That's What the Book Sales Are For

Ok, don't be mad at me. I'm going to talk about something today and I think it's going to hurt some feelings out there. Or bring up uncomfortable feelings about work, worth, value, capitalism, and art. Know that I'm not singling anyone out and that you can feel anyway you want and I welcome you to disagree with me early and often. But;

Promoting and publicizing your own book is not unpaid labor.

Ok, let me back up. For many reasons, a large part of the job of being an author today is promoting and publicizing your own book. It's hard, time-intensive labor, and in the past, it's was job done by the publisher, not the author. Unfortunately, those times are behind us as the corporate conglomeration of media companies and the rise of the internet and social media squeezed all the air out of a robust and varied media landscape where books were a frequent topic of conversation and attention. Because a publisher can't post on your Instagram for you, and all the eyeballs are on Instagram (or similar) instead of newspapers, or magazine reviews, or TV show segments, well, then, the author has to do the promotion in places the publisher cannot reach. It really sucks for all involved. The author has to learn a whole job from scratch. Publishers' shrinking publicity departments have too many books and not enough hours in the day. And readers expect unprecedented access and information from authors, if they're even paying attention at all. Now that you're thoroughly depressed about the state of writing and publishing in the first quarter of the 21 Century, let me get back to my point.

I hear complaints about how much marketing and publicity work authors have to do every day. As an author and an agent, I complain, too! But I get a little itchy when others say that such work is unpaid labor, for the author. It's not. It's just very, very, very poorly paid labor. Because the outcome of that labor is (theoretically) book sales. You post TikToks and interviews and write newsletters and put yourself out there with trending music and silly memes so that at the end of the day someone, somewhere will read your book. When someone buys your book, you get paid either indirectly (in recouping the advance a publisher paid you so that you get closer to earning royalties) or directly (when you self-publish and all the money comes to you). You do not get a check every two weeks for all the posts you put up on Instagram, so not it is not like traditional paid labor, even if it feels like a full time job. But over time, you might sell enough books to get royalty checks, or enough to show publishers you're a good investment and you get more book deals, or both. And that's your pay.

It's just really, really, really shitty pay! With shitty hours and no benefits and no guidelines and no performance reviews except for follower counts and little hearts and even less direct feedback on what you can do or have done and how many sales that labor lead to. Being a writer is the worst full-time job! You're not the only one who feels lost when it comes to promoting your book. Lots of people claim to know what works, but those people are usually trying to sell you their ebook or course or webinar. Most of us are muddling through it best we can. And the stakes, unfortunately, couldn't be higher. Publishers use a book's previous sales track record to decide if they should buy another book from that author. It's not the only factor, but it's part of the calculations. So, if the author tried to promote their book but were busy with their full time job/life, didn't know how to do it effectively, etc etc, and it didn't work, it's all their fault then? And publishers just hang them out to dry? Is that how it goes?

Yes and no. As someone who has been on both sides of this issue, and has had candid conversations with editors and publishers about what they can and can't do to promote a writer's book, all I can say is that it sucks for everyone all around, unless you are famous. If you're famous, this shit is easy. None of you reading this are famous, though, I'm sure, so we're all more or less in the same boat. Publishers are not off the hook here. They should absolutely invest more marketing and overhead dollars to promoting books by not-famous people (and while we're at it–hey book clubs run by famous people: stop picking other famous people! They don't need it!) But also, authors, you gotta do this work, too. It sucks and it's unfair and it's time consuming and opaque and dumb and the rules change all the time but this is the publishing industry we have right now, and we're not going back to Thomas Wolfe dropping off apple crates of manuscript pages at Maxwell Perkins' office and a few months later coming in to pick up the finished manuscript of Look Homeward, Angel (which is basically what happened according to A. Scott Berg's fantastic book Max Perkins: Editor of Genius). It would be nice if we could all just write our books in our cozy cabins and never think of the money side of things. But that's not what being an author looks like today.

I'm sorry. It sucks. It's not fair. It's bullshit. It's inequitable. It's all this and more. But that doesn't make it less true. The good news is I'll cover how to deal with it in my next book POSTING THROUGH IT: An Insider's Guide to Book Marketing and Covering Your Therapy Bills. Just kidding! I am not writing another non-fiction book right now. This is a joke.

Hating all the non-writing parts of being an author is normal. But that doesn't get you out of doing them.

With extra XOXOXOOXOXOXOXOXOOX today,

Kate