Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Two questions You Don’t Ask A Recently Published Author, and Why

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A few months before Soccer Dad came out, an Ohio soccer mom put out Surviving Soccer—a very different book for a similar audience. Karen Scholl’s is a humor book—a comprehensive send-up of the bizarre behavior and deranged thinking of sports parents who think they are normal. People like me and Scholl.

Now, Scholl is writing about the bizarre behavior and deranged thinking of authors who think they are normal. People like Scholl and me.

She’s captured a lot of what I’ve been writing in my “Sales Mode” series here, about the endless rabid relentlessness required to publicize and promote a book, and the rewards. In a recent Substack account of a torturous yet triumphant book-signing appearance at the American Library Association show in Chicago, Scholl hit on an aspect of this process that “Sales Mode” hasn’t touched yet. She wrote:

But you know what people say to you when your book comes out? How’s it selling? Seems innocent. Kind, even. Here they are asking about something that’s important to me. And yet it feels like a small, polite stab. Wasn’t it enough that I wrote a book and got it published? Now you want to know how many copies I’ve sold? Truthfully, I don’t actually know. I’m not sure I really want to know. I only know enough to know it will never be enough to brag about. You know?

Asking an author, “How’s it selling?” is like asking a long-unemployed person, “How’s the job search going?” But also, not asking, “How’s it selling?” is like not asking a long-unemployed person, “How’s the job search going?”

You worry you’ll wound ’em either way.

No, you won’t. Especially the author, who like Scholl, generally doesn’t know how the book is doing in any way that will satisfy a questioner, because the vagaries of book sales are full of delayed reporting from variously reliable channels, all with their technical caveats. It’s all shadows on cave walls. The best I can tell you about Soccer Dad is that “the publisher seems happy” and that sales in June exceeded sales in May (I am pretty sure), which indicates momentum is building since the launch, rather than falling off (I am pretty sure).

Yes, comes the reply, but what about the numbers? Here’s the problem with the numbers. The only numbers anyone has ever heard about books are about books like Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, which has sold “millions of copies worldwide,” and (mostly because it’s taught in schools) sells 125,000 copies a year, according to my close friend AI Overview. How about The Shining? “Exact figures for Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining are difficult to pinpoint, as the publishing industry does not publicly disclose raw numbers. However, early hardback sales are widely cited as approximately 700,000 copies …”

So how is it going to sound to you that my book is selling several hundred copies per month? Or, that I’d be pleased if it got up to 3,000 this year, in hopes that enough of those 3,000 love it so much they’ll recommend it to others, and so we maybe sell another 1,000 every year until—I don’t fucking know, why don’t you just tell me what I want to hear: That you enjoyed the book (if that’s true), and that you were glad to see it got covered in The USA Today. I didn’t write this book to make money, I wrote it to communicate with people. I want to talk what people are saying about it, not how many of them bought it.

If my book starts selling really well, you’ll be the first to hear it—probably from my interviewer on the Today Show. Meanwhile, please just hope it sells well enough to meet the Sisyphean goal I had for it going in: that a publisher wants me to write another one sometime, and that I come up with another idea worthy of another five years of my life.

Oh, and speaking of which, that’s the other question you don’t ask a recently published author: “What’s your next book?” Unless you’d also ask a mother in the recovery room what she’s going to name her next baby, and when’s it coming out.

(It’s also possible I’m getting a little brittle, after all these months of promoting Soccer Dad like it’s the Holy goddamn Bible. The other day a friend had the accidental temerity to suggest that Soccer Dad‘s good sales might have something to do with the World Cup. I threatened to drive over to his house and shit in his driveway.)

Do You Know What You’re Trying to Do, When You’re Setting Out to Write a Book (or Anything Else)?

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Last week Soccer Dad publisher Kris Pauls shared a quick clip of the author Ann Patchett, answering a question on C-SPAN, about what sells books. “I can give you the definitive answer to that question,” she told America’s Book Club interviewer David Rubenstein:

It is not a book tour, an ad, a radio show, a television show, a celebrity book club pick. The only thing that actually sells books is a person reading a book, and turning around to their friend and saying, ‘Oh my God you have to read this book.’ Books are a word-of-mouth product like nothing else. You can have the best publicity campaign, promotional campaigns, and the book will flop if somebody reads the book and thinks, ‘Okay,’ but they don’t want to share it. And I always say the experience of loving a book is not complete until you have turned around and said to someone, ‘You have got to read this.’

And I’d add that it’s even worse than that, for a writer who wants to sell books. It’s not enough for people to say, “You have got to read this.” The people they say it to have to listen, and buy!

If you started a writing project hoping it would turn out so good that strangers would not only read the thing, but go around forcefully convincing others to read it too in a society where only 16% of people read books for pleasure … well, you’d go back to bed. I’m actually getting a little sleepy just thinking about it.

But however vastly unlikely the notion that you might make something out of thin air that human beings you never heard of might use to connect with one another—”oh, you read that too?!”—that long shot has gotten me to the coffee maker for about 40 years of mornings straight. And I guess it’s gotten me back there again this morning, too.

An Author Born Every Minute: Easy Come, Easy Go, and ‘Monica, Say It Ain’t So’

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I was checking into the Ohio University Inn for my daughter’s college graduation earlier this month when I saw this lovely email.

It had been a couple of weeks since the frenzy of the book’s launch, and with things quieting down, this was just the kind of invitation I’d been hoping to start getting.

When I returned to Chicago, I didn’t hide my delight at this invitation, telling Monica, “This is especially excellent seeing that I have a lot of family in and around Boulder, who will be interested. (Four sisters and their kin.)” I asked her for more details, so I could consider whether to appear via Zoom, or turn the event into a little family visit.

Promptly, I got 19 happy paragraphs back from Monica, each of them reading like this:

For an in-person gathering, we usually host in a relaxed, social venue here in Boulder often a cozy café, wine bar, or community space that allows for an intimate but lively discussion. Attendance typically ranges from 25 to 50 engaged members, depending on the book and timing. The atmosphere is warm, conversational, and highly reader-driven not a formal presentation, but a genuine exchange of ideas. If you were able to join us in person, we would shape the evening around a discussion first, followed by a natural, informal Q&A with you woven into the conversation.

Yummy in an author’s tummy! I replied, “Wow, Monica, you folks don’t mess around! Everything below sounds absolutely lovely and I look forward to committing to this with you one way or another.” I chose one of the dates she offered based on my availability and also its correlation with our Father’s Day promotions. And I proposed a call, later in the week.

Monica replied affirmatively, calling my Father’s Day angle “brilliant” and saying, “Friday sounds perfect for a call I’d love that. Feel free to suggest a time that works best within your open windows, and I’ll make myself available.”

To which I replied, “I’m really knocked out by the thoroughness and thoughtfulness of your approach here and excited to connect.”

Now folks, I’m already once bitten. While promoting my last book, I got pulled into a long and mind-bending dialogue with some huckster claiming to be the documentary maker Michael Moore, who I was hoping would push it to his followers.

With Soccer Dad, I’ve already been approached by a few opportunists whose advances my publisher helped me head off. Scamming authors is like panhandling the homeless: as morally low as financially dubious. But apparently it’s a thing.

Also recently, I was invited to participate in a kind of SEO scheme through some soccer parent website. Guy kept telling me to just post a ton of stuff there, no matter the quality: “it’s as if someone else is telling google that your book is valuable. nothing else really matters. you want as many links as possible. it doesn’t even matter (per say) if people read it …” I wound up telling this plastic-eyepatch alley-man, “I didn’t write a book so I could become a bot.”

So as much as I was looking forward to visiting Boulder virtually or in person, as much as I allowed myself to accept the kismet of a Boulder book group embracing my book—hey, it wouldn’t be the first lucky thing that happened in my life—the fuzzy feelings turned to suspicion right away and Monica became “Monica” as soon as “she” wrote back: “Friday at 10:00 works well for me. And if you don’t mind, I’d actually prefer to continue our conversation here by email rather than by phone. It helps me keep everything clearly organized and intentional as we shape the experience together. I’m very happy to move quickly back and forth so it still feels fluid and easy.”

One of my Boulder sisters and I quickly discovered: Monica Rose was an elusive presence online. And, others had asked about Boulder Bookaholics being a scam. I wrote, “Monica, pardon me but this is getting a little strange to me, and starting to seem a little commercial. You don’t wish to talk on the phone? Also, I can’t find you online anywhere.” I pasted in a post about the possible scam. “Monica,” I e-cried, “say it ain’t so!”

And that, as the say, was the end of that.

What’s the lesson here? If you try to do anything in this life, people will try to take advantage of your undisguised desire—even if it’s something as dopey as writing a book.

Especially if it’s something as dopey as writing a book.