Be Yourself and Sell More Books

As a part of our Money Week series, Laura Stanfill argues that you should work with your publisher to do what feels organic, genuine, and true to you as a human being.

I’m running out of copies of Joanna Rose’s A Small Crowd of Strangers. My warehouse report says there are 306 in stock out of our initial run of two thousand.

This smart-and-sweet stunner of a second novel—one she spent twenty years writing—published midpandemic in September 2020. Joanna is a fixture in the local literary community; as her publisher and publicist, I had been counting on in-person events for big crowds, strong sales, and word of mouth. Instead, I found myself setting up online appearances, sending her book plates to autograph, and wondering whether I should have pushed her to boost her slim social media presence.

Only one major trade journal chose to review A Small Crowd of Strangers—a fairly normal occurrence for us, being a small literary press in a competitive market. But Joanna’s 1998 debut novel, Little Miss Strange (Algonquin), earned major coverage in the dailies, so the lack of response unnerved me. It felt like a test I had failed. Joanna and I discussed how the industry has changed significantly over the past two decades; these days, more titles compete for fewer review slots as print publications have downsized or folded. Even though I urged her not to take this personally, I still worried.

What if enough readers didn’t find A Small Crowd of Strangers?

What if Joanna regretted choosing my press for her twenty-years-in-the-making novel?

What if I turned out to be not just a friend and former student but the publisher who broke her heart?

Besides the raging pandemic, the devastating West Coast wildfires and the leadup to the 2020 election meant that we arrived at pub day feeling under siege. Joanna launched her book from a tech-savvy friend’s office. She recalled the Powell’s event this way: “It was during the fires, and I remember how good the air in his apartment was, and I asked him to recommend air purifiers. He sat nearby in his living room monitoring the internet, wearing a mask. I didn’t have a mask on, and it was unnerving. Everything was. I remember being so conflicted about celebrating my book at a time when the news was so dire—the election coming up, no vaccine in sight, death counts rising, and the town of Blue River being burned to the ground.”

And yet here we are, a year out from deciding on a conservative first print run, waiting for new copies to arrive at the Ingram warehouse in Tennessee. Demand continues—the long-tail method at work, blazing far beyond the conventional wisdom of a three-month sales window.

Many presses cannot afford to operate this way; their business models are driven by volume and sales. As a neurodivergent small press publisher, I founded Forest Avenue outside the mainstream industry environment. Publishing a handful of titles each year means having time and energy to center my authors’ experiences. I don’t insist they reach specific industry metrics like a certain number of social media followers, and I don’t fixate on the first three months of sales because I want these books to be finding readers long beyond that short window.

So what went right with A Small Crowd of Strangers? How’d we get here despite launching during a pandemic? And what can authors learn from this experience?

I have a few theories. They’re all related to Joanna being herself and promoting her novel on her own terms, not ones the industry imposed. It takes such a toll to perform to someone else’s expectations—even more so if you’re disabled or neurodivergent like I am.

Often, the saddest stories I hear about bad publishing experiences are from authors who did everything they were “supposed” to. If you can work with your publisher or publicist on doing what feels organic, genuine, and true to you as a human being, the whole ride will be a gentler, more enjoyable one. And maybe, like Joanna and I found, you’ll end up selling plenty of books.

Often, the saddest stories I hear about bad publishing experiences are from authors who did everything they were “supposed” to.

Here are some specific tips to consider:

Write the best book you can. Joanna puts her writing first, whether she’s studying poetry, crafting essays, or working on a novel. It’s the work that sustains her, not the aftermath.

“It’s been a strange time to release a book, especially one so long in the works, but it has come clear to me why we write,” Joanna told me. “Creativity and the essential response to it is, in the end, so private. And as all booksellers know, books find their way in the world one at a time.”

We can’t control how others respond to our books—or who decides to ignore them—but we can keep coming back to the page. Doing the work. It’s a balm.

Define success on your own terms. While there are many great resources on what to expect in the publishing journey—including Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal and Joe Biel’s A People’s Guide to Publishing—there are still plenty of misconceptions and exaggerations floating around. That’s in part because this industry is a complicated one to understand—and also because authors often share their successes but not their struggles.

If Joanna had been expecting to sell five thousand copies in the first year, or measuring her experience based on how the industry operated in 1998 when her debut came out, she’d be disappointed right now instead of elated.

How you frame the story of your work is a matter of perspective, and setting achievable goals helps immensely. In addition to discussing print runs, and reminding my authors that we can always reprint, I ask them what they want their lives as authors to look like. Then we craft our publicity and marketing around those goals rather than industry guidelines or outside expectations.

Love your local booksellers. I founded Forest Avenue on the concept of bringing readers and writers together inside indie bookstores. Even if you can’t afford to buy the latest hardcover, become a regular presence at your local store (as best you can in these pandemic times). Attend events, ask for advice, browse the shelves for comp titles, and read all the handwritten shelf talkers to get a sense of each bookseller’s taste and personality. Or order from your local store online and write a thank-you note to the booksellers in the comments field.

For sure, Joanna’s experience as a bookseller, and Forest Avenue being positioned as indie-focused, helped us gain traction in this market even during the pandemic.

Be clear about your personal comfort zone. Putting your book into the world can feel really scary. Setting boundaries with yourself (and your publicist) may seem impossible—after all, this is your book, and you swore you’d do anything to help it sell—but it’s easy to burn out, especially if you commit to lots of promotional opportunities that aren’t in your wheelhouse. I hope to remember this next spring, when Lanternfish Press releases my debut novel, Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary. I want to reserve some energy to deal with disappointments, manage chronic pain flares, and still have the emotional bandwidth to say yes to unexpected opportunities.

You do have to help promote your book, of course, but if you can get really clear on your strengths and preferences, it’ll help with creating a plan that works for you. If you don’t love public speaking, see if you can schedule some print interviews or place some essays, or ask for an in-conversation partner to ease your jitters.

Besides, there’s a good chance your audience will sense your discomfort if you keep saying yes to tasks that feel uncomfortable to you. Years ago I spoke on a PubWest marketing panel where a publicist talked about how she urged an author to join Twitter. He dutifully followed through . . . but he was terrible at it. His account lost followers and the press had to reverse course and take it over, pretending to be him.

Which leads to . . .

Social media followers don’t necessarily convert to book sales. Sometimes they do, of course, and if you’ve figured out this kind of conversion, congratulations! Many writers struggle with this, though, including Joanna. “It didn’t help that I was so resistant to all things tech to begin with,” she said. “It didn’t help that I am private in the best of times.”

So for those of you who agonize over these kinds of requests and worry that you’ll never earn high-enough numbers, it might feel like a relief to have this reminder. There’s a gulf between liking and sharing someone’s content and actually putting in the effort to purchase that person’s book, let alone read it. A small, deeply engaged audience is much more likely to hit the buy button, read your words, and share their response with other readers.

As Joanna said, “What felt right was holding the book in my hands. What felt right was you believing in it.”

And that’s the goal, right? As authors and publishers, we want readers. Followers aren’t exactly the same thing.

At this stage in my author journey, I’ve started a twice-monthly newsletter, The Bright Side, which discusses creativity, grief, and publishing. I switch roles regularly, speaking as a seasoned publisher and also as a debut author with first-time jitters. My newsletter has a small subscriber base so far, not quite two hundred followers, but the engagement stats are high: My readers comment and have conversations with me. While I do hope to grow that number, it needs to be an organic process that continues this high level of engagement. I don’t want to add subscribers who don’t actually read my newsletter, because that’s performative—and not true connection.

As authors and publishers, we want readers.

When in doubt, ask for help. So many devastated writers create stories in their heads about what others are achieving with their books. This kind of comparison can make self-doubt skyrocket. It can feel alienating and lonely if your book isn’t on The List—whatever the list is that month.

I reached out to several of my authors after announcing Joanna’s reprint on social media, just to reassure them that their books were selling well. I never want someone else’s good news to make another author on my list feel left behind or less sure about their own achievements. Some of them really needed that perspective; without my encouraging and transparent notes, they might have spun with self-doubt or misperceptions. Instead, I gave them context so they could celebrate with Joanna instead of pitting their books’ track records against hers.

If you are anxious about your sales numbers, reach out to your support team—your agent, your editor or publisher, and your author friends. Be open and honest about your concerns. Chances are they will have some perspective-clearing insight for you. Often your disappointments are expectations that were unrealistic in the first place, and you can clear those up with a conversation.

Finally, we can change the narrative together. I really believe this. If what matters is reaching readers with our words, then anything we can do to make our individual publishing journeys feel safer and more fulfilling should be a priority. Otherwise, writing the next book will be even harder. We can set clear boundaries to preserve our energy and mental health. We can make actual literary friends, instead of chasing numbers. We can create an audience for our work based on ourselves, or at least a public version of our true selves, not someone else’s idea of who an author needs to be in the world. And if anyone scoffs at your boundaries, or claims your book will fail if you don’t follow X or Y advice, tell them you’ve decided to be kind to yourself. After all, you’ve worked really hard on your book. You deserve to appreciate how far you’ve come.