BUILDING INTIMACY

On why we have got to stop equating "influence" and "intimacy" in the book sale model & do you want readers or media hits?

Whenever I talk to a class about publicity, I get asked the platform question. I can feel it looming in the background of all my conversations with writers actually. I get asked the platform question in about a hundred different ways, but what writers are really asking is twofold:

1. What’s the number (of followers, subscribers, engagement, virality) I need to sell my book to a traditional publisher?

2. And the more important question in the equation: how do I reach my audience?

The problem with our current idea of “platform” is that it is not (just) a numbers game, and audience engagement is not really fostered by “platform” in the traditional publicity model.

For example, just because you’ve written for twenty different high-profile magazines does not mean those editors cover books or can connect you in a meaningful way to the editors that do. So, while media placements sell the book to the publisher, they don’t always sell the book to the reader. And if you have 300k followers on Instagram, that does not mean those people will buy the book. Supporting an author financially and clicking “like” on an Instagram post, it turns out, are wildly different activities, and the work of engagement (with the book’s ideas) does not come from usual content. Because an author has 47k subscribers on Substack, does not mean that those people bought the book—they didn’t see the value in purchasing her personal story in the same way they value her inciting and insightful newsletter.

Getting to talk with so many beauties writing great books last week + two powerhouse editors Elizabeth DeMeo at Tin House & Kristen Renee Miller at Sarabande!

It’s true that publishers are requiring authors (requiring meaning they’re buying fewer books that do not follow their parameters in terms of connections and platform) to do much more work to promote their books these days, and we need to start asking if it’s because the publisher refuses to innovate rather than just continuing the “platform” conversation like a wash cycle.

I guess my question is: is the goal of publicity to sell books or is the goal of publicity to garner media hits (to make the publisher look good)? Because those aren’t always together.

This is a different conundrum depending on the publisher (imprints like FSG, holds the court of creating buzz, and Atria, holds the market share of TikTok publicity and marketing), but most publishers are sticking to the game they know: industry media. (Remember the cruise ship guy? That was Atria. Remember the scratch and sniff Sally Rooney cover from last week, the was FSG).

And what exactly do they mean when they say, “the public is often eager for the intimacy of getting to know the writer” (Esquire). Because everyone I talk to in writing classes, in MFA programs, outside the gates of publishing thinks this means “platforms,” as in authors=influencers. And looking at certain sales numbers (provided by the wonderful Casie Dodd at Belle Point Press, one of the smartest hustlers I know), just because you have a built-in social media audience, does not mean you’re selling that many books, or near close. Does it look better to a publisher when you submit a proposal or a pitch with that many subscribers? Of course. It looks like an easier lift on their end. Does it equate to sales? No. So, perhaps you can sell your book to the entity, but can you sell your book to a reader? A totally different ask.

Let’s talk examples of publicity. Maybe your audience is nineteen-year-old Colleen Hoover evangelists, then what is Good Morning America going to do for you?

(Partly momentum. Partly a signal to the rest of publishing that your book is important so then it’ll be picked up by the rest of media. I get it, I get it).

If the most important aspect of your book is lyricism and craft, is your publicity seeking out current and future creative writing students, their professors, their programs? I assure you, though nice, those folks aren’t looking in Bustle’s monthly book list. If you’re a poet, are you in any community with other poets? Because not much of a surprise, poets by poetry. Have you attempted to make one of your poems a sound on Tiktok—which feel accessible, specific, which linger? If I don’t get a video every six posts of a motherhood poem with a photo carousel of a mom and their kid on Tiktok, then my algorithm is off that day.

And how can you replicate the most powerful tool in selling a book: word of mouth? (and hand-selling?). Particularly to your audience.

The your audience part feels like the part we’re all missing, and THAT is intimacy.

If all books are vying for the same product-moving media space regardless if that media space would actually sell their book, what are we doing? Sure, publicists are trying to connect book themes to podcast themes, trying to reach demographic audiences by pitching certain media, trying to use author identity and book tropes to engage influencers (beyond Bookstagram, but even in the millions of posts hash-tagged under #bookstagram there are endless sub-categories, and sub-hashes). This is true for social media across the deck.

The question we should all be asking is not how do I build my personal platform that includes book writing (unless like the Esquire article says, you’re trying to be a “thought leader” which sounds like a Fancy Pants McGee rendition of “influencer,” so really the book was never the goal in the first place), it’s how do I reach the folks who will care about my art, who intersect with what I’m doing, who have my specific humor or enjoy this style of writing or want to read stories that mirror an aspect of their own story? WHERE are they?

If you sit in your author publicity meeting and the plan is this plan (don’t get me in trouble for sharing this, but this is a very normal publicity plan for a book at traditional publishers), why aren’t we asking what Good Morning America has to do with this specific book about grimy, speculative, queer, girlhood?

Does Good Morning America sell books? Of course. When’s the last time they chose a story collection? What does a Good Morning America spot signal to the audience for which I wrote this pitch to editors? (Really sharing my little guts with you here).

I don’t think they’re watching Good Morning America. I don’t thinks they’re reading Boston Globe or Washington Post. As much as all of these are good goals for authors, goals that authors have probably had forEVER, are they feeding the author’s ego or the audience of the book?

Image from The Daily Campus / https://dailycampus.com/2019/08/26/2019-8-26-second-floor-of-the-bookstore-now-an-urban-outfittersnbsp/

I think this reader probably buys books from Urban Outfitters. I think they have a photograph on their Instagram grid with a hint of hot pink Year of Rest sticking out of their tote bag. In that tote bag, there’s probably a lip gloss, a tinted lip balm, weed gummies, a claw clip, a half-eaten bag of salted nuts, and three loose stud earrings. I know them, you know them. But how do you reach them?

under “Hot girl tote bag” on Pinterest

And sure, the argument could be made that their mother could be watching Good Morning America, reading Boston Globe or Washington Post, but how much effort do you think their mother is making to then look up the book on a retail site and click purchase, or going out to the bookstore to buy it? Maybe around the holidays, yes. My mother, totally (she’s an overachiever), she’ll save that Boston Globe page in her little collection of papers to get the book the next time she’s out. But couldn’t we be more direct than the mother hope?

Rather than a publisher bet, what if we back-pedaled into a book’s publicity? Instead of designing campaigns around what media would be a dream for you (the author), what if we mapped out prime audiences and did more to figure out where we could gather them, and through which venues? Perhaps, this might mean authors no longer covet the New York Times Book Review or that Oprah Daily excerpt (though we’re all allowed to be lofty and precious about a few things), but instead covet ACTUAL book sales to ACTUAL readers?

The divide is not so much that books aren’t selling. The divide is that media placements have overshadowed publicity to be more about hits and less about readers. There’s no point in being in a Boston Globe round-up if it only sells four books and you get to post about it on Instagram (to an audience of folks who likely already love you and those who will buy the book, have bought it).

Particularly in our fast-moving publicity cycles where the book is only allowed a big splash within the month of release and then returned back to the publisher for paperback time. It’s the things that would be harder to shrink into an Instagram caption—book clubs, course adoption, librarian recommendations, joining nonprofits to talk about the book, Tiktok sounds, that sell books. It’s the people part, the intimacy.

A little example of this from my own life is that I’m reading Brood by Jackie Polzin. I picked it up after seeing it a few times in The Regulator, and knew it was a novel about caring for chickens (Gloria, Gam Gam, Darkness, and Miss Hennepin County). It’s jarringly great. Quiet, and meditative, but the narrator has this tight, painful, rhythmic way of speaking to the reader. A little funny, my dad would have loved it, I think. I have written down so many quotes from the book, felt pangs from so many sections, it’s really beautiful and also, not much happens.

After I’m done, I’m going to pass it to Janice—our neighbor and local farmer who runs the CSA where we get our eggs and every two weeks a basket of assorted yard-growth (this week was all kinds of lettuce, beets, a homemade tin of lip balm, and asparagus). If I was doing publicity for this book, I’d probably try to get it into as many CSA newsletters as I could. I’d probably make a little poster for neighborhood garden forums (both online and in the wooden boxes at almost every neighborhood farm). I’d reach out to county farming programs for families (my kid does “little farmers”). This might seem strange because the author wouldn’t be able to SEE the work, only its impact, but do you want readers or do you want Boston Globe? Maybe we can have a little bit of both.

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ICYMI: Barrie Miskin’s Hell Gate Bridge is on the ten books to read in June list for Washington Post, Liberty Street by Jason K. Friedman got a beautiful review in Jewish Books Council, Tatiana Johnson-Boria’s Nocturne in Joy was reviewed in Colorado Review, Frederick Joseph is launching We Alive, Beloved at Brooklyn Poets x Books Are Magic, Vic Liu and James Kilgore were interviewed in Inquest about The Warehouse, Jessica E. Johnson was on KATU talking about Mettlework, and so much more on our Twitter& Instagram.