DUCK DUCK JEEP
Maybe it's about giving without the expectation of return or dividends.
There’s a blue duck in my kid’s cup holder. Alongside small gray rocks, a plastic spoon with which he tried to eat the road-dust of fragmented small gray rocks, and something sticky (most likely from an apple sauce packet, but we clean and we DON’T judge). The blue duck is from his gymnastics instructor who drives a jeep and like all jeep owners I’ve ever seen keeps a row of fascinating little ducks along her dash. There are disco ducks and warrior ducks and ice cube ducks and ducks in shark suits. There is no end—the bad site has 150PCS of “Jeep Ducks” for $25.99 because there is nothing that can’t be commodified, even good will.
It all started, according to internet sources and sleuths, with a woman named Allison Parliament who wanted to spread a little cheer during the pandemic. I should note here that we love Allison because she’s Canadian. Here’s a little video.
And I don’t mean to cause a calamity but EVERY jeep owner is in on the ducks. It’s a full-blown movement. There are Facebook groups with around half a million members. My friend Christine carries extras in her stowaway cabin where I keep gloves and receipts and a fourteen year old granola bar and a diaper that’s somehow covered in pine straw even though it has never been outside. The Jeep manufacturer rented the largest rubber duck for their annual auto show in 2022. We’re in top-to-bottom ducking around here.
And I’ve been thinking about what the equivalent of the Duck Duck Jeep would be for book publicity. How to create a movement essentially. USA Today recently wrote about the “galley brag” phenomenon, but that feels influencer and exclusivity driven in a way that’s not quite the same as Duck Duck Jeep which has a kind of team sports intrigue. And you might think, okay naturally author’s support authors, which THEY DO, but the hierarchy isn’t in your head. It’s not the automatic—we’re both writers, let’s support. Or we’re both literary fiction novelists, let’s geek out. Or we are attempting to gateway drug more folks into horror from thriller, here’s what we’re going to do. Where as the Jeep people are like “jeep folk? yea, jeep folk. Duck? Duck.” It’s like a language—and it can cross between a beater and a brand new 2026 Wagoneer.
And of course it’s not the same because we’re making art or we’re making entertainment or we’re facing awards seasons, or we’re trying to get a film deal, or we’re competing for shelf space, or we’re hoping for foreign rights. Books are a team sport with an individual score. So, maybe my analogy is a lost one, but I can’t help but think that Duck Duck Jeep has larger messaging in publicity. And I think it’s turning the mindset from “this is mutually beneficial,” as in the ecosystem mindset with things like (1) you review me, and I’ll return the favor, or (2) let’s interview each other about our books, or (3) switching conversation partners at bookstores for respective releases. All of these things are beautiful and important, but they’re trade, they're give and take.
And I think the Jeep mindset, though easily abused, it’s true, lends itself to something I strongly believe from my time teaching high schoolers that I tattooed it on my arm—give anyway (yes, my girl, Mother Teresa). If I had students who were assholes, that doesn’t mean I withhold pencils that they needed to learn. If a student sucked the day before, that doesn’t mean they come into my classroom with that burden the next day—clean slate. If a kid felt I wronged them, I apologized. Grandstanding never worked. If I didn’t believe an excuse, oh well, I set the expectation that they came to me with a reason and I’m going to go down that path until it’s unbearably clear that I can’t.
I am not great at it, though better. I needed the tattoo as a reminder, TBH. And no one can be 100% perfect with kindness without expectation. I still feel personally affronted by things like the freelancer who responded to my pitch email three separate times last week to tell me I missed the word “of” in the title of the book (I did)—first telling me I made a mistake, then telling me that wait, he’s wrong, and then finally following-up with just my subject line bolded in the third email to point out my egregious error. See, I’m still thinking about it even though I wrote back, “Thanks _____, sign of the times.” Because holy shit, have you read the news? The thing I’m both most worried about and least worried about is the syntax of my emails, and yet—last week I had trouble emailing at all.
So, my PSA in an America that crushes my soul every single day, is about the lost art of duck duck jeep culture—giving without expectation. Leading with what will come back to me is like trying a boomerang for the first time.
Good will with the universe, putting out good energy, saying yes without the expectation of return, aren’t lost causes, and don’t have to feel like free labor, and don’t look like hustle culture because when you work this way—doing the good will that feels good (this is key) and not the kind that feels like, okay, I’m going to do this now and then in six months it’ll pay off in dividends—does, most of the time for me, pay off. It’s just that I’m never thinking of the pay off in the moment. I’m just thinking, yea, I do want to talk to a class of college students on Thursday and I have that hour spare.
And this is how I want you to imagine platform too—not this sort of salesy Shark Tank space where you choose a social media that you love most or feel best at and that’s where you set down your campaign roots, selling selling selling (monetizing monetizing monetizing). Platform starts with giving, not selling. (And I don’t mean giving advice). What can you offer, and how can it bring people in? Crochet patterns. Sweet! Advice on how not to kill that plant in the room you never go in? I need it. Star Wars conspiracy theories? I would send your socials immediately to my brother. Breaking down the latest episode of traitors? If Britney doesn’t vote out Danielle, I SWEAR. Is your dream job a museum docent but you’re an introvert—start a channel, docenting us through your favorite art. Where are you your goodest?
All of this also aligns you with your best self (not to get too woo woo)—the way Jeep drivers get to be weird little duck harbingers in community with other weird little duck folks. (Who doesn’t miss Duck Duck Goose though as an adult?).
So, email that author that you love about their work without adding them to the list of folks you’ll ask to blurb your next book. Go to silent reading night at your library, not to connect with book club folks, but because you get to silently read with other people like you in the quiet of all of our favorite places. Go to the author event when it’s raining. Say yes to that random person on Bluesky that says they need someone to read a poem for them and give a little feedback. Figure out how to put your favorite book somewhere in your dating profile (do you know how many people scroll dating profiles?). Have a list of books you read each year on your website with a small note about favorites. Review the book on Goodreads or Storygraph. Write the newsletter about the best block towers for four year olds alongside the books they’ll love for each tower, shamelessly. Cold pitch the editor, expect nothing, and be pleasantly surprised by the yes, yes, of course, yes.
And listen, the funkier the better—who thought rubber duckies in Jeeps would take off? (excerpt Ernie).
(A little lore for the people wondering: I would never drive a Jeep because I’m a loosey goosey around the curves having learned how to drive on a Ford Explorer that I WHIPPED around that high school parking lot with my pink dice and my mixed cds. We bought it from our neighbor, the ultimate mom, which meant there were tissues built into the center console).
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ICYMI: Nicole Graev Lipson is on fire and you can see mentions of her debut, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, in Slate, Judith, Brookline.News, Our Town, and Boston Globe this week, Sarah LaBrie and Hyeseung Song are both on the longest for Reading the West, Emily J. Smith talks to Crime Reads, Sarah Lyn Rogers made a list for Electric Lit and your fav Scorpios, Jehanne Dubrow gets direct with North Texas Daily and her poem “Civilian” is featured in Verse Daily, SJ Bennett’s A Death in Diamonds is toasted in Washington Post, Nothing Serious is reviewed in San Francisco Chronicle and recommended by the New York Times, and so much more on our Twitter & Instagram.
Yes to literary citizenship in all its forms. And now I know what's with the rubber ducks on Jeeps.
I have been blind to Duck Duck Jeep. But now I'll be able to see it. Thank you.
I love the spirit of your other commenters. I apologize for being neither so brief nor so pointed.
Several decades ago I learned, by the process of elimination, how much more satisfying life could be if I made it my purpose to help people rather than impress them. I recently realized that of all the possible things to collect, ducks and jeeps being timely examples, I collect other people's smiles. It's an inexpensive but rewarding practice. Your message resonates with me.
I may not be the world's worst at sales and marketing, but I'm on the shortlist. I'd like a place closer to the middle, but I doubt it would make me happier, just a bit less anxious. But I cope.
Recently a banana and a piece of duct (not duck) duct tape sold for six figures as a work of art. Teh buyer ate the banana. In my experience, the flavor of an aging granola bar doesn't change much, but some moisture is lost. Even if the nutritional value is degraded, I suspect the value of yours can only increase.
Thank you for your wonderful post.