a question about marketing

Today’s post is an answer to a follow-up question from the previous post:

How much were you thinking about building a network of readers before Finny was accepted for publication? The conventional wisdom nowadays is that you always have to be thinking about marketing so you’ll eventually have something to put in your query letter. I see the wisdom in this from a marketing perspective, of course, but not from a writing perspective. What are your thoughts?

Again, I have to be honest here and say that I didn’t really think about marketing myself before I sold the book.  As you said, I’m not sure this was the best business decision, but I’m sure it was the best decision for my writing.  I really wanted to write the best book I could, and to me that meant writing the book I would want to read and trying to block everything else out.

One thing I’ve heard about nonfiction writing is that books are often sold on “a platform.” While at first I thought this meant they were passed down from a stage, I realized later that “platform” refers to an established audience, which can be achieved from writing articles or lecturing or running a popular blog or being an expert in some way.  My sense is that fiction is a little bit different from that, in that it’s hard to know what the audience is for a given book.  While this can make fiction a little harder to sell in some instances, I think it also frees fiction writers up from having to run around too much to sell themselves before they even sell the book.  But I’m sure that being a celebrity or running a popular blog or appearing on TV wouldn’t hurt when you’re trying to sell a novel, so I don’t mean to dissuade people from that if you have interest in it.

As far as my experience, I worked more on doing some writing-related things that I hoped would make me and my novel more appealing.  This included publishing stories in established journals, applying for fellowships and awards, and attending conferences and residencies.  I posted earlier this year about some things I did that I thought were helpful for my writer’s resume.

I hope some of this info is helpful.  Also, everyone should feel free to follow up with me about this issue, or ask me questions about any other issues I’ve discussed in other posts.  I’m always happy to offer my experiences and answer questions as well as I can.

Writing Contests: Boulevard Emerging Writers

Here’s another contest specifically for emerging writers:
http://www.boulevardmagazine.org/partners.html
.  The nice thing about Boulevard, in general, is that they publish very well-known writers next to debut writers.  I’d imagine it’s a helpful boost to have one of your first published stories appear next to Ann Beattie or Billy Collins or Joyce Carol Oates.

Writing Contests: Playboy College Fiction

Do people know about this one?  They call it the “College Fiction Contest,” but my understanding is that it’s open to anyone enrolled in a university.  I remember that both years I was at Iowa, a lot of people would enter this contest.  I think it’s really helped a lot of writers get their names out there, so it might be a good one to put on the calendar for the future:

http://chuckpalahniuk.net/forum/1000026/playboys-2010-college-fiction-contest-info

Writing Contests: Glimmer Train

Glimmer Train magazine has been around for almost twenty years, and is one of the biggest supporters of new literary writers.  One of the issues with some literary journal contests is that even if you win, it’s hard to know how much a particular award will do for your career.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m somewhat thrifty, so I always like to have a sense of what I might be getting when I’m spending money on a contest.

I haven’t won any Glimmer Train contests, but I’ve had one story accepted there, and that one publication has been hugely helpful for me.  They do a great job of getting the message out about new writers they love, specifically to agents and to anthologies like Best American Short Stories.  From my experience, it seems a lot of people look to them as a trusted source.  And the editors, Linda and Susan, are outstandingly supportive of writers they love.  They have a passion for great fiction (and take pity on a few pale writers like myself).

A couple of the really helpful contests they run are the “Short Story Award for New Writers” and the “Family Matters” competition.

But here’s a link to their website:
http://www.glimmertrain.com/
— so you can check out all the contests.

Writing Contests: Zoetrope

I’m usually not a fan of contests.  The only contest I remember winning was when my middle school soccer team had ordered too many trophies, so they invented an award for the player who coughed the most during games.  That trophy was not a friend magnet.

But I think writing contests have been helpful for a lot of writers — specifically, short story contests at literary journals.  Some writers have told me that these contests are the best way to get an unagented submission read in full.  The idea is that while many or most journals don’t give priority to agented submissions, they have so many thousands of stories to read that they don’t have time to read every one in full.  Sometimes a reader might use a writer’s bio as a basis for how much to read of a story, so it’s harder for writers who are just starting out to get a good reading.

In contrast, most story contests are read blindly, meaning that the judges have no ability to see.  Kidding — it means, of course, that they don’t know who wrote the story or what her background is.  Usually, since you’re paying a small fee to enter the contests, you’ll get at least one thorough reading by a judge, and you generally are not going to be up against people who have six books out, since they wouldn’t enter a contest for beginning or unpublished writers.

I’ve never won a magazine contest myself, but I’ve also never won a cooking contest, and yet I think they’re a great idea.  Here’s an article by short story writer Jacob M. Appel, who has won a lot of contests, about why he thinks contests are useful for new writers: http://www.writingclasses.com/FacultyBios/facultyArticleByInstructor.php/ArticleID/58

Throughout this week I’ll be posting links to writing contests that have been particularly helpful to unpublished writers, as well as contests that my writer friends have mentioned to me.  These are all contests that seem to open a lot of doors for writers, and which specifically seek out writers at the beginnings of their careers.

For the first entry, I’ll mention a contest that Zoetrope magazine runs every year in collaboration with some well-known literary agencies.  You’ll notice that not only the contest winners, but also the honorable mentions get consideration by the agents.  Here’s the link to the contest (the contest details are below the list of this year’s winners and honorable mentions):
http://www.all-story.com/contests.cgi

Building my writing resume

Before I started working on Finny, I felt pretty hopeless about my prospects as a writer, among other things.  Despair is probably the biggest pitfall I’ve come up against as a writer, and it seems like the writers who stick around for a long time must find some way to manage the disappointment.  In my MFA program, I think there were a lot of people who were more talented than I am who never published and have stopped writing – and I think the despair is a big reason, the feeling of hopelessness about where it will all lead.  But who knows.  Maybe they all got jobs at Maxim.

In a future post I might talk more about disappointment and despair, but since this is generally a cheerful and practical blog, I’ll mention a couple concrete things I’ve done to keep my writing career moving forward, even at times when I wasn’t necessarily publishing a lot.  These are all things that seemed to help my “writer’s resume,” so that when I approached agents, magazines, and publishers, I might be taken a little more seriously than the guy who was writing the memoir about training his goldfish to do the laundry. (Actually, I would love to read that book if it existed.)

My agent mentioned in an earlier post that, more than my MFA, she felt that the publications and awards I’d received established my credentials as a writer.  Of course, an agent never sees the staggering number of rejections and “Thanks but I don’t think this is for us” letters a writer receives before approaching the agent. (I mean, entire forests have been leveled in the service of keeping me out of The Georgia Review.) But there are so many opportunities for contemporary American writers – as compared to, say, writers in Stalinist Russia – that I’ve found it helpful for my morale to always keep a number of balls in the air.  When I get a rejection from an award or magazine or fellowship, the best antidote I’ve come up with to combat the disappointment is to send out my work to a dozen more awards and magazines and fellowships.

One opportunity is writers’ residencies, during which an organization pays for your room and board while you work on a writing project.  The most famous ones in the U.S. are Yaddo and MacDowell, but there are a lot more.  There are also some amazing international residencies.  The two most helpful free listings of residencies I’ve found are at
http://www.transartists.org
and
http://www.artistcommunities.org/
.  In transartists.org, if you click on the “search” link under “residency opportunities,” you can search by country, which makes it feel a little like hotels.com.

I think the advantage of an artist residency is three-fold.  First, it’s a meaningful award to add to your resume.  Second, you’re getting paid to write, which is shocking.  Third, you’re getting to travel.  Through writers’ residencies, I’ve spent time in a medieval castle in Scotland, and on the Ligurian coast in Italy.  Next stop, Detroit.

Another thing my agent mentioned was helpful was that I had the support of some established writers.  A lot of early-career writers meet established writers at MFA programs or S&M clubs, but another less-committal type of place where I’ve met writers is writing conferences.  A lot of conferences offer opportunities to take classes with well-known writers and show them your work.  Some of the conferences are expensive, but probably not as expensive as that bender in Atlantic City.  And unlike the bender, there are often fellowships available.  Here’s a listing of conferences and residencies in the U.S.:
http://www.pw.org/conferences_and_residencies
.  If you have a known writer who supports you and can be an advocate for your work, it really does help open the door a little.

Poets & Writers also has a calendar of awards and fellowships:
http://www.pw.org/submission_calendar
.  I make a note to check this calendar every month and click on any awards I think I might be eligible for.  A lot of them are free to apply for.

Like I said, I find it useful both for my resume and my serotonin levels to always be submitting and applying and putting my name out there.  It has become a constant part of my life and a regular monthly expense – like groceries and crystal meth. (I’m totally kidding about the groceries.) It often feels like I’m getting nowhere, but when I put together an application letter or a bio, I realize that by some miracle I do have a few accomplishments to mention in it.

Hope this is helpful.  Please send me any questions or comments.  And have a good week.