what Shark Tank taught me about the difference between marketing and making art – substack.com

because writing a good book and actually selling it are two totally different things

Hello there! Welcome to Write More, Be Less Careful, a newsletter about making space for creative practice in a busy life. I’m a poet and an essayist, and my most recent books are the poetry collection Pocket Universe and the anthology The Long Devotion: Poets Writing Motherhood, which I edited with the poet Emily Pérez. My next book, The Good Mother Myth, will be out in January 2025—on Tuesday!!!—and you can pre-order it now!

Several summers ago, when I was spending a week at my parents’ with my kids, I ended up watching a Shark Tank marathon over the course of several days. Have you ever watched Shark Tank? As far as I remember, it’s basically a showcase of products that should not exist, which people are doing their damnedest to sell to the judges. I watched one woman do a long promo of a hairstyling product, and it hit me: this is an objectively bad and stupid thing, and she is selling the shit out of it.1

I had the inverse reaction a year or two later, when my agent and I were finishing up the proposal for the book that’s now The Good Mother Myth, and she was looking up sales numbers for the comps I’d identified. Several of the books I most admired—books that were deeply written, beautifully researched, that fundamentally transformed how I think about mothering—had sold very very few copies.

That really solidified it for me: writing a really good book and selling that book to readers are two totally different processes.

Sales numbers are not proof of the quality of a book, for good or bad. There are a lot of really excellent books that just aren’t finding their way to readers, for all kinds of complicated reasons. And we’ve all had the opposite reaction, of reading something that’s sold a bajillion copies, and thinking, this? really?2

Any good thing that’s happening for a book, it’s probably because someone—whether it was the writer herself or a publicist—asked for it. Before my first book was published, I assumed that the best books just magically rose to the top, and maybe there are cases where that happens—but more often than not, the Most Anticipated Lists, the Best Books of the Year, the book club picks, those are all happening because someone behind the scenes is hustling. I say that not to take anything away from the books that make those lists, but to highlight the fact that the quality of a book alone isn’t enough to get it there.

Marketing is not the same as making art. But if you want to sell your art, if you want the work you’ve labored over to find the people who will love it, you’ve got to learn something about marketing.

There are two related ideas in play here:

1. Deciding that you believe in your work and want to share it.

2. Learning the specific knowledge and skills that will help you get your writing in front of readers.

The second one is actually easier, I think! There’s no shortage of accounts and articles and books that will help you learn to promote your writing. (Also no shortage of scams, so buyer beware!)

some resources for learning about publicity and marketing:

I’ve learned so much from

Cassie Mannes Murray

and the Pine State Publicity newsletter. I’d start here, on finding your readers, and here, on “author brand,” if you don’t already know her great work.

Courtney Maum

’s Before and After the Book Dealis also a great resource in learning about the business side of writing.

I’ve also learned a ton from watching how writers I admire talk about their books—look at

Jo Piazza

hustling to get her new tradwife murdery mystery Everyone is Lying to You stocked at bookstores in all 50 states! There’s a world of difference between posting “buy my book” and actually coming up with a zippy, compelling description of what your book offers and who its for. (I recently heard

Sarah Lyn Rogers

describe her forthcoming book of poetry, Cosmic Tantrum, as good for readers who are “a little witchy and extremely online,” which I thought was great—it gestures toward the substance and the tone!)

But the first—believing in your work enough to share it, asking people to buy it/come see it/talk about it with you on their podcast or in their newsletter—that’s the hard part, and that’s the part that no course or newsletter can really do for you. I genuinely went to therapy before my last two books came out because self-promotion was making me so anxious. I don’t know that that therapist every really understood anything about the weird world of small press/poetry publication, but she did help me to understand that, whether it’s for having a messy house or talking about my new book, other people might in fact be judging me—and I won’t die of that.

If you’re someone who’s struggled with self-promotion (who hasn’t?), here’s what I would say: You’re allowed to want to make money from your art. You’re allowed to care about getting your book into the hands of readers who will love it. And you also need to know that doing that is work. That was the Shark Tank revelation: marketing and making art are different processes, but they’re both part of the job.

Once the thought of cold-pitching my book to someone’s newsletter or podcast stopped making me feel quite so nauseous, I discovered that there are parts of this work that are actually . . . really fun. I’ve got a bunch of events coming up this spring, and I’m genuinely so excited to be in conversation with other writers, folks in maternal mental health, women in mompreneur communities. When we know what our work offers readers, and when we can connect with those readers, there’s real joy in that.

💬 What questions do you have about sharing and promoting your own work? What writers have seen you do this well, or what have you done that you’ve been proud of? 💬

Speaking of self-promotion—I made this reel to share the dedication to The Good Mother Myth. If you want to remind a mom you love (including you!) that she’s already great, there’s still time to pre-order and enter your info here to get signed bookplate.

nancy.o.reddy

A post shared by @nancy.o.reddy

💕 let’s hang out 💕

I shared some fun pub day news with the Mom Squad—you can click on over to read the whole thing and sign up to your pep talk and/or lunch note—and I wanted to make sure to share my book tour info here, too.

If you’re in the Philadelphia/south Jersey area, I would LOVE to see you at the launch party this Saturday the 25th. The Small Works Gallery on 1609 N. Delaware is hosting it, and they’ve curated an absolutely knockout selection of work by local artists that touches on the book’s themes. I cried when Heather and Natalia showed me the work, and I’m getting teary now just thinking about it. (One of the artists is Emily Zilber, who shared her gorgeous illustrations in a good creatures interview.) I’m buying a BIG BOOK CAKE, please come have some!

smallworksphilly

A post shared by @smallworksphilly

And if you live in Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Madison, or LA, I’m coming your way, too! The details are below, and I’ll keep updating my website with all the info.

A couple notes, and things that didn’t make it onto the snazzy graphic:

• The event at White Whale in Pittsburgh will also have a livestream option, if you want to join us virtually.

• The pre-order thank you, a zoom workshop with me and Maggie Smith, is on Sunday, February 23rd at 2pm eastern. Enter your info at this link, and you’ll get the zoom link in your email and a signed bookplate in the mail.

• You can sign up for the virtual event at Ashland Public Library on February 25th here.

• On Saturday, March 8 from 10am to noon, I’ll be leading a workshop on pitching personal essays, book reviews, and more at the Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison. You can get all the info and sign up here.

Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. I’m so glad you’re here.

If Write More has helped you in your creative life, you can support me by sharing it online or with a friend, or by pre-ordering my next book, The Good Mother Myth.

1

It was a variation on the heatless curls that are all over my instagram now! I remember watching her show a video of how she spent like an hour every morning blow-drying her hair, then curling it and showing how these heatless curls were a replacement for that and thinking, but you could just not do any of that?

2

I don’t begrudge anyone their sales! And to some extent, those best-selling books make it possible for presses to take a risk on smaller books that won’t sell a ton of copies.