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This week’s question comes to us from Ani King:

My first book is coming out this year and I have a hard time with self promotion. What are your thoughts on getting the word out and shutting down the “humility” programming so many of us grow up with?

Humility is expensive.

But before we even get into that—congrats on the new book, Ani. Writing a book is a giant pain in the ass, and that is during the best of times. Writing a book in whatever level of late-stage capitalist hellscape we are in now is a feat that deserves a standing ovation. So this is me giving you that standing ovation, and I think it’s fair to assume that some of our readers are joining me in that. All hail Ani, writer of a book! Slayer of words! Builder of phrases! Finisher of projects!

I am excited to read your book, and I’m betting other people will be too. Which means they need to know about your book. The easiest way for people to know about your book is for you to tell them about your book. Case in point; I didn’t know you’d written a book until you told me you’d written a book.

A while back I was a member of a Discord server that was part of an event I went to. And like a lot of temporary communities, people ended up hanging around on the server long after the event had ended. Chatting with new friends they’d just made and showing off what they were working on. Personally, I enjoy showing people things I’m working on. Whether it be a zine, or a painting, or a book I’ve got coming out. Other people were showing off stuff they’d made as well. Which I also enjoyed seeing. And there was a lot of advice being asked for and offered. It was nice. At one point, and I forget what prompted it but it also doesn’t matter, the organizers sent out a “gentle” reminder that self-promotion was frowned upon. Now, I took that personally.

Talking about the company you worked at was fine. Talking about where you sourced weird materials was fine. Talking about your investments was fine. Talking about a particular tool a company made, including a link on where to buy it, was fine. (And for what it’s worth I agree that all those things are fine.) But things got in a gray area when it came to work you made yourself. For example, I could mention I was working on a book, and get lots of support from people, which was nice. I could talk about the process of writing the book, which was also nice. But once the book was finished, I couldn’t link to the page for buying the book. Because this was considered self-promotion. I find this attitude puzzling.

I also find it particularly common in people who don’t have to worry about where their rent money is coming from.

Why do we find the idea of “self-promotion” so distasteful? Let’s dig in:

First off, let’s deal with the phrase “self-promotion” which is absolute bullshit. You’re not promoting yourself. No issue whatsoever if you were, by the way! But in this particular case, you’re promoting your book. You’re promoting a thing that you wrestled with and won. You’re promoting a thing that dragged you to hell and you dragged back. You’re promoting a successful enterprise in human endeavor. And beyond that, you’re promoting the idea that this beautiful thing you made, these words you ordered, these ideas you successfully put to a page, will resonate with other human beings. You’re promoting your belief that you have made a thing that will fill others with joy, grief, and/or inspiration. You’re promoting the idea of human connection, which we need so badly right now. In the end, we write because it’s how we communicate with others. I write, not because of how it affects me, but because I’m hoping that reading it might affect you in some way. Without a reader, nothing I write matters. And like I said, if you’re not telling people about this book, they’re not going to know it exists.

Writing a book is labor. As is making an illustration, or writing a piece of music, or pulling a print, or knitting a sweater, or throwing a pot, etc, etc. I don’t know the details of your book journey, but since it’s your first book I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t receive a large advance that covered the expenses it took you to write that book, by which I mean the safety of knowing your rent was covered, your food was assured, your utilities were paid—none of that shit was assured by a publisher that covered that labor in advance so you would have time to write your book without the standard worries.

(Short aside about publishing for our readers: unless you are an incredibly well-known author or public figure, your advance will be very small. It will most likely not cover your basic needs for the time it takes to write the book. Congrats to you if it does. Also, an advance is just that. An advance on future earnings. So say that you get a $5,000 advance, you will have to make $5,001 from royalties to see $1. Also, your royalty split will be something dumb like 25% to you, and 75% to your publisher. And the printing and marketing will come out of those 25%. The good news is there will be no marketing. (Hurray?) Which means you are giving most of your money away to a nepo baby who inherited their imprint from their dad or uncle and you’ll have to do your own marketing anyway. You may also have to pay for your own editor out of pocket, and you will absolutely hate the slop-generated cover choices they foist on you. I don’t like publishers.)

All of that labor now needs to pay off. And since we live in, again, whatever level of capitalist hellscape this is, the idea that we should benefit from our own labor is distasteful and society does a pretty good job of making you feel like shit anytime you attempt to profit from labor of which they don’t believe they’ve gotten the cut to which they’re entitled, which is roughly 100%. AI sloplords can talk about how great their slop engines are (slop engines trained on the products of our labor), but we are supposed to be humble about the products of our own labor ourselves? I am allowed to be an ingredient but not the meal? Fuck that noise. Promote your work.

Next up, we need to deal with the voice in our own head telling us that if we don’t try we won’t fail. Too late. You already wrote a book. The ship has sailed. You’ve already succeeded. You went through the trouble of planting the seeds, tending the crop, harvesting, and now it’s time to feed the people. It would be irresponsible to not feed the people. You cannot let your crop rot.

Now I can hear some of you saying “But Mike, I’m an introvert!” which means it’s time to kill another useless binary. While writing is a thing that tends to attract people who mostly want to be left the fuck alone for long periods of time so they can do their fucking writing, I have seen more than my share of writers take to the dance floor. I think society enjoys carving people up into categories that makes them easier to parse, and to sell to. I think we also end up adopting these definitions about ourselves, and then have the definitions decide our future actions. We decide that we, as an introvert, don’t like being around people. When the truth is that most people aren’t that pleasant to be around, and when we find the people who we enjoy being around we tend to light up. This doesn’t make you an introvert, it makes you a good judge of character.

We are not “types,” as much as we have “moods.” My mood tonight might be “couch” tomorrow it might be “center stage.” Both are me.

A couple of weeks ago I did a local book reading. It was at Booksmith, one of my favorite local bookstores, and I was honored that Annalee Newitz, one of my favorite writers, agreed to go on stage with me and have a conversation about the new book. Here’s the part I haven’t told yet, not even to Annalee: I spent close to an hour crafting that email to her. And it was a very short email. Basically, “I’m doing a thing, I’d like you to do it with me. Don’t say no.” I paced back and forth thinking of all the ways they were going to say no. And once I sent it, I immediately started trying to come up with a backup list, a list that didn’t get very far because they replied fairly quickly and said “Let’s do it!” I then spent two months posting about the event on multiple platforms. I also made flyers and handed them out in the dogpark. I had a great time, Annalee had a great time, and the audience had a great time. The room was filled with “my people” and every one of them had to be reminded to come over a dozen times. Because that’s the job of a writer too. Any energy I had exerted in gathering all these people together was paid back a thousand-fold by being in the same room, and with purpose. I asked everyone in that room to give us one evening of their life, and our job was to make it worthwhile. Our job was to have a conversation that made them feel like they’d chosen correctly. And yes, we sold a lot of books. Am I bragging?

Yes, I am bragging! That’s the whole point of this essay. Humility is expensive. Humility doesn’t move books, and unsold books don’t pay the rent. If you believe in what you wrote, and I very much hope you do, completing your book should fill you with joy. (There is nothing like the joy of opening up that first carton of books from the printer.) And now your job is half-done. The rest of the job is to find your readers, so that joy can transfer from you to them.

At the best of times, finding your readers is a giant pain in the ass. In these times? You are going to have to get annoying. You are going to have to post about your book ten times a day, on as many platforms as you can stomach (but not X because fuck that), and probably start a newsletter (but not on Substack because fuck that), and you are going to have to tell your friends to repost every post you make about your book. (Hearts are nice, but reposts pay the rent.) You are fighting a billionaire’s algorithm. You are fighting an entire industry that wants you to feel like your humanity is a flaw.

If you post about your book a dozen times today, I may see it once. But even more importantly, you need to become part of those communities. Be useful. Be helpful. Be Ani, the person who helps people out. And not even as a strategy, per se, but because it’s a good way to be in the world. When I looked over the audience at Booksmith, I saw people I knew online, friends from the neighborhood, folks from the dog park (including one dog), and every employee from our local pet food store. People who I’ve built relationships with, not because I wanted them to buy my book, but because I enjoy their company.

They ended up buying my book though! You should too.

Then you should buy Ani’s book.

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