When I was a kid, there was a thing adults were always saying that made me crazy. “It’s all about who you know!” they would quip to each other at backyard barbecues to explain how someone got a new job or found a fancy puppy. This seemed insane to me. Every adult was also always saying that we needed to work hard, and that if we worked hard we would be able to achieve things. In my small child mind, I couldn’t reckon both ideas. I was too young to realize that capitalism is made to reward only a few, that structural privilege is always more powerful than talent, that as sad as it is, the adults are right. It is about who you know.
Mainly, though this made me mad when I was a kid because I didn’t know anyone who could help me do what I wanted to do. My dad was a pastor, not a famous comedian. My mom was a local wedding photographer, not the head of a museum. If it was “all about who you know,” I worried, how was I ever going to write a book?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve found where my name might go on the shelf in stores. It is a little embarrassing how long I’ve wanted to write a book because it is quite literally my entire life. I love books. I like to hold them and put them on my shelf and smell their dumb pages. It’s not a unique quality, but it is all-encompassing. In the same way that some people know they want children, I knew I wanted a book.
As I’ve written here before, I got a book deal this time last year. It ruled!! Dreams do come true!!!
I spent the year revising and editing and pulling my hair out and now I’m really proud of what I’ve made. But I’m also terrified. Because now that the book is done (IT IS FINISHED!), my job is no longer about how good I can make the book, it’s about… well… it’s about who I know. It’s about whether people will buy it. It’s about the thing no one can pay for that everyone wants: buzz.
For years, all I have done is try to write the absolute best book that I possibly can. But this next part, well, the next part is the part that doesn’t feel quite as good. It’s easy to feel good about writing a book you think might matter, a book that talks about topics we avoid, a book that reckons with faith and family and fear. It’s harder to transition from the easy morality of doing something you love into making sure you get to keep doing it.
None of this is a new idea, but capitalism is a system that rewards the wrong things. It rewards networks and privilege and luck. It rewards making money over art. The thing that sucks about that phrase the adults used that I hated is it acknowledges something we don’t like to acknowledge: the game is rigged.
It’s not enough to write the best book you can. It’s not enough to edit it until it’s perfect and really believe in it. It’s not enough even to get a book deal and get it published, because if you ever want to write another book, you have to sell this one.
That doesn’t feel great. I want the book to be enough on its own. But I also want people to read this book, and so we have to play the game.
Yesterday, we announced the cover of my book and the game (in this case the game of selling books) began in earnest:
What’s weird about publishing a book is that the game is rigged in ways we know already. It’s not like we are throwing spaghetti at the fridge and praying that the book does well (though I will fucking do that if you think it might work). This newsletter usually deals with books that are out-of-print and whose books get to stay in print. Publishing a book has made me realize that the disparity in whose books get read happens so much earlier in the process. It starts with who gets book deals, and it continues in every single phase.
In this phase, the game is rigged for PREORDERS.
Pre-orders can literally make or break a book. It’s all explained in detail here, but at its heart, the reason pre-orders matter is because they create buzz. The world, I am learning, also runs on buzz. It’s kind of a ouroborus situation in that people buy more books because there is buzz around a book and also books get buzz because people are buying the book. We cannot control the first one, but preorders allow you to game the second one. The industry uses pre-orders as a bellwether for how well a book will sell and how many copies they should send to bookstores.
It’s a rigged system. In many ways that rigging benefits me. I am white. My book is being published by a Big 5 publisher. I already have a built in audience from writing basically all the time for the last 10 years and being an idiot online. If it sometimes about who you know, I’m not in a terrible position. But it still feels weird and bad to hawk something I’ve poured my guts into for years like its tickets to a bad Times Square improv show.
I am going to write more next week about “art” and “commercial work” and “having a soul” or something, but right now I am here to ask you very nicely to please, please, please preorder my book.
While it's not officially out until June 22, you can purchase it now for the cool price of $28 via one of these websites:
Indiebound (this one is best! buy local!)
If you are getting this newsletter, I promise to sign your book or mail you a little nameplate that is signed to stick in the front of your book when it is eventually published. And I promise that this will be the only push for preorders I will do. No guarantees about when the book actually comes out, but this really is important! Thank you for humoring me!
I know this newsletter has been a bit absent lately. I hope you can understand why. But don’t worry. I have a couple good new finds for you coming up, and OF COURSE, end of year lists. : )
Painting is ‘A Young Woman Reading’ by Gustave Courbet