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When Is It Smart to Submit Your Work to a University Press? (You’d Be Surprised!)

Today’s post is by author Joni B. Cole (@JoniBCole).

How did a collection of essays by a Vermont author (me) end up being acquired by the University of New Mexico Press? Especially given I’ve never set foot in New Mexico and—while I like to think my writing is literary—my forthcoming collection isn’t what you would call standard academic fare.

In some ways, the process was fairly typical of finding any publisher. I sent the press a query letter, a proposal, and a writing sample. Then I waited (for months) and was beyond thrilled when I eventually heard, “Yes.” Despite the fact this will be my third book coming out from a university press, I still can’t discern exactly how university presses pick and choose the titles they publish, or how they compare with other traditional publishers.

Recently, I decided to shed my ignorance about university presses by posing the following questions to two very generous and patient souls at UNM Press: senior acquisitions editor Elise McHugh and director Stephen Hull. Their responses below provided quite the education.

JONI B. COLE: Who should pitch to a university press?

ELISE MCHUGH & STEPHEN HULL: Anyone who has written a book that they feel has an audience but suspects that the large traditional publishers in New York would feel the story is too regional or the audience too small to be published. The large trade houses (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster) and their many imprints look at projects they feel will sell in the multi-thousands from the start, and they’ll pass on books they don’t believe will hit that mark in the first year of sales.

Not all university presses publish trade projects, but those that do are a natural home for books with regional settings or topics, or books with national appeal that don’t fit the mold of a traditional big house. And when we talk about trade books we’re talking about books written for a general audience, books you’d commonly find in bookstores, public libraries, and online vendors (versus scholarly or academic books whose topics and writing style focus on classroom adoption, university libraries, and researcher use).

What are the biggest myths writers need to know about university presses?

There are a number of misconceptions out there. One of the most common we hear is that university presses don’t do anything to publicize books, such as sending books out for book reviews, entering books into post-publication book awards, or helping authors set up book signings and other events. We do, though how much of that a university press can do is really based on how large its marketing department is. University press marketing and sales departments operate in the same way as any other traditional publisher, including the Big Five. Like any other press, we want to sell books and support our authors, and we’ll do as much as we are able to in that regard.

Another myth is that books will be priced much higher than books from other presses. It’s true university presses can’t offer the same price points as the Big Five, like $14.95 for a long paperback. Most of UNM Press’s paperbacks, including our poetry titles, range from $17.95 to $19.95, with a few priced $21.95 or $24.95, if they are extremely long. This is due to economics: The more books printed at one time, the less each book costs to produce. But while the Big Five print multi-thousands of books at one time, university presses are much more conservative, sometimes printing as few as 400 to 1,000 at a time.

If all of the copies of a particular book don’t sell within three years of being printed, the press loses money. It’s kind of like new car sales—the car starts depreciating in value as soon as it leaves the lot. So university presses print more conservatively and then watch sales closely and reprint a book whenever its stock gets low so there are always books on hand. Essentially, each copy of a book costs more to produce, but in the long run the press (hopefully) will save money while earning money for itself and its authors.

A third myth is that a university press will publish only books by people who live in a particular state or if the book is about a particular state. Most university presses will publish a number of titles that focus on a particular state or region as they know how to market to the area around them. However, university presses publish authors from all over the world. What is more important than location is whether a book is a good fit at a particular press.

For example, if an author has written a manuscript about nature and they’re looking at a particular press, does that press publish books about nature? If it does, are all of the books focused on the state or the region, or does the press seem to publish books about nature from all over the United States or in the world? If they have a manuscript about wildflowers in New Mexico, it’s a good bet UNM Press would be a potential fit because we publish nature books about the Southwest. But if the manuscript focuses on wildflowers in Georgia, we wouldn’t be a good fit.

Conversely, UNM Press is well-known for books by, about, and for people of the Latinx and Chicanx communities. So if an author has a book of short stories by Latinx individuals that live all over the country (not just New Mexico or the Southwest), that would be an excellent fit. A potential author should research the presses they are interested in to see what kind of books each publisher specializes in to try and see if there’s a potential match (more about this below).

How is the acquisition process similar or different than at traditional presses?

In many respects the acquisitions process is the same. Most presses will have some guidelines for prospective authors telling them what the press publishes and what it wants to see when initially contacted. (FYI, very few presses actually want an author to send their full manuscript in at first contact unless they’re operating a book contest.)

On the homepage of UNM Press’s website, there is a tab that reads For Authors. It’s a drop-down menu to select Contracted Authors or Prospective Authors. On that Prospective Authors page we detail exactly what we want to see (query letter and proposal), what subjects we specialize in, and what acquisition editor a person should contact for a particular subject (for instance, among many other subjects Elise McHugh handles writing guides and poetry while Stephen Hull handles music and film titles). If a publisher doesn’t list a specific contact, Dear Editor or Dear University of ______ Press as the query letter salutation is completely acceptable. If an acquisitions editor likes the sound of the project, they will either ask for a sample or the full manuscript to review.

What is the review process at a university press?

This is where university presses differ from other publishers. Most university presses will send projects under consideration to one or two peer reviewers. These would be other writers known for work in the same category as the author. For instance, if we’re considering a novel, we will send the novel to two peer reviewers we feel have a similar writing style and ask them to return a report to us about whether they feel the manuscript is ready for publication and if they have any revision suggestions to offer. This can add some time to the process, but not as much as people fear.

We ask for the reviews back within two to six weeks, which frankly often is the same length of time editors at other presses would take. Some people are put off by the prospect of having their work read in this way, but for us it is a way to offer the authors outside feedback to catch things they might not otherwise catch. And we don’t require revisions to be accepted carte blanche. UNM Press editors read the manuscript as well and talk with the authors about the reviews and what revisions we believe would make the project stronger. In the end, this process has been designed to make the project as strong as it can possibly be because we want the author and their work to shine.

The other piece that is different and often causes a lot of anxiety is that university presses have advisory committees made up of faculty or administrators from their home institutions. Our committee is the University Press Committee, and it’s comprised of twelve faculty members from various departments whose subjects we commonly publish (such as English, Chicano studies, art, anthropology, etc.). Some of these committees vote on whether or not to accept a project for publication. At UNM Press, we take all projects we’ve had reviewed to the UPC for approval. The committee sees a memo from the acquisitions editor, the peer reviews, the author’s response to those reviews, and a sample of the manuscript. We meet once a month.

To authors not familiar with the university press process, this can appear like an arbitrary decision—why put in all this work and time if a committee can reject a project even if the acquisitions editor and peer reviewers like it? But the fact is, that rarely happens (and on most of the occasions it does, it’s scholarly manuscripts the committee has issues with due to the research). Between the two of us, we have been attending meetings like these for over fifteen years, and we can count on our fingers the number of times a project that has editor support and positive peer reviews has been rejected by a committee. The committee relies on the editor and those reviews.

Basically, what the committee is there to do is uphold a high standard of publication for the press. They aren’t there to reject things—they are there to support the press and its authors to make the books, the authors, and the press stand out. Of course it’s still nerve-wracking, but maybe it will seem less so if readers of this column keep in mind that at other presses, especially the Big Five and their imprints, acquisition editors have to present each project to staff, such as marketing and sales and business, and argue for why a certain manuscript should be published.

The fact is every editor has people they have to convince because every publisher receives far more manuscripts in a year than it can publish. UNM Press publishes 50 new books each year, about half of those trade and half scholarly. But because university presses are generally a department within an institution, our processes and who we have to convince may be a bit different, which can be confusing to a first-time university press author.

Do I need to go through an agent with a university press?

University presses will (and some often do) work with agents, but having one isn’t a requirement. Almost none of our scholarly titles are agented, and few of the poetry manuscripts. In respect to UNM Press’s literary nonfiction and fiction, we’d say half to two-thirds are pitched directly by the authors and the rest are represented by agents. Many smaller independent presses don’t require an agent either. If a prospective author does their homework and checks out the websites of publishers, the website will note whether or not the press requires agented representation for submission.

What are some of the unique benefits of going with a university press?

That’s a great question because there are trade-offs. For instance, many university presses can’t compete with advances offered by larger publishers, and some can’t offer advances at all. And no university press is going to set up and pay for a cross-country book tour. However, because university presses operate on a smaller scale, there are some unique benefits.

University presses are generally committed to keeping a book in print for as long as possible. Those smaller print runs give the presses more flexibility. And while we’d naturally do backflips if a new title sold ten or twenty thousand in its first year of publication, UNM Press has a different standard of what “successful” means. If we have a novel that sells 1,500 or 2,000 copies in its first year and not only earns back all of the costs put in to produce it but also earns additional income, that’s a success. That’s a book we want to have on our backlist for as long as we can.

Here’s an example of how that can work: UNM Press has a novel on our list that has been in print since the 1980s. We sell maybe a hundred copies a year, but we keep it in print and available to readers because we can print it in small quantities that are still affordable for us to produce. That also means, here at UNMP, that a book that was originally printed in cloth (hardcover), if it sells through those couple of thousand of copies within the first two or three years, has an excellent chance of being brought out in paperback. An author doesn’t have to worry about hitting that ten or twenty thousand (or higher) mark before a paperback becomes a possibility.

Authors also generally have more say and more knowledge of the production process with a small press or university press. Because UNM Press produces 50-60 books each year and has a smaller staff, our authors work closely with people in every department and can get to know people on a first-name basis. They get some say in the design of their book cover and the book’s cover copy. They work closely with our three-person marketing and sales team to set up a publicity campaign for their book. They can ask their acquisition editor questions. They work closely with the editorial, design, and production staff, and can ask the staff questions as their book moves from final draft to page proofs to printed book. We’ve had many authors tell us that they enjoy the more personal and intimate experience they have with a publisher our size, and we love to hear that.

Finally, an author’s book has an excellent chance of getting more marketing time and being considered a front-list title at a smaller press. At UNM Press, the trade titles stand out among the 50 being published that year (half trade, half scholarly) rather than get buried in the midlist.

Do university presses offer standard royalties?

The idea of standard royalties is based on what is offered by the Big Five and its imprints. The reality is that royalty arrangements can vary widely depending upon the press, how large it is, how it operates, etc. For trade books at UNMP we use the same basic royalty ranges as the larger houses. We do offer advances, and while they will generally be smaller than larger houses, they are competitive with other university presses with robust trade programs, and with independent trade publishers.

Have any blockbuster books come out from university presses?

Absolutely! Reaching back, A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean was originally published at the University of Chicago Press in 1976. John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces was first published in 1980 by Louisiana State University Press and has been in print continuously ever since. Hanif Abdurraqib’s Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, published by the University of Texas Press in 2019, was a New York Times best seller and on the longlist for the 2019 National Book Awards. And in 2020 Deesha Philyaw’s The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, published by West Virginia University Press, was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award.

But perhaps the most surprising blockbuster ever published by a university press is Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. This was first published in 1984 by the Naval Institute Press of the U.S. Naval Academy. It was the first work of fiction ever published by the press and launched not only a long list of books and movies by and based on Clancy, but arguably launched the whole subgenre of techno-thrillers.

What’s something you wish every writer knew before or after pitching a university press?

This is something we wish writers would do before pitching to any press: Do some research! Go to different press websites, look at the books they’ve published, look at the subjects they publish, read (and follow!) any guidelines listed for how to approach them. Rejection unfortunately is part of the process and it’s never pleasant, but doing some research in advance and tailoring your queries to those publishers you can tell are a good potential fit with your project will save you time, work, and frustration.

Thank you, Elise and Stephen.

5 Ways to Use Community Marketing for Your Book

Photo by Claudio Carrozzo on Unsplash

Today’s post is by Amanda Miller of My Word Publishing (@mywordpub), a self-publishing consultancy.

Locally and globally, in your community and around the world, it’s possible to create connections and memorable experiences with readers by using fun and interesting ways for them to interact with your book. This only requires a few copies of your book to give away. If the cat scratches the cover, don’t throw it away—use it for one of these nifty, inexpensive opportunities to get others involved in the marketing.

1. BookCrossing.com

Have you ever wondered what parts of the world and whose hands your book has landed in? With BookCrossing you can track your book and its travels. It’s free to register your book and it’s free for those who play. Here’s how it works: After registering, you get a unique BookCrossing ID to place on the inside of your book. When a reader picks up your book and sees the sticker, they are prompted to go to the website and indicate that they have your book. Like throwing a bottle out to sea with a note in it, you get to see who responds and where your book has traveled!

2. Reader’s pass-along

Similar to BookCrossing, a more informal way to connect with readers is to start a reader’s pass-along. First, prep your book by designating a space for readers to write in a sentence or two about what they took away and enjoyed most. Or, you can tuck a one-page insert inside the book for them to fill out. Add a prompt that says, “What did you learn or take away from this book?” Next, leave your book on a bench for someone to find, or even drop it off in a Little Free Library in your community. For every reader who comes across your book, they can list what they learned from your book and pass it on. This is especially great for self-help genres and inspirational books!

3. Little Free Library

Little Free Libraries can be found in most towns and cities. I’ve even seen them in airports. You can leave a copy of your book at a Little Free Library for others to “borrow.” To make it fun, you can also create a treasure hunt by writing a post on Nextdoor, telling people in your geographical area that your book is hidden in a special place and something awaits them inside the book. As an example, if you are a children’s book author, you could offer a $5 gift card to a local ice cream shop. It supports walking, family time, and reading!

4. Doctors’ and dentists’ offices and coffee shops

Who actually looks forward to visiting their doctor’s or dentist’s office? Help lighten the mood for those in the waiting room by leaving a good read for them to browse through! If you are a children’s book author, drop your book off at your local pediatrician’s office or children’s dentist’s office. Books can help distract and keep kids calm during stressful times. Similarly, consider leaving a book at your local coffee shop. Add a note, saying something like, “I hope you pick up this book and enjoy it. After you’ve read it, drop it in another coffee shop, waiting room, or park bench for someone else to enjoy.” It will keep the book fun for readers by tasking them with a mission and connection to the book itself.

5. Local silent auctions and fundraising events

Know of any silent auctions or fundraising events coming up in your town? Ask the organizers if you can donate a signed copy of your book to their event. Make a themed gift basket around the book. For instance, if your book is about travel, you can put little model airplanes and maybe even get the local shoe store to donate a set of sneakers. That increases the value of the total gift, but be sure to leave your book front and center.

For more ways to get readers to interact with your book, check out Jane’s wonderful interview with Amy Stolls, author of The Ninth Wife, where she lends quality advice to authors through her experience working with traditional publishers.

Why Plots Fail

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

Today’s post is by editor Tiffany Yates Martin (@FoxPrintEd). Join her on Wednesday, Oct. 5, for the online class 5 Steps to an Airtight Plot.

Many authors embark on a new manuscript with one of two common inspirations: a great idea for a plot, or a fascinating character and situation.

Both can be good springboards for story, yet without more development, each may result in stories that peter out, dead end, or get lost in rabbit holes (especially during the breakneck pace of NaNo).

Plots most commonly fail when:

they’re approached as an isolated element of story, a series of interesting events for authors to plug their characters into, orwhen interesting characters are randomly loosed into an intriguing situation with no specific destination or purpose.

Characters must take action, but action is not plot, and plot is not story.

The role of plot in story

The basic definition of story is a character pursues something he desperately wants, and he is changed by that pursuit and his success or failure in achieving his goal. Plot is simply the road the character travels on that journey.

I often reduce it to a simple formula:

Point A + Plot = Point B

In other words, story equals character arc plus plot.

Creating an elaborately structured plot and calling it story is like mapping a trip and calling it a vacation. What makes it complete is the character’s experience of it. Character drives plot, not the other way around.

Don’t panic, plotters. That doesn’t mean you can’t map out your plot ahead of time. And fear not, pantsers—it doesn’t mean you have to painstakingly develop or outline the whole story before you begin.

But creating compelling, cohesive stories does mean considering how these two crucial story elements work together.

Know what your character wants

Before you can put a character in motion, you have to know where she is headed and why. What drives your characters is the engine and the fuel for the actions they take and fail to take in the course of the story, the reason they—and we—take this journey.

Your character’s goal(s) and motivations determine those actions, as well as her reactions, inaction, and interaction; they dictate every choice she makes that pushes her along the plot. It’s essential to understand at least these basics about your characters before trying to put them in motion.

In director Baz Luhrmann’s recent movie Elvis, the titular character’s main motivation is evident from almost the first scene: Elvis loves music, especially blues and gospel. It literally moves him—in an early scene he wanders into a tent revival and his body starts shaking and swaying seemingly without his volition.

That dictates his main goal—to make his own music—which is the propulsive force for every subsequent action he takes (or doesn’t take) in the course of the story, starting with recording his own version of the one of the songs by a local blues musician that fascinated him, accepting Colonel Tom Parker’s offer to tour him on the carnival circuit, and every subsequent choice he makes.

But characters may have other goals and motivations as well, and will also continue to evolve as the story develops and as the author’s understanding of them deepens and grows—which will also affect the choices they make and the paths they take.

Elvis’s desire to pursue his music begins to morph early in the story as he is seduced into a new goal—fame and fortune—which evolves from his deeper motivation: a desperate need for love.

These are powerful and universal desires, the kind many readers can relate to. But they’re vague—another reason plots can falter or lose focus.

Create tangible as well as intangible goals

Pinning your character’s intangible longings to a concrete goal gives readers something to root for—or against—and tells us when the character has “won” (or lost).

Without that, momentum may stall, like a footrace with no definitive finish line for runners to orient themselves toward or to tell them when they’ve reached it.

Or the story may lose cohesion and feel episodic: “This happens…and then this happens…and then this happens…” but because the plot has become disconnected from the character arc, the actions lack meaning or impact.

Tie your character’s more generalized motivations to some specific, tangible “brass ring” that represents them.

For Luhrmann’s movie version of Elvis, each element of what drives him is pinned to a definitive representation of that longing:

His love of music—his kind of music—is tangibly represented by a Christmas special where Colonel Parker demands he sing sanitized traditional carols and not swivel those hips, as well as the broader concrete representation of Parker’s pushing him to shift his career to inoffensive, bland music, against a new manager who wants to encourage Elvis to play his own kind of music and swivel at will. This sets up a clear story conflict that serves as a powerful propulsive force.His desire for fame and fortune is represented by specific, tangible goals that Elvis associates with money—wanting to buy his mother a pink Cadillac, Graceland, his own plane, etc.—and popularity and acclaim, like bigger venues, Hollywood movies, and eventually a European tour.His longing for love is represented by his profound devotion to his mother, Gladys (and to a smaller degree his father); the Colonel; Priscilla and Lisa Marie; and, as the Colonel himself reminds viewers throughout, the fans. Elvis thrives on attention and confuses it with love—and that motivates every decision he makes in the story.

Defining what your character wants and why allows you to grow a cohesive, integrated plot as you throw obstacles in the path between your characters and what they want, and let their “why”—what drives them toward that goal—dictate the choices they make. Each choice sends them on the next step of the path as your plot develops organically, always driven by the characters.

Know how your character changes

One final reason plots may fail is that the character’s point B—how they change by the end of the story, externally, internally, or both—is not directly related to or a result of what happened to them in the course of it.

But if you let their goal and motivation dictate their actions and behavior at every decision point, then readers will see on the page, step by step, how your character moves along her arc: how each challenge she faces, every choice she makes, affects her, shifts her perspective, and causes her growth or change.

This direct, intrinsic relationship between plot and character—the character’s struggles, choices, longings, and goals that drive the actions they take in the course of the plot—is what makes for dynamic stories that feel organic, cohesive, and satisfying to readers.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, Oct. 5 for the online class 5 Steps to an Airtight Plot.

To Nail Your Book Proposal: Think in Synergies, Not Sections

Photo by Shiny Diamond

Today’s guest post is by editor and coach Lisa Cooper Ellison (@lisaellisonspen). Next week she is teaching The Three Essential Questions Every Agent Hopes Your Book Proposal Answers with Creative Nonfiction.

Writing a top-notch proposal can feel a bit like birthing a baby, complete with grunts, groans and cries by tired writers who fear they don’t have what it takes to push to the finish line. But with persistence, it can be done.

The key to writing a great proposal is to understand the essential questions it must answer, and—here’s the most important part—the synergies that will help you truly answer them.

Those essential questions:

Why me?Why this?Why now?

Unlike a query or a pitch, which might answer each question in a single paragraph, these questions get answered across multiple proposal sections. The most common proposal sections include Overview, About the Author, Target Audience, Marketing Plan, Comparable Titles, Chapter Outline, and Sample Chapters.

Why Me synergy

Key Sections: About the Author, Target Audience, and Marketing Plan

Unless you’re famous or know you have a robust platform, this question can feel like the great intimidator. Even experienced writers can get their knickers in a twist when creating a marketing plan.

That intimidation factor can lead to pixie-dust-filled prose about what the writer hopes to do once an agent or publisher signs them. These aspirational lines sometimes read a little like this: “In the leadup to my launch, I’ll publish a Modern Love essay and speak at multiple bookstores and conferences.”

If you’re publishing regularly with big places, speaking at conferences, and have relationships with editors or bookstores, this might be a solid plan. But if you’ve never published or spoken anywhere, how can agents and publishers trust you’ll be able to pull this off?

The best proposals use the About the Author section to lay out your current reach then follows up with a Target Audience section that reveals how your audience includes your readers. Once this connection has been made, you’ll use your marketing plan to show how you’ll leverage your existing platform (which you’ll promise to keep growing) to engage readers in ways that lead to book sales.

Why This synergy

Key sections: Target Audience, Comparable Titles, Chapter Outline, Sample Chapters

This is where the rubber meets the road. To answer the Why This question, you need to prove four things:

People are interested in this topic.There’s a need for this book.This book holds together.The writing sings.

Your Target Audience section sets the stage for your book’s glory by describing the readers interested in this material. Then your Comparable Titles section greases the wheels by showing that yes, other fantastic books have been written appealing to a similar readership, but they’ve yet to say your important thing, or failed to make your important point, or haven’t brought everything together the way you do.

Once you’ve proven interest or need, you’ll serve up your Chapter Outline. This section is the proof of concept for your book and will tell us whether you’ve strung together a series of unrelated chapters or created a meaningful, well-constructed manuscript that speaks to the interest developed in the Target Audience section and delivers on the thing your comparable titles have missed.

If you’ve written a memoir, your chapter outline will deliver a fresh and clear arc of transformation where every chapter serves an essential purpose. In a narrative or traditional nonfiction project, we’ll be able to identify your cogent argument and then see how your chapters work together to answer your book’s essential question.

Chapter outline perfected, you’ll deliver the pièce de résistance: your sample chapters. These crucial pages will prove that you don’t just have a great concept, you have the writing chops to pull it off. Your sample chapters should include pristine pages that reveal your best writing. If you’re selling on proposal, don’t assume impressive bylines give you a pass on this requirement, especially if you’re a debut author. Writing in short and long form aren’t the same thing. Some writers can nail the first while failing miserably at the second. Prove to agents and publishers you can do both, by sharing prose that wows them.

Why Now synergy

Key sections: Overview, Target Audience, About the Author

The Why Now synergy tells us why the world needs your book nowish. I say nowish because the publishing cycle is between 1 and 3 years depending on who’s publishing your book. That means your book-in-progress can’t jump on the latest bandwagon. Instead, it needs to speak to something that will be relevant for a while.

To do this, identify the conversations we’re having now, then think about what comes next. For instance, if our current conversation is about division, what comes after that? That next item is your nowish conversation. To capitalize on this synergy, you’ll refine certain proposal sections to reveal your book’s relevance.

If you’re writing traditional or narrative nonfiction, you’ll use a portion of your Overview to set up this nowish problem and how your book speaks to it. If you’re writing a memoir with a direct relationship to this problem, you might do the same thing, or you might lead with a key moment that exemplifies it.

To strengthen your argument, you’ll share how this issue shows up in popular books, movies, TV shows and other forms of pop culture. If you know your audience well, you’ll use a portion of your Target Audience section to talk about how your readers consume the media mentioned in your Overview. Then you’ll double down on your understanding of this conversation in your About the Author section by reinforcing how certain things you do, such as larger speaking engagements or bylines with traction, demonstrate demand for these concepts—plus you as its best representative. 

Studying well-written proposals is one of the best ways to understand these synergies. As you see how other authors put them in motion, you’ll find ways to do this in your proposal. Lucky for us, Jane has posted some great examples in the supplemental materials section of her Business of Being a Writer website.

Note from Jane: Want to learn more about these synergies and what belongs in each section of your book proposal? Join Lisa for The Three Essential Questions Every Agent Hopes Your Book Proposal Answers on Wednesday, Sept. 28, hosted by Creative Nonfiction.

Why the DOJ v PRH Antitrust Trial Doesn’t Change the Game for Authors, Regardless of Outcome

This article draws from my commentary and reporting that first appeared in The Hot Sheet.

In 2021, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) sued to block Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster on antitrust grounds. Penguin Random House (PRH) is the biggest US publisher by a large margin and publishes about 15,000 titles per year. Acquiring another one of the Big Five publishers, Simon & Schuster, would create an even bigger giant in the US market.

In its first filing related to the case, the government granted authors something of a fairytale wish: it centered the role of authors in the publishing ecosystem. The complaint states, “Authors are the lifeblood of book publishing. Without authors, there would be no stories; no poetry; no biographies; no written discourse on history, arts, culture, society, or politics. … Penguin Random House’s proposed acquisition of Simon & Schuster would result in substantial harm to authors.”

But which authors? This is where the plot thickens. The DOJ’s case focuses on the “anticipated top selling books” that garner advances of $250,000 and up. For the purposes of this case, that included roughly 1,200 books, or about 2% of all books released by commercial publishers. The government focused on proving how advances for top-selling authors would decline should PRH be allowed to acquire Simon & Schuster. The DOJ wrote in its initial filing that “hundreds” of authors would have “fewer alternatives and less leverage.” Hundreds. Canadian publisher Ken Whyte offered his clear take on this with the headline Justice for the .001%, and that’s a good summary of how I see it, too.

During trial, the DOJ argued advances for anticipated bestsellers could decline by as much as 20 percent should the merger happen. So, some quick math: if Hillary Clinton was paid $14 million for her memoir, maybe she’d only get $11 million for her next one. Or, consider Amy Schumer, who received $9 million for an essay collection. She might get a couple million less. Would they still write their books anyway? Would they suffer if they received a lower advance? (Would anyone care?)

I admit I’m being glib. Some have rightly pointed out that a $250,000 advance isn’t all that much for a Big Five publisher—or for an author either. After it’s broken into four installments and an agent takes 15 percent, that’s little more than $50,000 per installment for the author, spread out over a few years, before taxes. During trial, big publishers admitted that the large majority of advances do not earn out, which isn’t necessarily considered a failure for the author, just part of publishing’s business model. That effectively results in a higher royalty rate, and I have to wonder if the entire industry would be better off with higher royalty rates in the contract (especially for ebooks, where rates are widely considered too low by agents), and advances that quickly earn out. I’ll come back to that later. Here’s the bigger and more important point that I think gets missed repeatedly in trial coverage.

Most author advances would not be affected by the merger.

When you read op-eds about this case, most assume or imply there will be trickle-down effects that reduce all authors’ earnings, not just those receiving $250k or more. Yet the government’s modeling and its key economic expert project only that harm will come to authors of anticipated top-selling books. In fact, testimony indicated that authors receiving lower advances could benefit. The defense argued that the government didn’t want to use a lower advance figure of $50,000 as a cutoff for their antitrust case because it would have undermined their argument for market harm: There are no negative effects at that advance level, at least based on the economic modeling presented at trial. It was shown that, as a result of the merger between Penguin and Random House in 2013, advances for anticipated top-selling books decreased by about $100,000, while for all other books, advances stayed flat or moved up a bit.

Furthermore: as a collective group, authors and publishers outside the Big Five have been gaining in market share for years.

At the trial, PRH’s CEO testified the company had lost market share over the last decade, so one way for PRH to regain market share is through mergers and acquisitions. NPD Bookscan, which tracks print sales, has reported that the largest share of book sales belongs to publishers outside of the top 15 in the US, and that effect is likely even more pronounced on the digital side. More titles are released each year than ever before, and there is no evidence that mergers have led to decreased diversity in publishing and less opportunity for authors. In fact, history demonstrates the opposite.

Professor Dan Sinykin, who has studied the conglomerization of publishing, recently offered the following insight:

If the merger does end up happening, it will be an incremental continuation of the same trajectory we’ve seen in publishing for decades. It’s a mistake to think that the ongoing conglomeration will lead directly to the destruction of literature. A lot of interesting things are generated in resistance to conglomeration. The nonprofit presses exist as a direct result of it. There’s a dialectical relationship to what kind of literature is made possible because of conglomeration; it’s not simply a one-sided foreclosing of the possibilities for literature. And even within the conglomerates, authors always bring creativity to structural limits.

In order to see what’s truly limiting the possibilities for what kind of literature is published, you actually have to look much more broadly, at the class structure in the US, like who gets to go to MFA programs, who actually gets opportunities, and the deep nepotism involved in mentor–mentee relationships that all happen before you even get to an agent submitting a query to a publishing house. The merger between PRH and S&S draws our attention to this much larger set of networked problems, but in and of itself, this case is a drop in a 50-year bucket.

When the acquisition was first announced in 2020 (before the DOJ filed suit), Peter Osnos of the independent publishing house PublicAffairs said, “It’s natural, understandable, predictable that people will want to look at the downside. And it turns out there may not be quite the downside they think. That’s my slightly contrarian view.” He thought it might be a good thing, in fact, for Simon & Schuster to be run by a corporate parent that’s primarily focused on book publishing (that’s Bertelsmann), rather than a media company focused on streaming video. And you don’t even have to be contrarian to believe that as the Big Five or Big Four become narrowly focused on producing hits, that leaves more room for small publishers and innovators.

Ultimately, the DOJ may be entirely wrong about what happens to author earnings as a result of the Simon & Schuster purchase. But let’s say advances did decline. Is it possible an acquisition could lead to other outcomes that offer a net positive, like better marketing and promotion? What if lowered advances made it possible for small presses to compete for great authors? Or what if the acquisition led publishers to pay better royalties?

I know, it’s crazy to think authors might have more leverage or options in a Big Four situation. But consider the pace of technological progress and changing socioeconomic conditions. Maybe some authors would boycott a Big Four. Maybe authors would look for different kinds of deals from smaller publishers who pay higher royalties and offer more control. Maybe there are new types of publishers and media companies (see: Webtoon, Radish, Wattpad) and a future creator economy that gives writers more power and freedom to step away from average or poor deals. There are all kinds of potential outcomes, and the consolidation of legacy publishers represents the late stage of a possibly declining business model. In the long history of the written word, authors have found ways to adapt to new conditions and continue in their work. The greatest are forever remembered. In comparison, publishers are ephemeral and largely forgotten.

In a 2011 article about the Penguin merger with Random House, Planet Money’s Adam Davidson wrote, “It’s difficult to imagine how, in the digital world, publishers could ever monopolize the sale of written material. Even if there were only one house left, it would compete with every blogger and self-published ebook author. Eventually, it’s likely that book publishing will embody both conflicting visions of digital-age commerce—lots of small businesses and a few massive ones that handle big-ticket items.”

Little is likely to change in commercial publishing no matter the outcome.

The big dogs remain the big dogs. Mega advances will still be paid, and it will remain challenging to make a living if you’re the average author (as it has been throughout history if you depend on book sales alone). This is about protecting the status quo, not making progress—although I would argue that, even if the deal moves ahead, you still get the status quo. Either way, Simon & Schuster gets sold to another of the Big Five or maybe a financial buyer.

Notably, in its first response to the news of the DOJ’s filing, the Authors Guild said, “Unless the Biden Administration and Congress address antitrust reform in relation to Amazon’s practices, preventing the PRH/S&S merger will do little to reduce harm to authors and the publishing industry as a whole and may injure mid-list authors short term.” And also: “We look forward to working with the Biden Administration on antitrust reform that gets to the root of the problems in the industry, whereas the proposed merger was just a symptom.” Indeed.

Michael Cader, writing in Publishers Lunch, has perhaps the best summary of where we are now (subscription required): “Antitrust trials are technical and complicated and have little to do with the nuances of the businesses involved. They are about market definition, market concentration, and market constraints, and about pricing power and econometric models. … The government brought a very focused case about the small set of authors and deals that win contracts of $250,000 or more every year (or about 1,200 projects a year, as we learned). It was the DOJ, not anyone in publishing, that had no regard—in an antitrust case—for the other tens of thousands of authors and books brought to market every year.”

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Transforming Coal Into Diamonds: Telling Painful True Stories Through Fiction

Today’s post is by author, coach and editor Jennifer Browdy (@jbrowdy).

Let’s say that you are writing a memoir, but you find you really can’t share some of the more interesting, memorable stories from your life.

For example, there’s that colorful first boyfriend of yours, the drug dealer. How can you write about that romance without describing how much of your time together was spent cleaning the seeds out of large quantities of marijuana? Or about his unfortunate habit of cheating on you?

It would make such a good story! But since your long-ago boyfriend is now a respected lawyer and small-town politician, it might be better not to smear him with your memories, true as they might be.

So you hold that memory back. But years later, long after you’ve published your memoir, the story of that old boyfriend is still buzzing around in your head like an annoying mosquito, never landing, but never leaving you in peace.

My advice? Go ahead and write the true story down, fair and square. But don’t stop there. Take the true story as your rough draft and keep going, giving yourself permission to tell the truth…in fiction.

You’ll find that a joyful flood of new energy will surge up when you open the sluice gate of fiction. No longer caged by your concerns and hesitations, your story will start to cavort, splashing about in its new, more spacious imaginative environment.

Now you can write with abandon about the drug-dealing boyfriend of the main character, a woman who is not, any longer, you.

So who is she? That’s your first order of business, to figure out who your main character is, now that she is not you—and who is telling the story, since in fiction, unlike memoir, the narrator may be different than the protagonist.

Start sketching, until you feel like you know your new main character and narrator intimately. Then go back to the key scenes from your memories of your youthful romance, and retell them, imagining what might have happened if you had known then what you know now.

Maybe in this version of the story, your main character, coming in and finding her boyfriend in bed with a neighbor, doesn’t stumble out of the house in tears, but instead confronts them, demanding that they leave immediately.

Permit yourself a smile as you write about how your main character dumps her ex-boyfriend’s clothes out on the lawn, taking the still-damp sheets off the bed and adding them to the pile.

What does she do next? Take yourself back into the heat of that moment and imagine what a young woman might do if she were able to stand up for herself and move on with her life with self-esteem, strength and determination.

Imagine it…and then make it so, on the page! As you transmute lived sorrow into imagined victory, you will feel your own spirit growing lighter, released from the weight of your heavy memories.

If you do a good job of thoroughly transforming memoir into fiction, only you and your ex-boyfriend—and maybe that pretty neighbor he seduced—will ever recognize the ghostly outlines of the true story that undergirds your novel.

Why shift from memoir to fiction? When we bottle up our painful memories, we run the risk of letting them fester; we let perpetrators off the hook; and we prevent ourselves from sharing the hard-won wisdom we’ve gained through experience.

In writing purposeful memoir, we ask, “How can my story be of benefit to others?” We ask the same question when we write purposeful fiction, but we give ourselves far more freedom—and the potential for far more healing and joy—in our possible responses.

Shifting purposefully from memoir to fiction, we not only do no harm to the still-living people who inhabit our memories, but we also ignite the process of transforming the coal of true but painful stories into diamonds that can shine a bright light for ourselves, and for others.

The Art and Purpose of Subtext

Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author DiAnn Mills (@diannmills).

Subtext refers to characters who talk about one thing but really mean something else, and they both know it. And we’ve all done it, right? The subtext is the real conversation hidden by surface talk and is the core of the communication.

Through subtext, writers can provide information laced with sarcasm, heartbreak, or humor. And it always deepens the story with unpredictable outcomes and emotion. Characters engaged in the conversation know the hidden meaning; it’s an unspoken conversation below a verbal conversation and more valuable than the spoken word.

Why not have the characters state the obvious instead of flirting with the real topic? Isn’t it a waste of time for the writer and the reader? But communication that fulfills only one purpose is like serving a meal with no salt. The result might satisfy the tummy, but the experience is tasteless. Dialogue written without layers reduces the reader’s engagement in the story.

Characters might use subtext to show discretion:

They fear the wrong people understanding the real conversation could cost them.They haven’t the courage to directly express what is on their hearts or minds.The underlying message is only for a select few.The character has an ulterior motive.

The value of subtext for the writer:

Provides information to the reader without tellingAdds stress, tension, and conflict to the sceneReveals another layer of plot and/or pushes the plot forwardShows insight into the characterOffers mystery and intrigueForeshadows a future eventAllows the reader to play a role in determining the dialogue’s meaningShows the reader that the writer respects their intelligenceEncourages the reader to pay attention

Here’s a subtext example.

Lucy tugged on her favorite red dress for her anniversary dinner. Twenty pounds ago, she looked like a siren, but her current bulges churned her stomach. Giving birth to three kids didn’t help. Grabbing her evening clutch, she joined Jake in the living room.

“Does this make me look fat?” she said.

“Of course not. You are as beautiful as the day we took our vows.”

The subtext behind Lucy’s question: Do you still love me even though I’ve gained weight?

The subtext behind Jake’s response? I don’t care about your weight, and I love you more every day.

Subtext is especially effective when characters have opposing desires and yet are forced to communicate with each other. Better yet, when they’re put into a situation where they must work together to achieve a common goal that’s crucial to each, for different reasons.

Here’s an example of subtext when a real and open conversation could cost the characters more than they’re willing to pay.

The CEO called Melissa to the podium. She stopped at Tom’s chair in the boardroom and bent to his ear. “My proposal seals the deal with the company, and I know my raise and promotion is in the works,” she said. “Too bad, Tommy. I’ll be your boss.”

He bit back his urge to respond with sarcasm. She made him want to eat nails. “Good for you.”

Melissa continued to the head of the table, but the CEO stopped her. “Melissa, I have a quick announcement to make.”

She nodded and waited. Perfectly poised.

The CEO took the podium. “Melissa has developed an innovative program to streamline our inner office communications. She is ready to give the presentation, but I want to announce the other person who will be helping her drive this forward.” He paused. “Tom, come on up here. I’m thrilled you’ll be working right alongside Melissa. Your attention to detail is just what we need. This project will be your 9 to 5 job.”

Tom approached the CEO and shook his hand. “Thank you, sir. You won’t be disappointed.”

Melissa gave Tom an icy smile. “Congratulations. The idea of working alongside you for the next three months is a bonus. I look forward to learning from you.”

Tom’s head pounded at the thought of what lay ahead. “Thank you for all you’ve done for the project. I look forward to combining our goals to make the new program successful.”

The CEO raised his hand. “A round of applause for this new team. I expect we will see great achievements from Tom and Melissa.” He gestured at the two. “If you finish the project before the three-month period, I’ll have a handsome bonus for each of you.”

The above scenario paints a road of emotional turmoil for Tom and Melissa. They must work together for the good of the project and the company. Plus, a bonus for completing the job early sounds amazing. Yet how will they deal with their differences in an environment that expects and demands they remain civil to each other?

Francine Prose once said, “When we humans speak, we are not merely communicating information but attempting to make an impression and achieve a goal. And sometimes we are hoping to prevent the listener from noticing what we are NOT saying, which is often not merely distracting but, we fear, as audible as what we ARE saying. As a result, dialogue usually contains as much or even more subtext than it does text. More is going on under the surface than on it. One mark of badly written dialogue is that it is only doing one thing, at most, at once.”

More than a dialogue technique, subtext is amazing fun for the writer. See if you can level up your behind the scenes game.

3 Ways That Writerly Grit Leads to Publishing Success

Photo by Harrison Haines

Today’s post is by regular contributor Susan DeFreitas (@manzanitafire), an award-winning author, editor, and book coach. She offers an online course, Story Medicine, designed to help writers use their power as storytellers to support a more just and verdant world.

They say everyone has a book inside them, but few have the talent, skills, and wherewithal to actually write and publish that book.

Talent? Frankly, I think talent is pretty common, and that most people who really love books have the essential spark of what it takes to write one.

Skills? Those are harder to come by, and generally pretty expensive to come by, whether you’re paying in cash, time, or both.

But having recently completed my fourth novel manuscript—and coached countless writers through the same process—I can honestly say that this business of wherewithal, or grit, is by far the biggest factor in that equation.

Grit is often seen as the stubborn plowing ahead, the continuing to do, do, do despite life’s various indignities, rejections, and setbacks. And it certainly is that—but also, I think, something more.

It takes more grit to let go of some element of a book that’s not working than it does to keep pushing ahead with it. It takes more grit to get qualified feedback and put it to work in yet another revision than it does to keep pounding away at the manuscript by yourself.And it takes grit to hold firm to your vision for the project, even as you put that feedback to work, and continually seek ways to improve it.

Here, to my mind, are three critical ways that writers who’ll reach the finish line with their book, and go on to publish it, are distinguished by grit:

1. They seek qualified feedback.

In Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead, author Tara Mohr notes that it’s a stereotypically male thing to forge ahead with one’s big vision without seeking outside input on it, and a stereotypically female thing to seek feedback on one’s vision from any and everyone, whether or not their opinion actually matters.

As far as I can tell, writers of any gender can fall into either of these traps with their work-in-progress—and either one can keep those writers from ever actually publishing their book.

The first mode is just forging blindly ahead with your book without seeking anyone’s feedback on it. This is easier to do with writing than with virtually any other art form; you can work for years, even a decade or more, without a single other soul ever setting eyes on those pages of yours.

This might feel like a safe way to develop your vision without falling prey to the way that critical feedback can cause you to second guess yourself—but in doing so, you tend to set yourself up for a fall. Because all too often, when you finally shop that manuscript out, you discover that no one wants to buy it (or you discover this by self-publishing it).

The second mode I’ve spoken to here can be just as damaging, though—that being the mode where you seek feedback from people whose opinions really just don’t matter, like your spouse, your friends, your book-club buddies, etc.

These people might love your book, might be confused by it, might dislike this or that, might have ideas about how you can fix this or that. Regardless, their opinions and ideas don’t ultimately align with the reception your book is likely to receive when you attempt to publish it—and in revising to this hodgepodge of unqualified opinions, you run the risk of turning your book into a hodgepodge as well.

In order to actually move ahead with your project, and accurately survey your book’s chances in the marketplace, you have to seek feedback from people whose opinions are qualified. Meaning, people who understand your genre, who have the experience to recognize the issues in your manuscript, and who know how to address such issues in revision.

And showing your work with someone like that? Believe me, I know: it takes grit.

2. They address feedback while holding to the vision.

Say you’ve screwed up your courage and gotten beyond the first hurdle: Seeking qualified feedback. Which means you now have that feedback in hand—and chances are, it was not the fantasy we all secretly harbor: This is perfect! You should send directly to my agent—here’s their address.

No, in fact, the feedback you received pointed out some critical issues you need to address in revision. Which means that your next step requires grit of a different type.

Because just revising to feedback won’t get you over the finish line with your book. In order to do that, and to truly make your book work in revision, you have to also hold true to your original impetus for this project, what book coach Jennie Nash calls your “deep-level why.”

Your deep-level why is why this story matters to you, what you’re interested in about it, why you keep returning to it, what its inherent attraction is for you. And there’s nothing more critical to keep in mind as you decide how you’re going to implement the feedback you’ve received—because if you don’t maintain your connection to that original impetus or spark, you’ll lose what it is that makes your book special, and what will ultimately distinguish it in the marketplace.

Believing in yourself, and your vision for your book, even when you find out that it isn’t nearly as far along as you thought it was?

That definitely takes grit.

3. They continually seek small refinements and improvements.

The final role that grit plays in this process comes in at the end with a book project.

You’ve put untold hours into this manuscript, and part of you never wants to see it again. But even so, there are small refinements that can still be made—little improvements that will ultimately have an outsized effect on the finished product.

The closer any object gets to the speed of light, the harder it becomes to accelerate further. I think books are like that too: it can take forever to approach light speed (i.e., the finished version of your manuscript), but the small refinements you make at the end can make something that’s already good truly great.

At a certain point, of course, you just have to let manuscript go and move on. But the closer you can get to light speed—that impossible dream, the perfected version of your book—the more magical and dazzling it will ultimately be.

And what does it take to keep finding ways to improve that book, even after it feels like you’ve already given it your all? You’ve got it: grit.

Business and Creativity Go Hand in Hand: Q&A with Kern Carter

Author Kern Carter (@KernCarter) discusses his journey from being self-published to having two books slated for publication from Scholastic and Penguin/Random House, what he learned about marketing—and the market—as a self-published author, his views on the relationship between the art and the business of writing, and more.

Kern Carter was born in Trinidad and raised in Toronto, Canada. He is a full-time writer and founder of CRY Creative Group, whose mission is to build and inspire a community of emerging writers connected by the power of vulnerability and creativity. Kern is the author of Boys and Girls Screaming and the forthcoming novels Is There a Boy Like Me and And Then There Was Us. He has previously self-published two titles.

KRISTEN TSETSI: “I’ve always known that I wanted to be an author,” you write in the Medium post I’m Writing for My Life . Do you remember when being an author first struck you as a goal so real and powerful that you made a list of publishers you someday wanted to publish with?

KERN CARTER: Yes, I do. I was at my mother’s house in my early 20s. I had just started writing my first novel, Thoughts of a Fractured Soul, and was dreaming about what it would be like when I was a “real” author.

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Back then, I had this little yellow book where I would write down all of my future goals. But since (in my mind) being an author was my biggest goal, I wrote it down on a calendar the size of a bristol board and posted it at the foot of my bed. And I couldn’t just be any author, so I wrote the top five publishers that I wanted to write for, and Penguin/Random House was at the top of my list.

I’m proud to have gotten here because writing has been my companion since my earliest memories. The thought of being a novelist was always at the back of my mind, but it took Toni Morrison for me to launch it to the front. I reread Beloved and was absolutely blown away by how beautiful and painful and shocking the writing was. I was literally jealous of how good Morrison wrote and how her novel made me feel. I thought to myself: I want to make other people feel like this. That was the real trigger to starting my professional journey as a novelist.

What subject matter interested you when you first started writing creatively? Do you remember what your first book—which you said you wrote when you were eight—was about? And do you still have it?

Haha yes, the first book I ever wrote was called The Battle. It was a Lion King type of story with talking animals dealing with drama in the forest. My mom says she has it hidden away somewhere LOL.

My early writings always favoured fiction, but I also wrote a lot of poetry. When I started blogging, I had no direction. Anything that came to my mind, from sports to the welfare system in Canada, made its way into my writing.

“Publishers are set up to make money,” you said in an interview with Dr. Onye Nnorom on her “Race, Health, and Happiness” podcast . “In their mind, their biggest audience is white women. So if a book diverts away from that audience, they feel like, ‘Mm, I don’t know, that’s a risk for me to take.’ They say that to even put a Black person on the cover of a book would diminish how much the book would sell. That’s where we’re at in publishing.”

It was your awareness of this inevitable difficulty that helped guide your decision to self-publish your first two novels, but you also thought of those two books, you said, as a way to get more practice writing novels, as well as to establish a platform. Practice is one thing; publishing that practice with your name on it for public consumption is something else entirely and would scare almost anyone. What made you confident that your books were ready for whatever fate they would meet in the sometimes harsh world of readers, a world where you hoped to create this platform?

Any fear that I felt in presenting my first two books to the world was overcome by my dream of being an author. And to be completely honest, as much as I was fully aware that those books were practice, confidence was never an issue.

Growing up, my older brother was one of the top high school football players in all of North America. He got a full scholarship to Stanford University, then achieved his dream of playing in the NFL. I mention this because I came from a home where I saw dreams come true. Being witness to something like that didn’t just make me believe, it made me expect greatness from myself. So even back then, my goal was (and still is) to touch the world with my words. And when I say world, I mean that literally. I want my stories to be read from people all over the world, and I felt that way with my very first novel.

You’ve said you sold two thousand copies of your first, self-published, novel. How did you reach so many readers, and what advice would you give other self-publishers having difficulty marketing their work?

I reached most of those readers through the school board in Toronto. To be fully transparent, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I tried a lot of different marketing strategies and most of them didn’t work. For example, I had this idea that taking out ads in small-town newspapers would get me attention. I figured it would be less expensive and have a bigger payoff if a small group of readers knew me. I tried that for a while and monitored my book sales; nothing. I also tried doorhandle ads (I don’t know if that’s the formal name for them). Basically, I went door to door in different areas and left a postcard-sized advertisement of my first novel. That didn’t work, either.

But once I started reaching out to high school teachers and telling them about how I could use the themes of my novel to teach their students, it opened up an entire audience for me. I started with the teachers I knew, then got recommendations for more teachers. I also cold-emailed principals, as well. I found their contact info on LinkedIn and sent dozens of emails. Somewhere in my files is a list of all the high schools in Toronto.

To be honest, I don’t think 2,000 books is a lot, though. For me, it was a good first step, but my goal was to wake up and write books and not do anything else, so I was really hard on myself and didn’t really see selling that many books as success. My advice to self-published authors is to find or build community. If you focus on that, then selling books becomes a whole lot easier because you don’t need to convince anyone to buy it.

If you’re in the right community, they’ll see the value and want to support you. It’s funny, because for all of the querying I’ve done, I got my first agent through networking. I went to a book reading, and the host recognized me because I had been to a few of her events. She sparked up a conversation, and I told her that I’m an author who has sold a couple thousand books independently. For whatever reason, she opened her heart and her “black book” and introduced me to who would become my first agent. So yeah, networking does work!

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Another thing: please, please, please study the publishing industry. It’s not an accident that Boys and Girls Screaming became my first traditionally published novel. Before that happened, I dedicated my evenings to studying publishing. Which books were selling the most every week? Who was getting book deals? What kind of books were they writing? What trends did I discover?

Studying the industry made me aware of all of these things and gave me an understanding of what it would take to make my manuscript a commercial success. And I know some authors might be cringing at the word “commercial,” but I didn’t sacrifice an ounce of creativity when writing Boys and Girls Screaming. In fact, it’s probably my most creative novel and the story where I had to use my imagination the most.

You’d written that book quickly so you could get it to a conference and pitch it to agents, you said in an interview , so it makes sense that implementing those changes wouldn’t be too painful. However, imagine another novel you’ve had the time to carefully (and many times) revise to turn it into exactly what you wanted it to be. Can you imagine being so connected to the writing that certain requested changes would be unacceptable, or is your personal philosophy that the business and the creative simply go hand-in-hand, no matter what?

Through studying the publishing industry, I know for a fact that business and creativity go hand in hand. I just want to be clear here: for some writers, their goals aren’t as ambitious as mine. They don’t necessarily want to be bestsellers or even full-time authors. But my goal is to sell books, and since that’s my goal, it means that I have no choice but to consider the business side of things.

But that doesn’t limit my creativity in any way. The challenge is to create a body of work that can be both fulfilling to me as a writer and commercially viable to a publisher. As long as the changes make the story better and are aligned with the soul of the characters, I’m fine with it.

What mistake(s) did you make as a self-published author that others might learn from?

I made a lot of mistakes, but one stands out the most: I didn’t promote my first novel long enough and consistently enough.

After the first six months, I thought that I did enough work to gain an audience, but the truth is that six months is not enough time. The promotion of your novel, especially as an unknown, indie author, must be constant. You can do it in different forms, such as passively through blogging or a newsletter, but you must always be in promotion mode. That includes both before your novel is released and after. No lead time is too far out. I started promoting my second novel two years before I published it.

From the time you had the vision board with your list of publishers on it until the day you were told the Penguin/Random House imprint Tundra wanted your novel And Then There Was Us, you must have imagined what it would be like to get that call, or that email. How did you imagine the process unfolding (including how you imagined you would feel when and if it finally happened), and how has reality compared?

Yes, I imagined that feeling almost every day (no exaggeration). I knew I would get emotional, and I always imagined it being a phone call. And the reality of me getting the news happened almost exactly how I thought it would. The only difference being I was in public at a cafe, and so I kind of hid my face when the tears came.

To be honest, I also cried when I got my first publishing deal (with Cormorant) and my second deal (with Scholastic). I love my self-published books, but there is something incredibly powerful about imagining something for so long and then it actually happening.

The funny thing is that getting a deal and then signing a deal are two different things.

I have an agent, so when I first get the email or call saying XYZ publisher wants to purchase your manuscript, the actual details of what that means takes some negotiating. The royalties are fairly standard with all three of my publishers (between 8%-15% depending on several factors), but we had to figure out how much my advance would be, who owned the film rights and what percentage, and negotiate something called mechanical rights, which is too complex to get into details.

By the time I receive my signing bonus, which is payment for signing the contract [the first installment of the advance], it’s usually months after actually committing to the deal. And in the case of Scholastic and Tundra/PRH, my novel won’t be released until 2024, which is two years after signing the deal. That is also when I will receive the final payment of my advance, which is split into portions and handed out in accordance to milestones.

After you self-published Thoughts of a Fractured Soul, that you had a book in the world looked like success to other people, you said, but it wasn’t quite the success you wanted: “I was one block closer but the sky was still so far away.” Now that you have deals with Scholastic and Penguin, would you say you’ve touched the sky, or does the idea of what the sky is push farther out as goals are achieved?

I think signing with Penguin/Random House gets me closer to what I envision as success, just like signing my second book deal with Scholastic did. My goal is to be a full-time author and sell millions of books.

I know how that sounds, and I know a lot of authors have that goal. But for me, there is no alternative. I wake up every morning and think about what I need to do to be one of the top authors in the world. And just like a doctor or lawyer has a defined path to obtaining success in their careers, I apply that same rigor and discipline to writing. I write every single morning, I educate myself by studying the craft, and I gauge my progress.

Again, where I am now is not an accident. I planned to be here and plan to be a bestselling author. It’s not just a dream, it’s a mission.

You’re obviously already on track, but considering writing is a more subjective and finicky business than is being a doctor or lawyer, do you ever have moments of doubt?

Yes, for sure. I’ve had many moments where I doubted whether I would ever be published or build up enough of an audience. Doubts are normal. When I lost my first agent, that really shook me. I thought I was so close, then when we split, I honestly didn’t think I had any energy left to continue the chase. But for me (and maybe this is just me), quitting just wasn’t an option. I wasn’t just dreaming of being an author, I was preparing for it. So in my mind, it was never a matter of if, it was always just when.

Prayer and meditation really helped during these down times. I spent a lot of time in silence, my hands folded, sitting with my own thoughts.

Your focus in your novels is largely YA, and young adulthood is a time of high passions, high drama, and uncomfortable changes of all kinds that generate deep, powerful feelings. You also created the publication CRY Magazine on Medium, taglined “Creativity + Emotion,” whose goal is “to build a community of emerging creatives who are connected by the power of vulnerability and creativity. We emphasize the emotional aspects of the creative process.” What draws you to exploring and exposing all of this emotion?

I became a parent at 18 years old (my daughter is 20 now), so that time in my life was the most tumultuous. I have so many experiences from those teenage and young adult years that the emotions just come pouring out in the form of stories. It’s almost like I’m writing to my younger self. All of the struggles and doubts and fears I had are infused into my novels. And since there’s no way to actually go back in time and change any of my decisions, I hope young people read my stories and see themselves clearly.

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I mean, look at the titles of my books. Boys and Girls Screaming, Thoughts of a Fractured Soul, Beauty Scars, Is There a Boy Like Me, And Then There Was Us. These titles alone are a journey through my adolescence. It’s my reflections told through fictional tales.

And while my novels are a fictional expression of those emotions and experiences, CRY is a real-life reflection of the journey of being a parent and becoming a writer. It started out as a personal blog. I’d write about all the frustrations I was going through to achieve my goals. Then I thought that if I’m going through these things and feeling these emotions, maybe other people are, too. So I opened it up for other people to share their stories, and that’s how CRY Magazine was born.

In a novel writing class you took, you said in the “Race, Health, and Happiness” interview, some of your classmates didn’t understand how your novel’s character could be on government assistance and also have a car. They thought you should change it, or explain it in the story. You disagreed, you said, because the audience you were writing for would know how assistance worked and would know your character could both be on assistance and have a car.

I’ve seen a lot of authors asking on Twitter, “If I wrote X in my novel, would you understand what it means?” This suggests they think it’s important that readers immediately recognize all references and that they don’t trust their readers to either figure them out through context, look them up, or learn more about them in some other way, all of which I’d always taken for granted were part of the reader’s job.

When do you think it makes sense to explain to readers, and what is it not the writer’s job to explain?

Great question, and to be honest, there’s no clear answer. Part of your job as a writer is to use your instincts. You have to make decisions within your book that aren’t part of some template, and the only way to make those decisions is to use your gut. What I would say is to always focus on the characters. If it makes sense for the characters, then you’re probably in the right place.

One bit of feedback you said you received from a publisher was that you didn’t include enough trauma—understood to mean Black trauma—in the story. A recent NPR interview with Black romance novelists revealed that they’d received the same curious feedback: where’s the trauma? Why do you think predominantly white publishers, or at least publishers catering to a white audience, expect/want/need Black characters in fiction to experience what they would estimate to be an adequate amount of Black trauma for the story to be successful?

I think Black trauma sells. Look at rap music, look at the most popular Black-led movies. It’s something audiences have grown accustomed to seeing and Black creators have grown far too comfortable creating.

Your truth is your truth and I don’t want to tell anyone what stories to tell, but I would say that there are many sides to our experiences as a Black community. I met an Indigenous, Canadian author named Maria Campbell. She wrote this incredible memoir called Halfbreed that’s full of traumatic events. However, when meeting her, she said her hope was that future authors would write about the joyous moments of the Indigenous community’s experience.

I agree with that sentiment and would add that there are many ways to create tension in a novel without stereotypical trauma. For example, in my upcoming novel for Scholastic, Is There a Boy Like Me, the protagonist is dealing with the pressure from his family and his peers to live up to an expectation he never embraces. There are elements of that tension that can be amplified because of his race, such as the common stereotypes placed on Black men, but trying to fit in or live up to a standard set by your parents or peers is broad enough that you can take it in so many different directions, and the direction I chose for this story, specifically, was toxic masculinity.

My point is that you should tell whatever story you want, but think about your story as adding to the canon of literature. How are you elevating the art form or adding stories with so much value that they have no choice but to be read?

In the same conversation about your experiences with publishing, you say that even though your characters are Black, your stories aren’t about race, but, “even so, even with that kind of perspective, it’s still complicated because they’re looking at it as, ‘Who is going to enjoy this? Who is going to read this book?’ Ignoring the fact that there are millions of Black readers that would love this book, and ignoring the fact that there are millions of Asian readers over here that would love this book.”

One of the oft-mentioned benefits of fiction is its ability to transport readers into worlds they’d never enter on their own, to meet people or bear witness to experiences they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. At the same time, there’s a push for relatability in characters. “I want to read about people like me.” What are your feelings about what fiction is for, or where it has value?

You nailed it! Fiction is for entering into worlds that surprise or intrigue or frighten you. It allows you to get lost in those worlds and learn some deep truths about yourself or other communities you may not have found without reading.

I choose not to make race the central themes of my stories because those aren’t the stories that get me excited. There’s so much more I want to explore and will continue to explore that I find far more interesting. And that’s another benefit of fiction that is helpful to the writer. I get to express myself in creative ways that I could never do through conversation. For me, writing is a sacred practice. I’ve learned so much about myself by writing these stories, so I actually think there’s equal benefit for readers and authors.

How to Get Published in Modern Love, McSweeney’s or Anywhere Else You Want

Photo by Andrew Seaman on Unsplash

Today’s post is by Allison K Williams (@GuerillaMemoir). Join us on Wednesday, Sep. 14, for her online class Pitch, Publish and Get Paid.

Recently, a writer on Twitter bemoaned yet another rejection from a place they very much wanted to be published. A string of kind responses urged:

Just keep trying.
Publishing’s a numbers game.
Send out more submissions right away!

Kind, yes. Helpful? No.

They aren’t exactly platitudes—getting published in general is indeed a numbers game, requiring persistence and fortitude.

But getting published in a particular venue doesn’t happen by pulling up your socks for another try. Magazines, newspapers and websites are not interested in your perseverance. They are interested in your excellent, targeted writing that suits their audience and fits their voice. Whether you’re aiming for The New York Times, McSweeney’s, or Parents magazine, you must research and analyze what they already publish.

Sometimes you don’t even have to write the essay before selling it. Commercial essays, articles and 0p-eds often sell with a pitch—a short (short!) email addressing three simple questions: Why Now? Why Here? Why Me?

Why now?

What’s culturally relevant about your personal story? Often, that’s the difference between the past and the present.

Last New Year’s, on my fifth glass of champagne, I was still rationalizing that I wasn’t really an alcoholic.

My dad, an alcoholic, always called St. Patrick’s Day, “Amateur Night.” As March 17 approaches, I’m already buying bottles of sparkling cider and soft lemonade.

Cultural relevance also means figuring out who cares right now. Does your story tie into a recent political speech, incident on live TV, or bestselling book? When you’re on your soapbox, what are you responding to or in dialogue with?

Why here?

What makes this website, magazine or NPR station an ideal venue for your work? Researching their audience helps you make that case. Look at their ads—are they targeting consumers of McDonalds, Mercedes-Benz or Medic-Alert bracelets? Specific demographic information is often linked way down on the bottom of the magazine’s website. Look for “Media Kit” or “Advertise with us”—the venue compiles their own data so potential ad buyers know who exactly they’ll be reaching.

Why me?

Why are you the best person to write this piece? What in your personal experience makes you an “expert” in this topic, whether that’s surviving a bad drug trip or getting your kid to eat their peas?

Boiling down those three key points into 100-200 words also show you understand the magazine’s voice and tone isn’t easy—but it’s a skill that can be learned and practiced.

Literary media outlets usually consider only finished essays, but that requires specific targeting, too. For creative nonfiction, the most successful submissions very closely fit the tone and structure of what’s already published. It’s easier for editors to imagine publishing your work when they can feel how your essay fits their mission.

The New York Times Modern Love column is notable for the number of writers who have gotten memoir deals from their essays there. Modern Love has very clear guidelines. The essays are about “modern” love—some element in the story didn’t exist 20-50 years ago. They want submissions of 1500-1700 words. Most writers can follow those requirements.

But look deeper. Consult this list of Modern Love essays by topic and cross-reference chronologically. Has your topic been done in the last 3 years? Find another angle. Read all the previous essays in your category. Does your story seem too much like one already published? How is your angle new?

Do some literary analysis (which sounds terribly MFA-snobby, but it’s not hard). Notice that nearly all Modern Love essays start “in scene.” That is, we’re in the present, with the narrator, at a moment of action or crisis. Then the narrator loops back to the past, showing how they ended up in that moment. Then they move forward in time from the opening scene; what happened next? How did they come to realize the need for change? Modern Love essays end with another clear moment of action, realization or decision: based on everything I just showed you, here’s some beautiful wisdom.

Write your essay as creatively as you wish. But before you submit, revise it using the structure they usually publish. Yes, Modern Love is still incredibly competitive—but “keep trying” with essays you know are right for the venue and your odds are much better.

Another dream venue for many writers is McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. I’ve worked with writers on more than 20 pieces published by McSweeney’s, and they all have three things in common:

Specific point of view. A clear answer to “Who are you and why are you telling us this?”Tight writing. McSweeney’s pieces don’t have a wasted word. When aiming for any humor outlet, do one more pass after your “final” draft and remove every word that isn’t absolutely necessary. (Rewriting by hand helps!)A little bit mean. McSweeney’s specializes in sharp, clever satire that cuts like glass. If your piece is “nice” or “sweet,” it’s not for them. Plenty of other humor sites have a softer edge.

Am I suggesting you subvert your creativity to someone else’s mold?

Yes.

If you are a beautiful genius whose work defies categorization, who can’t be constrained by form, then you do you! Submit to literary magazines rather than commercial outlets or focus on publishing books. Or heck, start your own magazine where no two pieces are alike and the audience is different every issue.

But if you’d like to see your work in national publications—and get paid—it’s not enough to “keep trying” and hoping your work is what they want. Tailor your essay to smoothly fit their voice and mission. A couple of hours of analysis will not only improve your publication (and payment!) chances, you’ll also be a better writer—and that’s a win whether you’re published or not.

Note from Jane: If you enjoyed this post, join us on Wednesday, Sep. 14, for Pitch, Publish and Get Paid.