MAYBE I WANT AUTHORS TO BE CELEBRITIES
on the AP pulling book reviews, (Taylor Swift's) archetypes as a starting place, the caption heard around the world, and invigorating local and regional coverage
Earlier this year my husband’s classroom was up for a big computer science grant with a local gaming company which would transform his room with a 100k check. His school ended up in the Top 3, but ultimately came in second. I watched him make posters after we put the kids to bed, create QR codes, setup a voting table at lunch for weeks so students could support their peers in making it happen, and he wrote a script to be read over the announcements in the mornings, and me, well I wrote up a little press release and told him where to send it (local news) with a personal note. He got no responses from the press. I’m used to this kind of silence, it befuddled him.
Local and regional news sources are a beautiful publicity engine if (big if) you live in a place that has supportive (local author &) book publicity. There are states that are supportive of local artists and then there are states that either have nonexistent local news sources (so sorry!), or just don’t support books as an “arts & culture” feature. It not only varies by state but it varies by city. A robust local NPR-affiliate can do a lot for a book, likewise a paper that still runs book coverage regularly. (Shout out to WPR or WUNC or WABE or Star Tribune or Pittsburgh Post-Gazette!). But to be able to have this, we actually have to read the reviews, click the links, share them, write to the paper even—when you think a review gets it right (or wrong). Someone on Tiktok (and maybe Substack too) recently said engaging in a community means accepting annoyance, inconvenience, and irritation. So, then the extra inconvenient step of listening, reading, engaging with the work around the work (with our precious use of time which is being decayed away in seamless fashion), is necessary to maintain the community!
When the Associated Press internal memo to end weekly book review coverage surfaced a few weeks ago, it was obviously a bummer. (You can complain to them at this link). The Associated Press is one of the bigger book review outlets, and because the reviews are often syndicated to local papers they have a wider reach to general public than say Literary Hub (which wrote about the ending here). They also more frequently than the other coveted national papers covered books that weren’t only commercial standouts, contracted to big four publishers, or by authors who had already published a handful of books. In fact, they sometimes reviewed poetry, often reviewed university press books, and covered larger independent presses regularly. They could be convinced is what I’m saying.
Nothing grinds my gears more than media that relegates all “indie” books (not talking self-published here) into one category, which they then will not cover.
In the larger landscape of book review publishing, I’ve seen the “traditional book review” which is what the AP typically wrote be replaced by the not-exactly-a-profile, but a sort of hybrid “book story” that isn’t a review at all, but an attempt to influencer-infiltrate an author into the literary landscape. There are obviously profiles of authors who are famous, but this reads as something different—it makes the story behind the book, often some angle of the author’s journey to writing it, the book coverage. And I don’t mean “It took [insert author] fourteen drafts to get to a finalized version of her debut novel,” or well, anything that has to do with the actual writing of the book at all, and more so the intrigue of the author’s story that led to the book story. I see this across the board, regardless of genre. Look at the coverage for Anna Marie Tendler or Sarah Hoover’s Motherload. Look at Texas Monthly’s recent piece on James Wade’s debut fifth book (Thanks, Kelly Turner) Narrow the Road, or coverage of Kate Riley’s Ruth.
Vanity Fair has stated that they’re moving toward this sort of coverage—the story of the story, and I’m not going to lie, I like it, but it’s more work. It makes the author’s web of story much more important to the publicity of the work. We’ve been saying this for a while, but it’s telling authors that the work does not stand alone (not even fiction or poetry), it will not at least, in larger book coverage, be able to stand on its own. Yes, of course national reviews (straight reviews) still exist (Washington Post, LA Times, New York Times Book Review, Book Forum), but as Erica Stern messaged me last week—there were only six reviews in the NYT Book Review on Sunday (wild!).
If you like this cover, might I recommend Michelle Gurule’s THANK YOU, JOHN. Out the end of next month and so good we’ve gone through multiple galley runs! Also, the Netgalley reviews are a state of wonder: comparing it to the best memoir since The Glass Castle, requested it be made into a movie, and how it will “revolutionize the world of memoir.” Readers get it.
Media now demands the author cannot be divorced from the work, unless we’re talking about the success of anonymity like Letter to My Transgender Daughter or Tart by “Slutty Chef.” It was bound to happen with the proliferation (I originally wrote prolifery, which I think should be a word) of influencer books, but writers are not (usually) influencers (in fact those are stereotypes awfully divorced from one another), and marketing a self is a skill (that can totally be taught and teased, AND takes a lot of effort).
So, what’s the point of knowing all of this? (Get to the point, Cassie).
My hope is that through the rescinding of book reviews at Associated Press we will see a few things happen, the first: a flourish in local and regional book coverage (and that it’ll arrive alongside a flourish in embracing local and regional communities to protect and brace ourselves from inverted totalitarianism); I miss when my local paper did book reviews—my dad used to save me the pages, even before I entered the world of publicity (alongside comics for my fridge!).
The second is that we’ll see innovation in book coverage at large (I’m looking at places like Zona Motel which are covering book events—creating a “scene” (that I hope for outside of NYC!). This is not to say that I want authors to become traditional celebrities (well, maybe I do, HA!), but I do want the art of writing to be as respected in media as say a movie star. (As much as we shame the movie-star-esque profiles of writers, they’re fun. The lipgloss conversation went on for weeks! It’s good that authors be treated like people with interests behind sentences).
I realize how much aesthetics are involved in those choices (beautiful movie star), and also there’s the mystery of the movie star, that we’ll never really know them like a regular schmegular person writing in their little closet (it’s me)—we’re always given bite size pieces that are often meaningless or scandalous, and authors don’t have that kind of “curiosity luxury,” but can it be created? It can! (it can! I say to myself again for encouragement). That’s the question, that’s what I’m interested in exploring in the next few years (maybe I want to break the system? Maybe we’re in a break the system age, and I’m choosing hope & wishful thinking).
Before I get into Taylor Swift, read this post by Candice Wuehle.
Okay, here’s a starting point on the author branding / author as brand conversation: I mentioned on notes that I might write about Taylor Swift’s obsession with archetypes and how it could help you in book publicity. That caption was ridiculous, let’s be honest. It immediately made me think of my “cheerleading shorts” from high school. (Shout out to the Soffe warehouse right next to South of the Border, iykyk). I hated trading out those little folded-up, triangle cut shorts for required gym wear during gym class and then there’s my best friend Ashley and I walking the track, but running when we got near the teacher. Sigh.
I think archetypes (while relegated to the high school classroom usually) are a great place for authors to start in their “branding” journey. Figuring out where you fit into a sort of stock mold (or where you might be relegated to stock mold is probably a better way to say that—something as simple as “crone” or “shadow” or “everyman” or “maiden” (here’s a big list, and you can also find these in things like Tarot! or just culturally “girl boss,” “unlikeable woman, “golden retriever boyfriend”)—gives you options to figure out what people automatically think of the state of life you’re in (and your characters are in), or the placeholder of life, and then where there are similarities (where does your story align), and of course, friction with the archetype: intrigue, curiosity, untangling, contentiousness, down right abrasiveness (I wish I could share here a recent essay by Gabriella D’Italia, author of Getting Dressed in the Dark on Doubles, but it’s not out yet—soon!). This is to say: ideas in conflict are hot! Assumptions being broken are hot! Finding out something you thought was A has a B side, hot!
It works for characters too, and is an easy way into creating a framing or angle because I’m sure you’ve thought about it while writing—what are you writing into and what are you writing against. I mentioned Tart up there, look at the coverage—what are the assumptions about chefs, then women chefs, then how is she breaking them or agreeing? How does Narrow the Road coverage look—he’s writing into the Western tradition, road trip novel, but with a “vulnerable and sensitive hero.” So, then what are ways in for publicity—he’s attempting to break the stoicism (toxic masculinity) of the Western while writing into the tradition, there’s a diary in the book so getting into the internal negotiations of the narrator instead of just the external conflicts being the thing that potentially drives momentum in the story (Cormac) etc, etc.
What I’m saying is that using the archetype is a starting point. Taylor Swift is well-known for this, and I imagine it’s how she does a lot of her writing. It makes her writing both familiar in that attempt at universal experiences and stock characters (heartbreak, revenge, want) and also a place to be narratively specific to her own bread-crumbing of what actually happened.
The stock archetype is never enough from an author branding point, but it does give you a place to say okay, I or my characters or my story or my plot devices fall into this umbrella, what questions can I ask about that umbrella to come up with angles that add something to the story around my book, that offer me talking points and framing. One goal of publicity is to create conversation, this framing might help you start to look at what conversations you’re already in (having a brief David Foster Wallace (I KNOW) “This is Water” break here—what water are you in, how are you managing it and subverting it), and what conversations can be untangled from these larger containers.
As always, the Pine State calendar of events lives here, and you can buy our books here! You can also see what we’re working on and contact us through our website, Pinestatepublicity.com.
You can read a review of HOT HOUSE BLOOM by Austyn Wohlers in the New York Times, in fact all the great reviews for this one are on Bookmarks, and here is a conversation with Austyn in Baltimore Fishbowl, Ashley M. Jones was in conversation about her new book Lullaby for the Grieving on New Books Network, Michelle Gurule’s THANK YOU, JOHN is on the hot summer reading list (& also someone on Netgalley just said they haven’t read a memoir as compelling since The Glass Castle! WOAH!), Jocelyn Jane Cox was interviewed about MOTION DAZZLE in Mer Literary and featured in the Mount Horeb Mail, and so much more on Twitter & Instagram.
So interesting, Cassie! Especially the paragraph about how book coverage is moving more toward covering the story behind the book or the author’s story of writing the book. So thinking about author as brand–meaning the writing does not and can’t speak for itself.
This Is Water = 💙💙💙