Promote Your Book Without Dying of Shame
a mini-course for writers, right here on this lil substack
Why is self-promotion so hard for writers?
For one thing: Nobody talks about it. Nobody teaches it. The best you can do, it seems, is figure out how to cultivate an aura of mystery. Or to already be the kind of sexy, skinny, rich, mean person who effortlessly consolidates social power in the literary world.
And beyond that, we have a tendency to shame ourselves and each other for the sin of daring to want attention, or daring to think we deserve it.
We all probably have at least one family member who makes constant jokes about how pointless and silly it is to write a book.
We’ve all probably made those jokes ourselves, possibly to disperse the discomfort we feel about having pursued something that others told themselves they couldn’t do.
Even if you pursue academic training, MFA programs make no attempt to teach you how to figure out what you’re about and who you’re for. “Good writing” is so broad that it means nothing. Professors have wildly varying approaches. I think we all kind of know that one kind of book isn’t for everyone, but we almost never define a book’s aims before talking about whether it succeeds.
Writers re-state, over and over, that money is evil, success is selling out, and the really good, wonderful, pure-of-heart ones are penniless teachers, selfless nurturers, pious do-gooders. (That last part usually isn’t spoken overtly, but pay attention to the ways writers praise each other, and what for: It’s a lot more common to hear effusive whatnots about how generous and wonderful and brilliant someone is as a teacher than to hear similar praise for someone who really knows how to sell their work and cultivate an audience. In my experience, at least.)
It’s no surprise, then, that I hated the idea of defining my work as a product. It seemed like the absolute antithesis of everything that mattered to me about writing. I didn’t want to flatten my work in that way. I didn’t want to limit its potential audience. I also … couldn’t really articulate why poetry mattered, why it had to be protected from this flattening, why I wrote it, why anyone should care. Why I wanted someone to choose my novel to read when they could choose millions of others.
But I mean … unless you’re an outsider artist making a mountain of papier-mâché for god in the desert, you have some desire for money and influence.
If you don’t, I guess you clicked on this by mistake?
It’s OK to want things. Like money, fame, and influence. Really, it is. It’s OK to want these things for no reason other than you would get a kick out of the experience. And it’s OK if you’re still deeply divided on the matter, because you’ve been taking in some really confusing messages about what it means to be a good artist, and a good person.
Art is a metabolic process. The reader isn’t just some troublesome stranger who wanders onto the scene long after all the fun has happened. Art is an exchange of energy. And if you ignore half of the exchange, you’re missing out on a lot of joy.
Absolutely, you can go forth on the hope that the ideal reader will find you someday, magically. Or you can hide away and write for no one but yourself. That is a legitimate choice! Probably the most spiritual, beautiful one, even. If you are one such egoless artist working for the sole love of communion with the unseen, I applaud you. Maybe I’ll join you someday.
But until then, I am still a creature of ego. I like lipstick, fast cars, tight underwear, tinsel. I like that I’m me and not you. I like hearing the starting pistol. I like the flutter in my heart that means I hope I’ll win.
It might surprise you to discover that there’s a way of promoting your work which actually enables you to more thoroughly enjoy and commit to the process of making it—especially if it’s weird, oblique, or non-commercial. Or that understanding the use case for your writing might make it more fun to commit to making the work that you most want to make, without looking over your shoulder at how everyone else is doing.
I care deeply about these matters because I care deeply about art. For the longest time, I thought that marketing and promotion was the antithesis of everything that mattered most to me. I thought that if I was good enough, the world would beat a path to my door, and that attitude made me an envious, anxious, self-critical, you-critical, us-critical mess. It made it harder to write because the stakes were so high, and it made it much harder to enjoy the success I was already experiencing. It has been a huge surprise to see that learning how + why to promote my work helped me untangle so much messiness and angst. Which is why
starting this week, I’m going to do a branding & promotion course, right here on this Substack.
If you subscribe, you get:
A DIY framework for finding your use case, your audience, and your method
A weekly lesson + discussion thread on promoting, marketing, and branding your writing in a way that doesn’t make you barf,
A monthly Q&A-style podcast, and if there’s enough interest,
A one-on-one session in which I walk you through the framework of discovering your use case, your audience, and your method (which will be recorded and shared with other subscribers as a knowledge base)
along with my usual weekly behind-the-scenes entries for subscribers.
Here are some topics that are on deck:
The perspective shift that makes it easy to promote without barfing
The only thing you need to do to level up your promotion skills
The biggest mistakes I made in promoting my first novel (embarrassing, lol)
What about the cool people who don’t ever shill their work?
The clubhouse model: a use case for us weirdos (and David Lynch)
What is magnetism + how to cultivate it (no love+light involved, I promise)
What’s behind the curtain in literally every single online marketing course
Social currency & lit world economics
Two extremely stupid social media mistakes I made
How branding creates psychological safety
Why promotion is the antidote for envy
What is value anyway?
Case studies: Ottessa Moshfegh, Garth Greenwell, Sally Rooney, Colleen Hoover, and more
The magic of consistency
Fuck everyone
The spiritual purpose of band T-shirts
Lessons from the girlboss dark web
Unpacking the shame of wanting to be seen
My #1 book promo advice: Get arrested
All of this will be posted behind the subscriber paywall ($7/mo, $70/year). If you’re not sure whether you’ll like it, by all means, sign up for a month and see what you think! If you just want to dip in for a month here and there and read the archives, that’s totally cool, too.
Every month, subscribers will vote on a lesson they’d like to share with non-paying subscribers, so you’ll still get access to some useful stuff if you don’t want to add another paid subscription to your monthly budget.
FAQ
Q: So, what qualifies you to teach on this topic?
A: Experience, primarily. From 2019-2022, I ran an online teaching biz (which some of you may remember, hieee!) and during that time, I took many, many courses on business and promotion, marketing and branding, etc. etc., yadda yadda. Some of them were useful; a lot of them were a total waste of money. And almost all of them didn’t really apply to writers or writing world. I have tried a lot, and failed a lot. (And cringed a lot, oh boy.)
I have two MFAs, one in poetry (Michener Center for Writers) and one in fiction (Iowa Writers’ Workshop). For better and worse, my experience in those programs taught me almost nothing about marketing my work. Maybe other MFA programs are different, or they’re different now, or you were there at the same time as me and had a totally different experience. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I loved both of them regardless! What I’m getting at is I’ve had a lot of experience inside establishment literary world, and I think I can speak pretty accurately to the prevailing ways of doing things.
My first novel, Marilou Is Everywhere, came out in 2019 from Riverhead Books. My first poetry collection, I Live in a Hut, came out in 2012 from Cleveland State University Poetry Press. I’ve experienced a range of publication & promo experience, from university press to big three.
Please note: I am not a life coach, therapist, doctor, or healer. Just a writer gal. Because I’m using my experience here, I’m limited by it.
One thing that I wish I had known about online courses, before I spent so much money on them, is that very often, the teacher has found a method that works really well for them … but that doesn’t mean they understand why it works for them or how it would work for someone else. If they aren’t especially self-aware about this, you can end up being hugely frustrated when you try to implement their instructions. (For example: Instagram was a whole different ball game in 2012. The people who built their audience in those years can’t necessarily tell you anything about what would work today, because they simply have no idea.) Even if they’re acting in good faith and doing the best they can to help you, if they aren’t self-aware about their limitations, it’s a total waste of time and money.
I do have a breadth of experience, but I also have blind spots. I still absolutely think I can give you some useful ideas and perspective shifts, but it doesn’t hurt to state these limitations clearly. Especially in online course world, where hot air and fuzzy promises are commonplace.
Q: How long will you run this course on your Substack?
A: Honestly, I don’t know. I’m committing to covering all of the topics listed above, but beyond that, it depends on whether there’s engagement and interest to continue. If this develops into a cozy + useful online community, I can see it going for much longer—because where there’s community there’s discussion, and where there’s discussion, there’s a proliferation of topics and angles to explore. We’ll see! It’s good with me either way.
Q: Will you be offering refunds?
A: No. Since there’s a month-by-month option available, I suggest that you choose that to start with—that way you can cancel after a month if you decide it isn’t for you.
Q: Will you read my manuscript?
A: Gladly! I love doing developmental edits, and Substack subscribers get an automatic discount on my editing and consultation services. But it is a separate service, and I charge a fairly standard per-word fee. If you’re interested, send me an email and I’ll give you all the information.
Q: Can I interview you for my podcast?
A: Hell yeah, buddy!
Q: What’s this one-on-one session about?
A: You’ll send me your website, your socials, and a brief work sample ahead of time, and I’ll walk you through my framework for discovering your use case, your audience, and your method. This will take place on a Zoom call, which will be taped and uploaded for other subscribers—that way they can learn from your experience, and you can learn from theirs.
If you’re feeling a little shy, no worries—this is an optional feature, and you can get the same use out of this framework if you do it on your own.
Q: I’m a [musician/visual artist/actor/director]. Will this be useful for me if I’m not a writer?
A: Maybe! A lot of what we’ll talk about is applicable for any artist, I think, but my perspective is deeply informed by my life in the lit world. The fundamentals about promotion are the same no matter what, but I do think that the standards and social mores of your field matter a lot. This is why I found it so hard to use marketing advice directed at, say, life coaches.
But I can’t guarantee in good conscience that it’ll apply across the board in your field. Again, check it out for a month or so and see if it helps.
More questions? Please, ask away!
And if you’re in, LFG: