like that's not put
on. I probably sound like that right now on this podcast.
(16:33):
Anyone's listening. It's just like, I like explaining and teaching.
Like when I was a child, my friends would come over to my house.
I'd be like, let's play school. But I had to be the teacher.
I would never let anyone else be the teacher. So that's my default mode.
Yeah, you keep talking about TikTok. I just wonder, is that really where your
focus is right now instead of Instagram or I don't know?
I mean, I guess it depends on your readers. I think my readers tend to be old women is more my jam.
(16:59):
So I think Facebook for me, for instance, I've connected with,
you know, although my Facebook was just hacked.
So it's kind of devastating trying to navigate that.
But yeah, I just wonder, you are very focused on TikTok.
Is that your thing now? Yeah, TikTok's my thing. But Julie, your instincts are
totally right to be on Facebook.
And I think Facebook's having a renaissance. You should be where your audience is.
(17:23):
So I got on TikTok just because of how powerful BookTok is for selling books.
I just became curious about it.
BookTok sold 54 million print books in 2023.
It's 7% of all print book sales are happening on TikTok. And I just think as
someone who works in the publishing industry, I have to understand this new platform.
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And also as an extremely online person, I'm excited by learning a new platform. I think that's fun.
So I think also there are a lot of stereotypes about TikTok and the kinds of
books that do well on BookTok.
People assume that it is just fantasy and romance, two genres I do not read.
But there is an entire literary fiction corner of TikTok, and that's where I
live. So I'm excited and happy on TikTok, but I do not think everyone needs
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to be on there, especially if your audience is like over 35.
I don't think you need to be on TikTok. I'm also really excited this year about Substack.
I think Substack is the future for writers because it allows them to earn income
directly from their audience instead of from mainstream media.
We've seen tens of thousands of people get laid off from digital media.
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And I just don't see a future there.
Like hoping for a staff job is like hoping for a $500,000 book advance,
like three people are going to get them.
And the rest of the writers have to figure out how they're going to earn income for their writing.
So I'm, I'm excited about Substack and TikTok for the future. Sure.
I just want to ask, this is more of an observation, but I'd love to know your thoughts.
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So I write narrative nonfiction, and a lot of my friends, though,
write historical fiction or more novels, literary fiction.
It seems like the marketing of what most of my...
Traditional narrative nonfiction friends are doing versus what my fiction writing
friends are doing is so different.
(19:14):
And I would put memoir more with like the fiction group where it's much more
like, you know, focused on, you know, Instagram and TikTok and all of that and
being there in those spaces.
Whereas like it feels as if the nonfiction people tend to be much more sort
of more old-fashioned, less excited or willing to do as much out there publicity.
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I don't know. I wonder what you think, if you see a difference in those two.
I know a lot more about memoir than I do narrative nonfiction.
For narrative nonfiction, how much does your platform matter to sell a book?
And how much is it really your journalism chops to sell the book? Would you say, Julie?
It's so hard to know because no one's telling me like, it's your platform.
(19:58):
I mean, I do not have a bajillion followers, you know, I think probably bylines
in the times or whatever is helpful, I would assume or my, you know, I don't really know.
But yes, it doesn't seem like I also think that what I've noticed is the life
cycle of fiction and memoir is very fast is much faster.
(20:19):
Whereas, you know, you're always promoting and you're always writing a new book.
And a lot of people are, you know, publishing books every two years or a year
and a half or whatever it means.
Whereas with nonfiction, it's much more like you've taken three years and you're
keeping your platform, I guess, by your freelance pieces here and there,
you know, where you're freelancing, but you're mostly,
you know, you're not really coming out with a book for three,
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five years or something.
So I don't, it just seems like a different animal, but I don't know. That's just...
Yeah. So for certain categories of fiction, like historical fiction,
romance, contemporary romance, women's fiction, I think a lot of the marketing
that's done by the publisher is in the packaging and the promotion of the book
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to say to the reader, this book is like that other book that you already love, right?
They make it look like that book. that's why there's so many like
the so-and-so's wife the wife of the so-and-so
the daughter of such and such there's like so many books that have the
same title the Paris wife but then there were all those derivative the thriller
titles that all look the same like she's been gone she's already left it's for
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the readers of the similar books so that's a way to so the good news for authors
of novels is that you don't have to have a platform you just have to write a
book that's similar to book that's already successful,
but also unique and different. That's the only thing you have to do.
For me, I mean, I've, I've my challenge, I'm on submission right now,
which I won't go into too much detail for my novel.
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But I think my challenge is that I'm not, I'm not writing a commercial novel.
I'm writing a literary novel that has a plot. And I think I'm hard to pigeonhole.
And so they're not really sure where to put me because I, I've written a novel
with a disappearance in it, but it's not a straight mystery or thriller.
It's a literary novel. So I think on the next submission round,
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I'm already thinking like, how do I pitch my book differently?
So I'm really trying to tweak the pitch to communicate what it is,
but it's hard because I'm trying to do my own thing. And this is partly why I get,
I'm irritated as an optimist about platform and brand because I don't write to the market.
I don't know how to write a straight romance novel and cash those checks.
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That's not the kind of writer that I am.
I want to write the kind of weird novels that interest me personally,
and I want to figure out how to market them.
It's difficult to do what I'm doing, but I want to stay true to myself.
And I want to hold on to my faith and belief that there are readers for my strange
book if I can figure out how to describe it to those readers.
Okay, so we were talking about marketing and positioning for different kinds of books.
(22:52):
Yes. And I think those novelists working in more commercial genres,
the expectation, like in Annabelle Monaghan, Annabelle is writing a book a year.
That's the calendar that she's on. That sounds really intense to me.
I don't think that I could write that fast.
There's a whole other conversation to be had about narrative nonfiction because
as book advances are getting smaller and smaller, it's like who can afford to
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spend three years writing a deeply reported book.
There was a big piece in Esquire. I don't know if you guys put links in the show notes,
but there was a big piece in Esquire last year about what's happened to kind
of sports journalism and like long form books were used to follow like a baseball
team for a year, like Moneyball, like that kind of a book that they just don't
publish, even though those books are hugely popular,
no one can afford to write them based on the advances.
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So I think having a platform, even though you don't need a platform as a novelist
to sell your novel, having a platform and a brand can help you stay in business.
It can help you sell your next book. It demonstrates that you have a following
for your work and it can help you sell your next book.
So I think it's going to end up being critical for writers, even though they
(23:56):
kick and scream doing it.
How do you balance the time it takes to write your own books with maintaining
your platform and coaching other writers?
So I love running my own business because it lets me set up my own schedule
and it lets me kind of adjust the flow of work in and out.
I haven't had a full-time day job since 2009.
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I just am not very suited for a nine to five.
I can't stand being bored. Like I would rather work seven days a week than work
nine to five, Monday through Friday. It's just my personality.
So I love running my own business, working with writers. And in my ideal world,
I write my own work in the mornings and then I spend the rest of my days editing
(24:38):
other people's work or talking on calls with my clients.
And then the platform stuff, the internet stuff, it's just my hobby.
It's just what I actually enjoy. It's not something that I schedule.
Some people like baking or going camping or taking salsa dancing classes.
I don't do any of that stuff. I just go on the internet. I'm a very indoor person
and my social life is on the internet. So I don't have to really schedule it out.
(24:59):
It can be frustrating because I do notice the TikTok algorithm is a very demanding boss.
And when I take time off TikTok, It does not reward my videos with any views.
It makes me earn back the attention of TikTok.
So that can be kind of demoralizing.
And so I've been trying to get back on TikTok lately, and I'm trying to like
(25:20):
produce videos every day because then those videos get attention.
So it's brutal. But other than that, I don't really feel pressure to produce.
I do send out a weekly Sunday newsletter. That's another thing that I do every week.
So for people who are intimidated by what I'm describing, I think figuring out
what's realistic for you in your life.
(25:42):
The other recommendation I would have for people is like run a 30-day experiment.
Experiment so for 30 days you're going to post every day on instagram whatever
the platform is you're most comfortable with just try to do a post a day for
30 days make it fun for yourself i did,
30 days of book publishing advice when threads which
is like the instagram twitter platform when threads first started i was like
(26:04):
i'll just do this for 30 days and i was like running out of ideas and it was
not going very well and then on day 27 the main threads account reposted me
And then I got tons of engagement and tons of new followers and tons of people
coming over to my sub stack.
So people will notice your work if you just do something consistently over time.
So consistency and not necessarily publicizing your own book or even stories
(26:30):
within the book or teasing it, but really other topics that are like book adjacent, essentially.
Yeah, another fun one I saw on threads was Megan.
Is it Megan Collins?
I might mix up her. It might be Megan Collins, but she independent of me.
We didn't have the we had the same idea at the same time, but unrelated.
She decided for 30 days. She had a new novel coming out called Thicker Than Water.
(26:53):
So for 30 days, she posted a photo on threads of something that's thicker than water. her.
So she posted like hummus, honey.
And that was just her fun little game. It was promoting her book,
but it was fun. And it was like a game with the audience.
So yeah, I would say you want to be creating content around something that's
genuinely interesting to you.
(27:15):
I would imagine for you, Julie, it could be something from your research around the book.
It could be if it's on Instagram, it could be photographs if it's on Facebook,
engaging your audience in a conversation.
So maybe it's questions that trigger people's nostalgia and memories.
I think your book's about department stores. I just went to in Chicago.
I'm from Chicago. And over the holidays, I went to a museum exhibit all about
(27:38):
the vintage department stores of Chicago, like Marshall Fields.
It was really cool. But I think like people love they love going back down memory lane.
They love these memories of
like in Chicago, going to the Walnut Room with Grandma at Christmastime.
You know, people love that. So you open the door for them to have a conversation with you.
And that's how you get engagement rather than saying, hi, I'm sorry,
I have to do another one of these posts.
(28:00):
But I just want to remind you that my book is coming out like no one wants to
do that. No one wants to beg. It's not dignified.
Okay, that makes me feel better because I have been putting Facebook ads out
or posts or whatever about like, your memories of like, oh, this department
store, that is what I'm exactly going on here.
So thank you. Thank you, Lily. But I hear that.
(28:20):
I mean, I think, you know, I guess one thing I would like to ask you,
which is not actually relevant to that, but an earlier point you were bringing
up, which is what exactly do you do with authors when you're working with them?
Are you doing publicity and marketing?
Are you doing editing of their manuscripts?
Like, are you doing the whole shebang? Because it seems like you're doing all
(28:42):
the different aspects. So I wonder if you could tell us about your business a little bit.
Yeah. So I'll say, like, over time, I started my business in 2017.
And over time, I've gotten more into the marketing side of it because it's fun
for me. And also, it's easier if the book has already sold.
So I have been through experiences with clients where I've worked so hard on
their book proposal. who have worked so hard on their book. I believe in their
(29:03):
book. I think it's going to sell, and then it doesn't sell.
It's very demoralizing for me, too. I really am selective with products I take on.
I feel guilty taking on projects if I don't think that that book could actually
sell, so I really work with writers if I think their book has a strong chance
of selling, and then sometimes it doesn't, and that can be really hard.
But I can give you just a short case study of an author that I worked with named Sarah Vogel.
(29:27):
She was one of my very first clients that I took on, she sent me an email like
three months after I started my business.
And she said that for 30 years, she's been wanting to write a memoir about a
class action lawsuit that she fought in the 1980s in North Dakota on behalf of family farmers.
And when she sent me this email, I don't think I could have even told you what
(29:48):
a class action lawsuit was like. That's how ignorant I was. But I was like, let's have a phone call.
I started working with her in 2018. And.
What I came to realize is basically she has like an Erin Brockovich story from
North Dakota. She was a single mom of a toddler.
She took on these farmers. The Reagan administration was shutting them down.
And she took them on even though they couldn't afford to pay her.
(30:09):
She lost her own home to foreclosure while she was battling farmers.
And she went up against the Reagan administration and she won.
And I pitched this book to a literary agent. So I made a connection between
a literary agent I knew and between Sarah.
I worked on her proposal. We spent a year just on the book proposal.
The book proposal was 100 pages long.
I was talking to her every week. It was in a really intense.
(30:30):
This is an unusually intense experience, but it was like an insane story.
We sold it as like Grapes of Wrath meets Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy meets
Heartland by Sarah Smarsh.
A lot of people don't know about the 1980s farm crisis, that it was the worst
farm crisis since the 30s.
Then I worked with her for over a year editing the book that she was writing.
(30:51):
So I stayed through past the book proposal to writing the book.
I went to North Dakota when the book came out. Like I was in the room when like
a guy at the back of the room stood up and said, I don't know if you remember
me, but you saved my farm.
It was like an incredible experience. I'm so proud of that book.
And basically she'd been wanting to write it since the time I was born.
(31:11):
So she'd been wanting to write it since the early 80s, which is when I was born.
And so to bring this book to life, it's published by Bloomsbury.
It's called The Farmer's Lawyer. That was an extremely rewarding experience.
So that's like that's an example of like a nonfiction book proposal that I worked
on and that a client that I've worked on with many years for many years.
Other books, sometimes people come to me when they have a book under contract
(31:34):
and they just need someone to provide accountability and who's editing their
pages every week as they're writing them.
I have found in my experience that editors don't have time to edit books.
So I'm brought in as like an editor who's paid directly, you know,
the writer pays me directly to edit their book because their editor doesn't
really have time to edit their book. So I provide accountability.
(31:54):
And then I have some clients that come to me when they have their book coming
out and I help them with this kind of outreach to book talk influencers,
books to grammars, to let them know about the book ahead of time.
So that's almost like PR marketing.
You would think the marketing department at the publisher is doing this,
but again, they're stretched thin, they don't have time.
And from what I've been told from book marketing professionals in publishing,
(32:20):
my emails directly to these creators have a much higher engagement and success
rate because it's coming directly from me, like a human being,
like I'm not like a cog in the machine sending out all these publicity emails
that creators aren't even responding to because they're overwhelmed.
Having these direct relationships with creators, even though it's time consuming,
it can really go a long way.
(32:42):
Well, I'm sure a lot of what you're describing sounds a lot like the work of an agent.
Do you think of your, I mean, you know, working on a proposal,
coaching it through being like an extra editor, like, have you ever thought about being an agent?
(33:04):
Yes, I actually spent all summer considering becoming an agent and there's not enough money in it.
So agents don't have time to do what I'm doing. They can't talk to a writer.
You know, I'm on the Zoom. Sometimes I'm on a Zoom with someone for two hours,
you know, working on their book. You know, my clients cry to me.
I mean, it's very emotional.
It's very intense and an intense, close relationship. It's a lot of hours and
(33:26):
agents don't have time for this. So I got all this advice over the summer.
I talked to multiple writers about representing them.
I didn't promise anything. I just had these preliminary conversations.
I got all this advice about being an agent. And when I crunched the numbers,
when I crunched the numbers, it's like if I had a good year,
if I had a good year, five years in a row, I might make like $25,000 to $50,000
(33:47):
a year for years before you.
I can send you the link to my sub stack where I broke down the numbers for all
this, but there's just, it's so much work that you hope might one day pay off.
And like, you're the agent of lessons in chemistry or something like you're
hoping that one day you'll get a gusher that will just pay you forever.
(34:07):
But I can't afford to take that risk.
So running my own business where I know what my My income is coming in every
month and I can plan ahead much more stable for me and allows me to continue to write.
So do authors pay you by the hour?
I'm sure people listening would like to know, like, how does it work?
And I mean, you have to you obviously pick and choose which projects are going to take on.
(34:31):
Yeah, it's hard for me to answer that. I'm not I'm not taking on any projects
right now. So this isn't a sales pitch.
But I, I, I usually work with people, but I develop a proposal for them based
on their specific needs.
And we work together for a series of, of months. Yeah, it is. It is interesting.
I wonder if, you know, there's been so much talk about how publishers,
so many people in the publishing industry are overworked and underpaid,
(34:54):
right? That's the thing now with everything.
And whether it's, you know, the publicists, like you said, or actually agents
who I know are, you know, usually, you know, have their own businesses.
But is that is that has that gotten worse in your opinion in recent years?
Or is that just like a lot of talk and people feel that way?
Or is it really, you know, significantly different in terms of the amount of work?
(35:17):
Let's say publicity teams are expected to work, you know, the number of books
are expected to deal with, you know, any given week or something compared to
a few years ago. My impression is that it's gotten worse.
Salaries really have not gone up in publishing. It's very hard for younger editors
to advance to more senior positions.
(35:38):
I know of one editor who got a quote unquote promotion to acquire even more
books for a different imprint than the one she was already at.
And it came with no raise.
So that was her promotion. Did she do it?
Yeah, she did. She had no choice. There are just, I think the thing that we
(35:58):
don't talk about enough is just how many writers there are. There are so many writers.
So many people have burned out on publishing and left their full-time salaried
positions to become literary agents.
So now there are even more literary agents. And that sounds like a good thing
for writers, except those literary agents are all submitting to the same few editors.
(36:19):
There have been major layoffs at the big fives, like at Penguin Random House.
Those editors have not been replaced.
They have just dispensed that work to the junior staff members.
So the volume of submissions is overwhelming.
So even as there are more writers and more agents, there are still only like
(36:39):
20 imprints you can send a literary novel to.
That's it. Like you can send it to 20 editors. And if those 20 editors are not
interested in your literary novel, it's donezo.
You don't have anyone else to send your book to. So there aren't unlimited editors.
There aren't unlimited imprints. There is a finite number of those things.
And then there's like tens of thousands of writers trying to get a spot at one
(37:02):
of those finite places. So it's worse than it's ever been.
Yeah, I made this joke yesterday in my newsletter, but like it's a compliment
to not get ghosted right now.
Like if someone replies to your email, that's a compliment, even if it's to
say, I'm sorry, I'm going to pass.
That is that's the level of professionalism that we're expecting from people
who work in publishing industry right now.
(37:24):
Well, thank you so much. I wonder, you know, it's obviously,
I mean, I guess that's a kind of a bummer way to end.
There's so much bad news, obviously, out there, so much competition,
lower advances, all that stuff. Can we end with something positive?
What do you think? I mean, maybe the good thing is, you know,
that authors do have more of a platform, you know, they are developing their
(37:46):
sub stacks, or they are getting out there and connecting with audiences.
I mean, I don't know. So I mean, I'm late.
Yeah, yeah. This is why I'm happy about TikTok and why I'm happy about the success
of Colleen Hoover. Everyone likes to make fun of Colleen Hoover novels.
But Colleen Hoover is bringing all these people to reading. All these people
that don't consider themselves readers are suddenly hooked on Colleen Hoover novels.
(38:08):
And so I feel like there's an opportunity to say, oh, you like that?
You might like this, too.
I also heard the owners of the Ripped Bodice bookstore in Brooklyn.
This is a romance-only bookstore. store. They are these millennial sisters who own the bookstore.
And they said, you know, the people coming into the bookstore are so young. They're young readers.
So young people, there's a stereotype that young people are just on their phones,
(38:28):
and they're addicted to their phones, and they're not reading.
Young people are reading novels, fiction sales are up.
So that makes me excited. There is a whole new generation of readers coming up.
And we can reach them, we can talk to them about books.
So I think writers, writers who can get excited about who who their audience
is, and who can make connections online, one reader at a time.
(38:52):
That's really what makes your whole day. When I get an email that's like,
I just wanted to tell you how much I love self-care.
I was texting pages of it to my friends. This is an email I got a couple weeks
ago. That made my whole week.
That's one reader that really is the dream reader for self-care.
She really got it. I love getting an email from her. And that's why we do this.
We have the fantasy that we're going to be in a sold-out auditorium talking
(39:14):
about our books, But it's just one reader at a time that really gets our book.
That's what keeps us going. I agree with that. Thanks for listening.
This has been an episode of How Books Work.
Join us on our next episode as we continue to explore.
Music.
Music.
(00:05):
How Books Work, real talk with editors, agents, and publishing insiders.
Hosted by writers Julie Seitao and Alice Robb.
Leigh Stein is a writer interested in what the internet is doing to us.
She's the author of five books, including the critically acclaimed satirical
novel, Self-Care, which I read. It was brilliant.
(00:27):
And the memoir, Land of Enchantment. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in
the New York Times, the Washington Post, The New Yorker Online,
Air Mail, Allure, Elle, Poets and Writers, BuzzFeed, The Cut, Salon, and Plate.
Thank you very much for coming on. Thank you.
Impressive bio-ly. Yeah, so we were really excited to talk to you because you
(00:51):
have published in, like, so many different genres.
And it seems like you've just worn so many different hats in the publishing industry.
And I don't know, I'd love to hear just like a bit about that evolution.
Like what did you start out thinking you were going to do?
And what are you doing now? How do you spend your time now professionally?
(01:16):
I came into the book publishing industry from kind of an interesting direction.
I have a very unconventional educational background.
I dropped out of high school and I moved to New York City to be an actress.
So I went to acting school for a year.
And during that year, I was publishing poetry and short stories on my live journal,
which is like an early blogging website.
This was in the early 2000s. I had my first short story published.
(01:39):
My experience at acting school led me to realize that I was the nerd that liked
reading the plays and like enjoyed theater history class while everyone else
was like copying each other's exams.
So I was like, maybe I don't want to be an actress. Maybe I want to be a writer.
So that first short story publication was like a signal to me that writing and
being an introvert was more of my path.
(02:01):
So then I just worked in restaurants and wrote.
I moved to New Mexico to write a novel. I was publishing on the internet this whole time.
And then through a series of events, events strange events
I ended up getting a job as the assistant to
Francoise Mouly who's the cover editor of the New Yorker magazine
she's married to Art Spiegelman through a friend that I had made on the internet
(02:23):
I got the job as her assistant and the HR department at Condé Nast was like
where did you go to college and I was like oh I didn't go to college and they
were like oh okay they were like looking for a reason that that would mean I
couldn't work at the New Yorker but that really wasn't like,
it wasn't actually a rule. So I got in that way.
I worked for Francoise for five years, one year at the New Yorker and four years
(02:46):
at her easy reader comic book company.
And ever since then, that was around 2008. Ever since then, I have been like
publishing industry adjacent. I've been a published author.
I've written five books. And now I work as a book coach helping other writers
with their careers and their book launch strategy.
So you're not working on new books now yourself that you're really focusing
(03:07):
just on this book coaching business?
Oh, no, I'm writing. I'm working on my sixth book now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Is it a novel? Can you think about it?
And I guess, can you talk a bit, can you tell us a bit about,
I guess, like how your different books have come out and what you've learned about,
(03:28):
I mean, how to promote them and how much that matters or how much we can control?
Strategy has changed through the years because I had a pivotal experience in
2016 when my memoir came out.
So for three years, I was the co-founder and executive director of a literary
(03:48):
nonprofit organization called Out of the Binders that started from the Binders
Full of Women Writers Facebook group.
I did not start the Facebook group, but I started the conference and I led that
organization for three years, I sold my memoir in part on the size of my platform.
But my platform was that I was the leader of this organization that had 40,000
members in the Facebook group.
(04:09):
I took it for granted that the members of the internet community would support
my memoir when it came out.
And this was a big miscalculation that kind of changed my career forever because
I didn't ever think of who my audience was besides other writers.
And I think a lot of writers make this mistake.
You see writers on social media kind of promoting their work to show off to
(04:33):
their friends and peers.
You see them doing a lot of bragging and announcements and speaking in the same
lingo, the same vernacular as other writers with MFAs. It's everyone just talking to each other.
And there's such a huge readership beyond other writers. So I sold this memoir to a publisher.
In part because of the size of my platform. And I had the unfortunate experience
(04:56):
of having my memoir come out in August 2016.
You might remember there were some other things happening in 2016.
I had one op-ed go viral in the Washington Post.
At one point, it hit the most read article, even above their Trump coverage.
But that didn't really do anything to generate book sales. And And my book was an absolute flop.
(05:18):
To date, it has sold 1,400 copies. So you can imagine my disappointment as someone
running, leading a community of 40,000 women and working myself to the bone
running that organization.
I worked seven days a week. I was constantly being drawn into fights on the
internet that I was like the room.
I had to like moderate these arguments. I was just like working so tirelessly
(05:40):
and so selflessly. And none of those people bought my book.
So after that experience, I learned my lesson and I was like,
I have to learn book marketing.
I didn't know if my next book would ever sell after that experience.
Like after having those low sales numbers, my agent had to resurrect my career from the dead.
And she did. She sold my next book, which was my novel, Self-Care,
(06:02):
which has been my bestselling book to date.
Not a bestseller, but compared to my other books, it's a personal bestseller.
And I hired a marketing consultant 11 months before the book came out.
I worked so hard on the marketing for that book.
So I really learned a lesson from the experience with Land of Enchantment.
And self-care was a completely different beast.
It sold more copies in the first week than Land of Enchantment sold in its lifetime.
(06:27):
That's a great accomplishment. I wonder, you mentioned you're alluding to sort
of the difference between your viral op-ed, let's say, and book sales.
I know that publicity and And marketing are kind of two buckets that we often
put together, but they're really so different.
You know, us in the media, obviously, we have connections and publicity is one
(06:48):
thing, but marketing and marketing to non-writers, as you say,
and actually the readers is a whole other beast.
So I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that and how it's,
I mean, it's really changed, I think, in the last few years,
because I had a book come out five years ago go in 2019.
And it's like a whole other world now, you know, with this book.
So I'd love to hear what you think.
(07:11):
Yeah. So first I'll say something about viral articles and then I'll talk about
marketing and publicity.
So my memoir sold because I had an essay go viral in 2014.
So in 2014, I wrote an essay for BuzzFeed about my memoirs about an abusive
relationship I was in in my early 20s.
I wrote this article for BuzzFeed about the last summer of my ex-boyfriend's
life before he died in a motorcycle accident and he was manic that summer.
(07:33):
That article went viral.
It triggered an editor to email my agent and say, is there a book? Can I see the book?
So my agent went on submission to all these editors.
So that was like the golden era of personal essays on the internet,
the 2010s, like the mid 2010s. This happened to a lot of people.
We've all heard stories about the writers that had a modern love essay go viral,
(07:55):
and that led to a book deal.
So it used to be that a viral essay was like proof of concept.
It proved to the book publishing industry that there's an audience for this
story at a book length version.
So that helped me sell the book to a publisher, but my Washington Post op-ed
did not help me sell copies.
And I think it's because the readers on the internet, if they've read the article,
(08:16):
they're like, why do I need to buy the book? I read the story.
And so I think some publicity departments in publishing are still behind.
Book publishing is just slow in general. So I think a lot of professionals are
still operating under the idea that these opinion pieces sell books,
these personal essays or these op-eds sell books, and they encourage writers to write them.
Writers are often writing these for free, for no money, just for exposure.
(08:39):
I don't think they sell books. I think TikTok sells books.
There's an author named Rose Hackman who has blown up on TikTok.
She wrote a book called Emotional Labor.
Her agent told me, like, there are more comments on that video saying,
what's the book? Where can I buy it? Than there would ever be on an opinion piece.
So I think TikTok is much more powerful. Now, the difference between marketing
(09:00):
and publicity is that publicity can only happen once.
Your book only comes out on one Tuesday, that's it.
Your publicist is working tirelessly, I hope, to generate as much media attention
as she or he can for that launch week.
You're trying to get maximum sales, maximum coverage that first week,
(09:21):
and then your turn is over.
It's someone else's turn. Unless something else newsworthy happens,
like it gets sold for TV or film, you get a little burst of publicity.
But the reason I decided to learn marketing is that marketing can happen forever.
I can still market my novel self-care. It's been out for three and a half years
and I can still market that book because marketing is just making readers aware
(09:43):
of something and and showing them why they would like this. So I can market a book for years.
I can't publicize a book for years. It's only newsworthy at the time that it's new. Yeah.
What you were saying about how op-eds don't necessarily sell books reminded
me of, well, it's like what you were saying, though, writers think so much about other writers.
(10:06):
And like as writers, we pay so much attention to bylines and we read the little
italicized sentence at the bottom that says this was drawn from a memoir.
But it's like most people don't even look at that, which I realized when I was
promoting my book about dreams that just come out in 2018. and I had an op-ed
in the New York Times that was drawn from the book.
(10:27):
And I also expected this to just be like a magic bullet.
And I was at a party like that week and I felt someone had written a book about dreams.
And they started telling me about this really interesting op-ed they had read
in the New York Times about dreams.
And they had no idea that it was related to a book. Yeah, that's so funny.
It's like a Rebecca Solnit moment.
(10:49):
Men explain my own book to me.
Yeah. So like I want writers to think when they people are so negative about
personal branding, I'm not negative about personal branding.
Personal branding is just what do you want to be known for?
You want to be known as the go to person on X. If there's an editor at the New
York Times, that's like, man, I wish we had an expert who could write about X.
I wish we had an expert who could write something about ballet.
(11:11):
Who do we know who writes about ballet? You want them to think of Alice.
That's your brand. But but on in their Twitter bios and Instagram bios,
writers put their like literary magazine bio, which is like her short stories
have appeared in X, Y and Z.
But it's like, no, what do you want to be known for? You want to be known as
the writer who writes about this specific niche.
And for me, it's writing about Internet culture. That's what all my books have
(11:32):
in common. And it's what I'm uniquely obsessed with.
So when when a writer is thinking about their personal brand,
it's like, what are you obsessed with that no one else is?
Yeah, I thought the name of this thing is hot. Yeah.
It's interesting to, like, tie together, tie together, to think of tying together
different themes, like, different genres, sorry, through a common theme,
which I guess is what you've done through, like, yeah, nonfiction and novels and...
(11:58):
Yeah, I mean, one of the things is I do think a lot of writers have sort of an innate,
you know, feeling that comes up when you think about branding and like,
you know, the idea of like publicity, like we were saying, it's much more like
understandable for writers.
Marketing and the idea of selling and branding yourself, it's so sort of not
(12:20):
what the purpose of our writing is for.
So it's really hard, I think, for a lot of writers to make that transition. you've
been able to do it in such a like organic way that
doesn't feel like you sold out or it's super over cheesy or
whatever all the things that writers worry about when they're
trying to kind of push their products i do you have like advice or thoughts
about how or why you think your branding has sort of stayed really kind of genuine
(12:48):
and doesn't feel sort of overly pushy or something that I think a lot of writers are afraid of?
I think what writers are uncomfortable doing is selling themselves.
They really resent having to do self-promotion on the internet.
But what you see me doing is not self-promotion. That's why it doesn't feel gross.
I'm not on camera telling you about my novel over and over again.
(13:08):
That's what most writers do
when they get on TikTok. They create these video ads for their own books.
And it's cringy. So what I do when I'm online is I talk about the things that
I'm interested in that I think my audience is interested in.
So I so like, I keep I keep playing with my bio on TikTok.
I keep changing my bio. This is fun for me. It's like wearing a different outfit
(13:29):
or something like tweaking my bio to try to think about what do I want to be known as on TikTok?
What do I what am I doing on TikTok that's different than anybody else?
And so this week, I changed it to aging millennial book talk creator account,
because I'm just kind of making fun of the fact that I'm like a crone. I'm 39.
I got a comment on a video recently that was like, wow, you don't look 35 and
(13:50):
I'm 39. And I was like, God bless you.
So I think I'm self-deprecating. I don't take myself too seriously. And I'm not doing sales.
The other thing that I've done that I've been really successful at and that
I help my clients do is that I did a whole outreach campaign to book talk creators
so that they made the videos about my book.
That's what you want. You want the appearance of viral word of mouth marketing.
(14:15):
You want to make it look like everyone else is talking about your book.
And I think writers do this because writers send advanced copies of their books
to their coolest friends.
They try to get the most famous writers they know to promote their book, which is a strategy.
But if those writers are only being followed by other writers,
again, we have this echo chamber where it's just writers telling other writers
(14:36):
about new releases by writers.
You've got to reach the readers. So figuring out how to get your book to readers
that would actually like it, this is marketing.
It's figuring out who is your ideal reader? Who is the person that would love your book?
Is it a Gen Xer? Is it a millennial? Is it a mom?
Is it someone who doesn't have kids? Is it like a 26-year-old trying to make
her way in the big city? Like, who is that ideal reader?
(14:59):
Where is she on the internet? How do you get your book to her so that she could
tell her friends about it?
I find that to be fun and less, I don't know, it's so emotionally fraught because
writers, we feel envious of each other. We feel in competition with each other.
We're, as Mary Carr would say it, like always checking to see where we are in the line.
Like, are we at the front of the line? Are we at the back of the line?
(15:21):
Like, who's ahead of us in line?
And the Internet really exaggerates that because people are sharing their good news all the time.
And I just want to tell people, like, forget it. Like, don't worry about it.
Like, your job is to sell your book to readers, not to other writers.
Do you think that your background as an actor is helpful in this?
I've often wished that I could hire an actor to play me around my book releases.
(15:48):
That's funny. I don't I guess I, you know, because I was never really an actor like I just studied it.
Like I'm like I reached like high school level acting, but I taught it to kids.
I taught musical theater to kids for years.
I think it's my natural. It's my natural. What's the word? My knack for teaching more than acting.
I think people who are teachers do really well on TikTok because the audience
(16:11):
on TikTok wants to learn.
So I think of myself more like in teacher mode when I'm on camera than an acting
mode. Also, I think it's funny.
Like I try to be really natural on TikTok. But whenever I watch my videos back,
I just sound like a bossy eight year old explaining something.
But I think that is my that is actually my authentic self. Like that's not put
on. I probably sound like that right now on this podcast.
(16:33):
Anyone's listening. It's just like, I like explaining and teaching.
Like when I was a child, my friends would come over to my house.
I'd be like, let's play school. But I had to be the teacher.
I would never let anyone else be the teacher. So that's my default mode.
Yeah, you keep talking about TikTok. I just wonder, is that really where your
focus is right now instead of Instagram or I don't know?
I mean, I guess it depends on your readers. I think my readers tend to be old women is more my jam.
(16:59):
So I think Facebook for me, for instance, I've connected with,
you know, although my Facebook was just hacked.
So it's kind of devastating trying to navigate that.
But yeah, I just wonder, you are very focused on TikTok.
Is that your thing now? Yeah, TikTok's my thing. But Julie, your instincts are
totally right to be on Facebook.
And I think Facebook's having a renaissance. You should be where your audience is.
(17:23):
So I got on TikTok just because of how powerful BookTok is for selling books.
I just became curious about it.
BookTok sold 54 million print books in 2023.
It's 7% of all print book sales are happening on TikTok. And I just think as
someone who works in the publishing industry, I have to understand this new platform.
(17:43):
And also as an extremely online person, I'm excited by learning a new platform. I think that's fun.
So I think also there are a lot of stereotypes about TikTok and the kinds of
books that do well on BookTok.
People assume that it is just fantasy and romance, two genres I do not read.
But there is an entire literary fiction corner of TikTok, and that's where I
live. So I'm excited and happy on TikTok, but I do not think everyone needs
(18:08):
to be on there, especially if your audience is like over 35.
I don't think you need to be on TikTok. I'm also really excited this year about Substack.
I think Substack is the future for writers because it allows them to earn income
directly from their audience instead of from mainstream media.
We've seen tens of thousands of people get laid off from digital media.
(18:30):
And I just don't see a future there.
Like hoping for a staff job is like hoping for a $500,000 book advance,
like three people are going to get them.
And the rest of the writers have to figure out how they're going to earn income for their writing.
So I'm, I'm excited about Substack and TikTok for the future. Sure.
I just want to ask, this is more of an observation, but I'd love to know your thoughts.
(18:53):
So I write narrative nonfiction, and a lot of my friends, though,
write historical fiction or more novels, literary fiction.
It seems like the marketing of what most of my...
Traditional narrative nonfiction friends are doing versus what my fiction writing
friends are doing is so different.
(19:14):
And I would put memoir more with like the fiction group where it's much more
like, you know, focused on, you know, Instagram and TikTok and all of that and
being there in those spaces.
Whereas like it feels as if the nonfiction people tend to be much more sort
of more old-fashioned, less excited or willing to do as much out there publicity.
(19:38):
I don't know. I wonder what you think, if you see a difference in those two.
I know a lot more about memoir than I do narrative nonfiction.
For narrative nonfiction, how much does your platform matter to sell a book?
And how much is it really your journalism chops to sell the book? Would you say, Julie?
It's so hard to know because no one's telling me like, it's your platform.
(19:58):
I mean, I do not have a bajillion followers, you know, I think probably bylines
in the times or whatever is helpful, I would assume or my, you know, I don't really know.
But yes, it doesn't seem like I also think that what I've noticed is the life
cycle of fiction and memoir is very fast is much faster.
(20:19):
Whereas, you know, you're always promoting and you're always writing a new book.
And a lot of people are, you know, publishing books every two years or a year
and a half or whatever it means.
Whereas with nonfiction, it's much more like you've taken three years and you're
keeping your platform, I guess, by your freelance pieces here and there,
you know, where you're freelancing, but you're mostly,
you know, you're not really coming out with a book for three,
(20:41):
five years or something.
So I don't, it just seems like a different animal, but I don't know. That's just...
Yeah. So for certain categories of fiction, like historical fiction,
romance, contemporary romance, women's fiction, I think a lot of the marketing
that's done by the publisher is in the packaging and the promotion of the book
(21:03):
to say to the reader, this book is like that other book that you already love, right?
They make it look like that book. that's why there's so many like
the so-and-so's wife the wife of the so-and-so
the daughter of such and such there's like so many books that have the
same title the Paris wife but then there were all those derivative the thriller
titles that all look the same like she's been gone she's already left it's for
(21:25):
the readers of the similar books so that's a way to so the good news for authors
of novels is that you don't have to have a platform you just have to write a
book that's similar to book that's already successful,
but also unique and different. That's the only thing you have to do.
For me, I mean, I've, I've my challenge, I'm on submission right now,
which I won't go into too much detail for my novel.
(21:47):
But I think my challenge is that I'm not, I'm not writing a commercial novel.
I'm writing a literary novel that has a plot. And I think I'm hard to pigeonhole.
And so they're not really sure where to put me because I, I've written a novel
with a disappearance in it, but it's not a straight mystery or thriller.
It's a literary novel. So I think on the next submission round,
(22:08):
I'm already thinking like, how do I pitch my book differently?
So I'm really trying to tweak the pitch to communicate what it is,
but it's hard because I'm trying to do my own thing. And this is partly why I get,
I'm irritated as an optimist about platform and brand because I don't write to the market.
I don't know how to write a straight romance novel and cash those checks.
(22:28):
That's not the kind of writer that I am.
I want to write the kind of weird novels that interest me personally,
and I want to figure out how to market them.
It's difficult to do what I'm doing, but I want to stay true to myself.
And I want to hold on to my faith and belief that there are readers for my strange
book if I can figure out how to describe it to those readers.
Okay, so we were talking about marketing and positioning for different kinds of books.
(22:52):
Yes. And I think those novelists working in more commercial genres,
the expectation, like in Annabelle Monaghan, Annabelle is writing a book a year.
That's the calendar that she's on. That sounds really intense to me.
I don't think that I could write that fast.
There's a whole other conversation to be had about narrative nonfiction because
as book advances are getting smaller and smaller, it's like who can afford to
(23:12):
spend three years writing a deeply reported book.
There was a big piece in Esquire. I don't know if you guys put links in the show notes,
but there was a big piece in Esquire last year about what's happened to kind
of sports journalism and like long form books were used to follow like a baseball
team for a year, like Moneyball, like that kind of a book that they just don't
publish, even though those books are hugely popular,
no one can afford to write them based on the advances.
(23:34):
So I think having a platform, even though you don't need a platform as a novelist
to sell your novel, having a platform and a brand can help you stay in business.
It can help you sell your next book. It demonstrates that you have a following
for your work and it can help you sell your next book.
So I think it's going to end up being critical for writers, even though they
(23:56):
kick and scream doing it.
How do you balance the time it takes to write your own books with maintaining
your platform and coaching other writers?
So I love running my own business because it lets me set up my own schedule
and it lets me kind of adjust the flow of work in and out.
I haven't had a full-time day job since 2009.
(24:18):
I just am not very suited for a nine to five.
I can't stand being bored. Like I would rather work seven days a week than work
nine to five, Monday through Friday. It's just my personality.
So I love running my own business, working with writers. And in my ideal world,
I write my own work in the mornings and then I spend the rest of my days editing
(24:38):
other people's work or talking on calls with my clients.
And then the platform stuff, the internet stuff, it's just my hobby.
It's just what I actually enjoy. It's not something that I schedule.
Some people like baking or going camping or taking salsa dancing classes.
I don't do any of that stuff. I just go on the internet. I'm a very indoor person
and my social life is on the internet. So I don't have to really schedule it out.
(24:59):
It can be frustrating because I do notice the TikTok algorithm is a very demanding boss.
And when I take time off TikTok, It does not reward my videos with any views.
It makes me earn back the attention of TikTok.
So that can be kind of demoralizing.
And so I've been trying to get back on TikTok lately, and I'm trying to like
(25:20):
produce videos every day because then those videos get attention.
So it's brutal. But other than that, I don't really feel pressure to produce.
I do send out a weekly Sunday newsletter. That's another thing that I do every week.
So for people who are intimidated by what I'm describing, I think figuring out
what's realistic for you in your life.
(25:42):
The other recommendation I would have for people is like run a 30-day experiment.
Experiment so for 30 days you're going to post every day on instagram whatever
the platform is you're most comfortable with just try to do a post a day for
30 days make it fun for yourself i did,
30 days of book publishing advice when threads which
is like the instagram twitter platform when threads first started i was like
(26:04):
i'll just do this for 30 days and i was like running out of ideas and it was
not going very well and then on day 27 the main threads account reposted me
And then I got tons of engagement and tons of new followers and tons of people
coming over to my sub stack.
So people will notice your work if you just do something consistently over time.
So consistency and not necessarily publicizing your own book or even stories
(26:30):
within the book or teasing it, but really other topics that are like book adjacent, essentially.
Yeah, another fun one I saw on threads was Megan.
Is it Megan Collins?
I might mix up her. It might be Megan Collins, but she independent of me.
We didn't have the we had the same idea at the same time, but unrelated.
She decided for 30 days. She had a new novel coming out called Thicker Than Water.
(26:53):
So for 30 days, she posted a photo on threads of something that's thicker than water. her.
So she posted like hummus, honey.
And that was just her fun little game. It was promoting her book,
but it was fun. And it was like a game with the audience.
So yeah, I would say you want to be creating content around something that's
genuinely interesting to you.
(27:15):
I would imagine for you, Julie, it could be something from your research around the book.
It could be if it's on Instagram, it could be photographs if it's on Facebook,
engaging your audience in a conversation.
So maybe it's questions that trigger people's nostalgia and memories.
I think your book's about department stores. I just went to in Chicago.
I'm from Chicago. And over the holidays, I went to a museum exhibit all about
(27:38):
the vintage department stores of Chicago, like Marshall Fields.
It was really cool. But I think like people love they love going back down memory lane.
They love these memories of
like in Chicago, going to the Walnut Room with Grandma at Christmastime.
You know, people love that. So you open the door for them to have a conversation with you.
And that's how you get engagement rather than saying, hi, I'm sorry,
I have to do another one of these posts.
(28:00):
But I just want to remind you that my book is coming out like no one wants to
do that. No one wants to beg. It's not dignified.
Okay, that makes me feel better because I have been putting Facebook ads out
or posts or whatever about like, your memories of like, oh, this department
store, that is what I'm exactly going on here.
So thank you. Thank you, Lily. But I hear that.
(28:20):
I mean, I think, you know, I guess one thing I would like to ask you,
which is not actually relevant to that, but an earlier point you were bringing
up, which is what exactly do you do with authors when you're working with them?
Are you doing publicity and marketing?
Are you doing editing of their manuscripts?
Like, are you doing the whole shebang? Because it seems like you're doing all
(28:42):
the different aspects. So I wonder if you could tell us about your business a little bit.
Yeah. So I'll say, like, over time, I started my business in 2017.
And over time, I've gotten more into the marketing side of it because it's fun
for me. And also, it's easier if the book has already sold.
So I have been through experiences with clients where I've worked so hard on
their book proposal. who have worked so hard on their book. I believe in their
(29:03):
book. I think it's going to sell, and then it doesn't sell.
It's very demoralizing for me, too. I really am selective with products I take on.
I feel guilty taking on projects if I don't think that that book could actually
sell, so I really work with writers if I think their book has a strong chance
of selling, and then sometimes it doesn't, and that can be really hard.
But I can give you just a short case study of an author that I worked with named Sarah Vogel.
(29:27):
She was one of my very first clients that I took on, she sent me an email like
three months after I started my business.
And she said that for 30 years, she's been wanting to write a memoir about a
class action lawsuit that she fought in the 1980s in North Dakota on behalf of family farmers.
And when she sent me this email, I don't think I could have even told you what
(29:48):
a class action lawsuit was like. That's how ignorant I was. But I was like, let's have a phone call.
I started working with her in 2018. And.
What I came to realize is basically she has like an Erin Brockovich story from
North Dakota. She was a single mom of a toddler.
She took on these farmers. The Reagan administration was shutting them down.
And she took them on even though they couldn't afford to pay her.
(30:09):
She lost her own home to foreclosure while she was battling farmers.
And she went up against the Reagan administration and she won.
And I pitched this book to a literary agent. So I made a connection between
a literary agent I knew and between Sarah.
I worked on her proposal. We spent a year just on the book proposal.
The book proposal was 100 pages long.
I was talking to her every week. It was in a really intense.
(30:30):
This is an unusually intense experience, but it was like an insane story.
We sold it as like Grapes of Wrath meets Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy meets
Heartland by Sarah Smarsh.
A lot of people don't know about the 1980s farm crisis, that it was the worst
farm crisis since the 30s.
Then I worked with her for over a year editing the book that she was writing.
(30:51):
So I stayed through past the book proposal to writing the book.
I went to North Dakota when the book came out. Like I was in the room when like
a guy at the back of the room stood up and said, I don't know if you remember
me, but you saved my farm.
It was like an incredible experience. I'm so proud of that book.
And basically she'd been wanting to write it since the time I was born.
(31:11):
So she'd been wanting to write it since the early 80s, which is when I was born.
And so to bring this book to life, it's published by Bloomsbury.
It's called The Farmer's Lawyer. That was an extremely rewarding experience.
So that's like that's an example of like a nonfiction book proposal that I worked
on and that a client that I've worked on with many years for many years.
Other books, sometimes people come to me when they have a book under contract
(31:34):
and they just need someone to provide accountability and who's editing their
pages every week as they're writing them.
I have found in my experience that editors don't have time to edit books.
So I'm brought in as like an editor who's paid directly, you know,
the writer pays me directly to edit their book because their editor doesn't
really have time to edit their book. So I provide accountability.
(31:54):
And then I have some clients that come to me when they have their book coming
out and I help them with this kind of outreach to book talk influencers,
books to grammars, to let them know about the book ahead of time.
So that's almost like PR marketing.
You would think the marketing department at the publisher is doing this,
but again, they're stretched thin, they don't have time.
And from what I've been told from book marketing professionals in publishing,
(32:20):
my emails directly to these creators have a much higher engagement and success
rate because it's coming directly from me, like a human being,
like I'm not like a cog in the machine sending out all these publicity emails
that creators aren't even responding to because they're overwhelmed.
Having these direct relationships with creators, even though it's time consuming,
it can really go a long way.
(32:42):
Well, I'm sure a lot of what you're describing sounds a lot like the work of an agent.
Do you think of your, I mean, you know, working on a proposal,
coaching it through being like an extra editor, like, have you ever thought about being an agent?
(33:04):
Yes, I actually spent all summer considering becoming an agent and there's not enough money in it.
So agents don't have time to do what I'm doing. They can't talk to a writer.
You know, I'm on the Zoom. Sometimes I'm on a Zoom with someone for two hours,
you know, working on their book. You know, my clients cry to me.
I mean, it's very emotional.
It's very intense and an intense, close relationship. It's a lot of hours and
(33:26):
agents don't have time for this. So I got all this advice over the summer.
I talked to multiple writers about representing them.
I didn't promise anything. I just had these preliminary conversations.
I got all this advice about being an agent. And when I crunched the numbers,
when I crunched the numbers, it's like if I had a good year,
if I had a good year, five years in a row, I might make like $25,000 to $50,000
(33:47):
a year for years before you.
I can send you the link to my sub stack where I broke down the numbers for all
this, but there's just, it's so much work that you hope might one day pay off.
And like, you're the agent of lessons in chemistry or something like you're
hoping that one day you'll get a gusher that will just pay you forever.
(34:07):
But I can't afford to take that risk.
So running my own business where I know what my My income is coming in every
month and I can plan ahead much more stable for me and allows me to continue to write.
So do authors pay you by the hour?
I'm sure people listening would like to know, like, how does it work?
And I mean, you have to you obviously pick and choose which projects are going to take on.
(34:31):
Yeah, it's hard for me to answer that. I'm not I'm not taking on any projects
right now. So this isn't a sales pitch.
But I, I, I usually work with people, but I develop a proposal for them based
on their specific needs.
And we work together for a series of, of months. Yeah, it is. It is interesting.
I wonder if, you know, there's been so much talk about how publishers,
so many people in the publishing industry are overworked and underpaid,
(34:54):
right? That's the thing now with everything.
And whether it's, you know, the publicists, like you said, or actually agents
who I know are, you know, usually, you know, have their own businesses.
But is that is that has that gotten worse in your opinion in recent years?
Or is that just like a lot of talk and people feel that way?
Or is it really, you know, significantly different in terms of the amount of work?
(35:17):
Let's say publicity teams are expected to work, you know, the number of books
are expected to deal with, you know, any given week or something compared to
a few years ago. My impression is that it's gotten worse.
Salaries really have not gone up in publishing. It's very hard for younger editors
to advance to more senior positions.
(35:38):
I know of one editor who got a quote unquote promotion to acquire even more
books for a different imprint than the one she was already at.
And it came with no raise.
So that was her promotion. Did she do it?
Yeah, she did. She had no choice. There are just, I think the thing that we
(35:58):
don't talk about enough is just how many writers there are. There are so many writers.
So many people have burned out on publishing and left their full-time salaried
positions to become literary agents.
So now there are even more literary agents. And that sounds like a good thing
for writers, except those literary agents are all submitting to the same few editors.
(36:19):
There have been major layoffs at the big fives, like at Penguin Random House.
Those editors have not been replaced.
They have just dispensed that work to the junior staff members.
So the volume of submissions is overwhelming.
So even as there are more writers and more agents, there are still only like
(36:39):
20 imprints you can send a literary novel to.
That's it. Like you can send it to 20 editors. And if those 20 editors are not
interested in your literary novel, it's donezo.
You don't have anyone else to send your book to. So there aren't unlimited editors.
There aren't unlimited imprints. There is a finite number of those things.
And then there's like tens of thousands of writers trying to get a spot at one
(37:02):
of those finite places. So it's worse than it's ever been.
Yeah, I made this joke yesterday in my newsletter, but like it's a compliment
to not get ghosted right now.
Like if someone replies to your email, that's a compliment, even if it's to
say, I'm sorry, I'm going to pass.
That is that's the level of professionalism that we're expecting from people
who work in publishing industry right now.
(37:24):
Well, thank you so much. I wonder, you know, it's obviously,
I mean, I guess that's a kind of a bummer way to end.
There's so much bad news, obviously, out there, so much competition,
lower advances, all that stuff. Can we end with something positive?
What do you think? I mean, maybe the good thing is, you know,
that authors do have more of a platform, you know, they are developing their
(37:46):
sub stacks, or they are getting out there and connecting with audiences.
I mean, I don't know. So I mean, I'm late.
Yeah, yeah. This is why I'm happy about TikTok and why I'm happy about the success
of Colleen Hoover. Everyone likes to make fun of Colleen Hoover novels.
But Colleen Hoover is bringing all these people to reading. All these people
that don't consider themselves readers are suddenly hooked on Colleen Hoover novels.
(38:08):
And so I feel like there's an opportunity to say, oh, you like that?
You might like this, too.
I also heard the owners of the Ripped Bodice bookstore in Brooklyn.
This is a romance-only bookstore. store. They are these millennial sisters who own the bookstore.
And they said, you know, the people coming into the bookstore are so young. They're young readers.
So young people, there's a stereotype that young people are just on their phones,
(38:28):
and they're addicted to their phones, and they're not reading.
Young people are reading novels, fiction sales are up.
So that makes me excited. There is a whole new generation of readers coming up.
And we can reach them, we can talk to them about books.
So I think writers, writers who can get excited about who who their audience
is, and who can make connections online, one reader at a time.
(38:52):
That's really what makes your whole day. When I get an email that's like,
I just wanted to tell you how much I love self-care.
I was texting pages of it to my friends. This is an email I got a couple weeks
ago. That made my whole week.
That's one reader that really is the dream reader for self-care.
She really got it. I love getting an email from her. And that's why we do this.
We have the fantasy that we're going to be in a sold-out auditorium talking
(39:14):
about our books, But it's just one reader at a time that really gets our book.
That's what keeps us going. I agree with that. Thanks for listening.
This has been an episode of How Books Work.
Join us on our next episode as we continue to explore.
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