Kendall Jenner on a boat reading your book for $200, Alex.

in which I discuss reading audiences, Targét, Reese Witherspoon, branding yourself, P&Ls, CLASH books, and cool girl aesthetics

If you follow me on Twitter, you already know my rage-rant feelings about the 2019 debut book Where the Crawdad’s Sing. I should say, my feelings about this book boiled over well before Slate published their damning breakdown, “The Dark History Behind the Year’s Debut Bestselling Novel” and mostly had to do with the way publishing treats southern literature—which I learned all too well when hearing a story from my old boss about an editor from Publisher’s Weekly on a SIBA panel (Southern Independent Bookseller’s Alliance) say, “but isn’t southern literature really just the porch and the sweet tea.” You see, I have forgiven this man because I can choose to believe he simply didn’t know his audience, although the name SIBA was on the door.

Toni Morrison, and Sula, would like to have a word about porches. But I digress. What I want to talk about here is a few things: the Targét audience, one hit (publicity) wonders, and finding your fellow weirdos.

Let’s start with how Crawdad’s became a mega-hit, and that is the move of one woman. Undoubtedly a woman everyone thinks of as quintessentially southern (and because of a good ol’ movie that I still love, but does not age well), Sweet Home Alabama. That woman is (drums!) Reese Witherspoon. (I suppose I am also fueling publicity with this newsletter, alas).

While I appreciate Reese’s support of books & literature, scrolling through the full list of book picks does feel like she has an ideal shopper in mind, and that ideal shopper is the woman who calls Target “Targét,” and maybe, possibly, buys pattern kitchen utensils, enjoys the newest Magnolia release, knows when Target collabs drop, and her activewear more-often-than-not matches. To be totally fair, I have been this woman—she is almost always white. My point is that this book club serves a reading audience that publishing already knows exists (why? because they’ve been marketing to only this audience for a long, long time). What then, can we do, to reach reading audiences that go beyond this?

This is the BIG question of publishing. So much of pre-#publishingpaidme (and very much still) was CEOs (and certain others) claiming that diverse books don’t sell because they don’t have a reading audience. What’s missing in the fine print here is that publishing has only recently been asked (and not yet held accountable) to reach more diverse reading audiences, which very much do exist and want books, as Rudine Sims Bishop says, that act as “mirror, window, and sliding glass door.”

To acquire those books, without doing the back end publicity work of reaching their broader audiences, is a self-fulfilling prophecy—one that proves the CEO correct. Except … no work has been done on the consumer end to find and widen those audiences beyond the usual. If we treat publicity as it has always been treated traditionally, we will only ever reach the white woman book club, which is either Belletrist (cool, glitter girl) or Reese (Targét mom).

Last week, Sophia Stewart of Publisher’s Weekly, published a recap of book publicity and the changes in the landscape, “Getting the Word Out: 25 Years of Changes to Book Publicity”. While celebrity book clubs are here to stay and are a sure-fire way to boost book sales, she did sort out the breadth of the landscape for today’s book publicity engines, and noted a unique change to who exactly could put a book on a map with good promotion. And that is through the individual (several individuals), better defined in social media as the *branded* individual. Someone who has created a sort of character offshoot of themselves (not necessarily in a performative way), who creates content specific to a niche audience, which then grows.

Glennon Doyle and Brené Brown both sell books this way, by packaging and bumper-stickering the meaning of those books for an audience they’ve already managed to target by, you got it, branding themselves. (I am not asking anyone to go to that level, please don’t—it’s too much, it feels fools gold at a certain point).

We still (of course) have the surprise celebrity publicity, for instance Kendall Jenner reads the same essay collection for an entire summer—Chelsea Hodson’s Tonight I’m Someone Else, which caused a cluster at Holt. They could not keep up supply with the demand after this photo of Kendall hit press. Because all of publishing is a game, and publisher’s bet on how a book might do, determined by a P&L, they simply didn’t have enough copies printed. And that P&L determines the next set of dominos for everything: the advance, number of copies, the publicity dollars and reach, the team. So much rests on that initial bet.

Can you imagine this scenario today in an economy where printing schedules are constantly shifting, books are being lost at sea, and (paper) costs are up, up, up. (Anne Trubek has a great newsletter on this in Notes From a Small Press). But what I want you to know is that those bursts of publicity, while incredible for any author but especially a debut, aren’t always sustainable. And sustainable, earn-out publicity, is what we should all be after.

So, how do you get there? You go to where your people are, and you create enough of a brand so your people find you.

I have seen an agent on a book that got so much publicity, they were able to put together a six page package for film agents. Major newspapers mentioned and reviewed, it made anticipated lists, the author placed essays in bookish outlets—truly, the book got all the publicity a debut author might want. For all intents and purposes, it seemed golden. Large print run, lots of publicity, surely this equals more sales. Not quite.

What I learned from this is two-fold. One: we need books to have a longer life than publication day news, and Two: the book hadn’t reached its audience yet. It’s reached a reading audience, but perhaps not its ideal reading audience.

When someone asks on Twitter, tell me who I should read to learn more about ____, tell me who’s writing your favorite coming of age essays, tell me who your favorite form poets are, tell me who writes the best dialogue, you want to be tagged and mentioned, because … well, because you’ve created the writerly brand that says you are that thing. It’s not a popularity contest, it’s good branding, which is simply, good storytelling of your story.

Shout out here to Kathy Fish, the queen of flash fiction. Shout out to my favorite final girl, Meghan Phillips, shout out to Alina Stefanescu, our philosophical poet, shout out to Cora Harrington who teaches me about intimacy style, shout out to Hanif Abdurraqib (& Wendy) two humble hometowners, and shout out to Matt Bell, everyone’s writing best friend, holding all of our hands through revision. Each of these people has a defined brand and I bet most of them aren’t even trying—they’re just naturally these people; telling the story of you and your writing should come naturally, but does take effort.

I hear from a lot of authors who say to me, “but do I have to have TikTok to be relevant? Must I be on social media? Must I have a website? Must I write a newsletter? Must I be a character in the liminal state (yes, I did get an MFA) of online life?” And the answer today is mostly yes. But in publicity we have to think less about ourselves as writer, and more about our ideal readership because—

So, that is what I’m proposing with this week’s exercise.

It turns out, as evidenced by publisher’s weekly man at SIBA, we have to tell publishers and industry professionals what they don’t know. We have to know our own audience often-times better than they do. And part of that is being able to define what we’re doing and the other part is knowing who our people are & what they love.

For this exercise, we’re going to talk about branding ourselves, I’m sending you to TikTok, specifically to stylist Allison Bornstein. In the first video of five, she says to find three adjectives that describe your current style, and/or the style that you aspire to have. She says in order to find this out, go look at your “regulars”—not necessarily the clothing items you love, but the things that you wear all the time. Then, look at them and ask yourself, “how would I describe these pieces, what words would I use?” Think of the similarities between them and pull out some adjectives.

Now, this exercise can be done as a mood board if you’re into that sort of thing, but I’m much better at visualizing through words. What you’re going to do is instead of clothes, you’re going to visualize your writerly brand, so that you can determine what sort of person is going to love the book you wrote. First, write out all the things that you think are the strongest elements of your work. And be honest with yourself—what are you really good at?

For me, that would be lyricism, turning towards ancient stories and texts, the unfortunate lack of personal boundaries, concern with the south, sentence rhythm, transitions & leaping, and my infusion of research using the same voice as the personal. So, my ideal reader is probably going to read and care about poetry and poetic form, they’re probably going to like fairy tales, myths, and history, and they’ve probably read a Sarah Manguso, Heather Christie, or Jo Ann Beard. My three adjectives: lyrical, genuine, slipstream.

The most important of these, to me, across all my roles in publishing is the genuine one. I hope that when people think of me, they think genuine and transparent.

Now, once I have an idea of what I do well, and therefore what my ideal reader likes—I need to go (& talk about), or my work needs to go, where people who are into those things will be able to find it. And this can start well before your book is written. It should influence:

• What magazines and websites am I submitting my work to?

• What agents are representing similar work?

• Who am I following on social media that does similar work and where are they submitting or being featured?

• What are my comp books & authors?

• How is what I’m talking about online, posting online, and promoting online pointing back towards the community I want to foster?

• Who do I find myself in conversation with (figurative and literally—who’s responding well to me)?

• What writers are coming up with me (or in my peer group) who are doing work that overlaps with mine, or work that I can celebrate?

• What keywords should I search across websites and social media to find resources and interest for my work?

• What panels should I suggest for conferences?

• What could I teach?

• What could I talk about?

• What interview questions might I want to be asked about these strengths?

A lot of us stiffen up at the word “brand” because it feels so prepackaged. It feels like we’re no longer people. But the best writers, the writers who we keep coming back to and keep seeing, have a distinct brand that they’ve cultivated by marketing themselves as an expected thing to an ideal reader. And that brand can be influenced by a lot of factors. For instance, Cormac McCarthy’s brand is influenced by place, the southwest, and time, post-apocalyptic or stuck. Kelly Link’s brand is short stories and weird magic. Sandra Cisneros’ brand is both cutting and breathtaking, driven by a young voice, by home. Jacqueline Woodson’s brand is about young people, community, and urgency.

Let’s use Moshfegh as a brand example since she’s not online.

If I had to brand Moshfegh, which she has more than successfully done without an online presence and with very few interviews, I would say her work is concerned with: first-person POV, an unsettling feeling, self-deception, loneliness, mental health, driven from a very singular what if question (what if I just continued to sleep? what if that person loved me?) and completely motivated by interior characterization (to the point of reclusiveness) and not traditional “plot.”

Who are her people then?

• Well, for one, people in MFA-land. People who use words like “liminal” and think that the less there’s plot in a book, the more stirring, the more artful. (This is in the traditional sense of these programs, they are not all like this, and not all of us believe this about lit-er-a-ture).

• Fence Magazine, Granta, Vice Paris Review, The Baffler, The Believer—a little bit quirky, a little bit dark, very much literary-serious but in most cases with flavor. Bustle wrote about her in 2015 and most of what they say has to do with her being pretty establishment (and academic / award-winning) in terms of her career trajectory, but also very not online, which creates a mystique. Someone winning all of these awards, and yet, who are they? If you’re reading this, you’re probably already too-online to suddenly become a Moshfegh in this sense, but even her covers give off a similar cool detachment.

• What I love about what Moshfegh publishes is that her books are always morally gray. There’s no judgment within them even though, as a reader, you’re like whaaaaat the fuuuck. James Sullivan wrote about the feeling for The Boston Globe. So, her readers usually don’t need a bow, or a feel-good. Her readers have this energy:

So, she’s capitalizing on a sort of aesthetic. The girls who love Heathers, the girls who love Jawbreaker, the arteests, the high literary meleiu. Millenial and Gen-Z cool girls. You would be seen as cool & smart on public transport reading Moshfegh, you would be giving off the vibe, “don’t talk or even look at me.”

And her books are marketed to this same aesthetic from cover to coverage. If you know your narrative (literally and figuratively), then you can control it a little more. If you know your brand, then you can find your people (and they can find you!).

I can see some of y’all rolling your eyes, that you just want to be online and say whatever you want, and that’s fine. But what about having a niche newsletter? What about having a thing that you regularly talk about—Dungeons and Dragons, video games, crocheting, finding the best pair of jeans, climate change. What about editing a few anthologies with topics that overlap with those things? What about mentioning books (reviewing!) that overlap your interests with your audience’s interests? One of my best tweets was about what planner I was buying heading into 2022. My audience, I suppose, wants to be organized but we’re flailing.

A lot of this is just about being a good and active member of your community.

A press that’s really good at this branding & community thing is CLASH books. They have a punk & defiant vibe, and they stoke the flame of it. Their brand is clear from every single angle, and you should follow them and buy their books because CLASH is publishing all 🔥🔥🔥.

So, ask yourself: who’s your audience, and where are they? Like Where’s Waldo, but with a book deal at the end.

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Buy the books I’m working on this season. Here is a lovely little list (in order of pub date) with three adjectives for each one:

• A Boy in the City by S. Yarberry (intimate, queer, philosophy)

• Iguana Iguana by Caylin Capra-Thomas (longing, self, road)

• Taste: A Book of Small Bites by Jehanne Dubrow (sensual, storytelling, bittersweet)

• The Mean$ by Amy Fusselman (funny, Twix, money)

• Swan Wife by Sara Moore Wagner (fairy tale, transform, embodied)

• Curing Season: Artifacts by Kristine Langley Mahler (belonging, excavation, place)