Watch a Writer Bet on Himself: #002

First week = groundwork. Build the platform, drink hot coffee, research book proposals, drink iced coffee, draft a query letter, think about more coffee.

Damn, Substack is dope. An insane parade of smarties writing fascinating takes, not one single angry relative reposting propaganda memes. I love it. So…

Each week I will report on my steps, missteps, and payoffs as I undertake the long process of publishing a memoir, Dead Virgins for America. This is Week Two.

I’ll also post some silly / deep / useful stuff. Let’s nourish the spirit as well as the intellect, m’kay?

The Gist of My Efforts (TL;DR):

1. Ways I’m building my quote-unquote platform. Outreach on other social media. Mastering Substack. Enlisting friends with platforms. Getting organized.

2. Surprises I found in my research. Agents give advice on Substack! I found lots of help with queries and proposals. Leaderboards are useful.

3. The grunt work. I drafted a query letter using successful examples. I began my proposal, focused on the marketing plan. I researched successful memoirs.

4. An excerpt from the memoir, Dead Virgins for America. At bottom.

But first, something silly. Never underestimate the power that language imparts.

1. Hammer Another Plank into the Platform

Introverts! A topic I’ll keep coming back to is platform. Meaning the prospective author’s audience reach. Why?? Why must we have such a thing? Writers are cave trolls. Writers are pale and wan. At parties, writers find a quiet corner to ogle the bookshelf. I’ve been through the Five Stages of Grief on this one: Denial, Bargaining, Anger, Depression, and finally… Acceptance. So:

Get sexy! The consensus seems to be: publishers don’t sell books, authors do. Fine. That’s some bullshit but there it is. What even is my platform? I’ve got a few thousand followers on Instagram and Facebook, whom I spent the week trying to coax over to Substack. I’ve got some notable friends who have their own large platforms. I’ve got connections in the worlds of journalism, music, and Hollywood. But in reading about how to write your marketing plan for your book proposal, it’s becoming clear that I need to formalize all this. Get specific. Agents and publishers want hard numbers.

New habit! So every morning I cultivate my garden. I draft Substack posts. I solicit Q&As from author friends to share. I cross-post to other SM. I do calendar reminders to post. I set a time, chosen for maximum engagement, for finished posts to go out.

Pro-tip! You can post to your page for subscribers to read, AND Substack will email your post, but DON’T FORGET to also share to Notes, which acts like a Twitter feed. That way people who don’t subscribe (yet) might discover you.

Say hello! I found like-minded authors on Substack. I left comments when warranted. I gently left a breadcrumb trail to my Substack. In short, I’m cultivating a community. That’s the beauty of the platform: smart, kind, people who share interests. Celebrate it.

Get paid! Last Saturday, I published my first real post. I pimped it on IG and FB. Results as of Thursday: 175 subs, $1,028 in sub fees, 2,402 views, 76% open rate. I had agonized about whether to even add a paid tier. Eventually I figured: Why not? Even though all posts are free, 10% of subs voluntarily paid. DO IT.

Have you had success building your platform? Tell us how in the comments.

And now something deep. I saw Emmett Till this week at the grocery store, by Eve L. Ewing.

2. Surprise! Findings from Research

Categories! Did you know about Leaderboards? They track rising Substacks by category. I checked who’s being read in categories that apply to me. I reached out.

Friends! I asked published friends about their agents, their experience, their advice. If someone recommends you to their agent, your query goes to the top of the stack.

Agents! Did you know that book agents post advice on Substack? Hell yeah! I read about thirty posts on

Agents and Books

and

Not So Secret Agent

.

The method of finding an agent is one big WTF. One author I know went with the first one who expressed interest. (I would not do that.) Another queried a hundred agents to land three interested parties. But how do you even know who to query?

Initially, an author friend pointed me to a searchable database on Poets & Writers. Someone on Reddit also suggested QueryTracker, which lets you search for free. But

Kate McKean

at Agents + Books prefers Publishers Marketplace, though it charges a monthly fee, because it’s more accurate and up-to-date. She’s an agent, so…

Proposals! Writing an agent query letter is a dark art. Same for a book proposal. Why do I even need a proposal, y’all?? My book’s already written. (Here is why.) Essentially, you’re providing coverage of your own book, plus a gameplan for selling it. Does this seem like a thing a publisher would do for you? Yes it does. But, my pretties, the business has changed. I see this in Hollywood, too. You do a lot of free work in hopes of making a sale. Most buyers shrug. There’s a great, probably apocryphal, story about a screenwriter in 1982 sending a bunch of producers the script for Casablanca under a different title, only to get responses that it was “weak” and “uncommercial.” So yeah.

Anyway. This outfit is pimping their self-publishing services but they have some good free guides to writing query letters and proposals. I also found this excellent analysis of query letters for major genres. A published friend also kindly shared the proposals for two of his books, so reach out to your friends. Am I missing other resources?

And now, something fun. Pull it out at parties. DJ Kool Herc! 1520 Sedgwick Ave!

3. The Grunt Work

Drafts! As of this writing, I have drafted a query letter. I have begun my proposal, focusing on the marketing plan, since that’s the big question mark for everyone.

Submissions! As yet, I have sent zero queries. I have sent zero proposals. I do not yet have a list of agents to submit to.

Houses! I did research successful memoirs by non-famous people, who published them, and the agents. I found some interesting stuff. Certain publisher names came up again and again. Random House. Houghton Mifflin. Alfred A. Knopf. Little, Brown, and Company. Pantheon. A few others. These are big legacy publishers with money but short attention spans. There are smaller publishers with less dough that may invest in a writer’s long-term career. Do you have data about this? Please share.

Control! When I was younger, I’d buy anything certain music labels put out. SST, 4AD, Factory, Twin/Tone, Merge, Dischord, ECM New Series, Blue Note, etc. The only publisher I track in the same way is NYRB. There has been a lot of consolidation so some of these names may have folded into others. But I want to be as informed as possible when offered a deal. I used to be in the music business and it’s littered with cautionary tales of big advances, zero royalties, and dropped authors. I want to play the long game here.

And now…

4. An Excerpt from Dead Virgins for America

(For backstory, see the excerpt at bottom in this post.)

As the year became 1991, Freddie Mercury died. Queen was the first band that made Bobby feel cool. The other fourth-graders heard of them first but Bobby glommed right on. At the time, their song Another One Bites the Dust was everywhere, with that timeless bass line ripped directly from Chic. Curiously, an early Queen song contained lyrics about Jesus healing a leper. It’s heavily theatrical in the manner of Jesus Christ Superstar. But it’s not hard to imagine that young queer misfit Freddie got the metaphor. All of Freddie Mercury’s camp was lost on Bobby—and apparently on the rest of the world too, since We Will Rock You was a sports arena staple. So a lot of people’s worlds were turned upside-down in November when Freddie announced he had AIDS and then one day later died. A guy who could afford all the AZT in the world. The press coverage was savage. Headlines that called him pervert, that he sowed iniquity, and that old chestnut: he got what he deserved.

Outrage artist—and evangelical hero—Rush Limbaugh mocked Freddie’s death on his radio show by playing a snippet of Another One Bites the Dust. Cool dudes joked about Freddie Mercury. But that same year, when Magic Johnson announced he was infected—from sleeping with women—the fear really hit the straight male populace. AIDS was a straight-guy disease now. Better strap on that latex, bro. Because AZT was still priced for the rich. And eleven ELEVEN! years YEARS! into the crisis, Congress was just starting to take it seriously. All while the loudest evangelicals were still calling AIDS the gay plague, with the White House’s backing.

Big Pharma, Big Government, and Big Church were not on Bobby’s side. One would hope the church at least would act out of love, rather than greed or fear. Paul’s most poetic scripture passage, which everyone knows from a million weddings, defines it thusly: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Bobby did know a few Christians who lived by that passage. He just hoped his college friends were among them.

Because Bobby had an occasion to test the waters of openness with his fellowship crew. He was invited to join the leadership circle of the group. To kick things off, everyone went around the circle and shared their testimony, meaning their conversion narrative. A lot of their stories took a similar shape—middle class suburban upbringing, religious parents, Sunday school, youth group, then a come to Jesus moment. There wasn’t much edge to the stories. Maybe a divorce or two. Here Bobby was, with his crazy hair, weird clothes, oddball friends, and a whole other life on the fringe. They were sweet people but he recognized their side-eyed suspicion from his own parents. He didn’t think AIDS would get a hallelujah.

So he did an experiment. He spun a dramatic yarn. One adjacent to, but not wholly congruent with, the truth.

Well, we went to church sometimes. It was kinda sporadic. But it was enough that I knew the stories. When I was thirteen I got into punk rock. I was hanging out with older guys. And they got me intro drinking. Then drugs. It started out with weed. But later I got into a little bit of heroin. Then a lot…

Now, on the one hand, it was kind of a shitty thing to do. His friends sincerely cared about Bobby and wanted to know his true story.

It got pretty bad. I started selling on the side to pay for my habit. When the parents found out, my dad beat the shit of me. So I left. I moved downtown with a couple of guys. We lived above the blood bank in a squat…

But on the other hand, their eyes popped like they’d seen a Hieronymus Bosch painting come alive. They were scared. This was true depravity—like Satanic Zeppelin lyrics or gay sex. They wouldn’t make eye contact with Bobby.

But heroin isn’t the kind of thing you can keep up for long. You either bottom out or you die. Eventually I got into recovery. And that’s where I met Jesus. I got clean and here I am.

There was no hallelujah. Just silence and shocked discomfort. Bobby hated to say it, but it confirmed his suspicions. They meant well but this was beyond their experience and capacity to deal. He could see that they would never again look at him in the same way.

So he let them off the hook. He told them he was just kidding, he really had an ordinary suburban altar call moment, just like them. They exhaled as one. There was annoyance, a couple of forced chuckles, palpable shared relief. They quickly moved on to the next person without comment.

Bobby wanted to die a little. These were his friends. Ostensibly enlightened people, instructed by their faith to take care of orphans and widows, to feed the hungry, heal the sick, welcome the alien. But they were young. They wanted to keep themselves from being polluted by the world. Their culture was calling AIDS a plague from God. Maybe they would have stepped up to the challenge, but Bobby was afraid to test them. And imagine—what if he were gay?

Prison. Hard labor. A felony conviction. That’s what gays got in the U.S. before 1962. At the moment Bobby tested his friends, anti-sodomy laws were still on the books in 27 states…

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Once a week, on Saturday morning, I’ll send out a report detailing my efforts and their results. Plus a memoir excerpt. When results are slow in coming I’ll send fun stuff.

What publishing questions would you like to see answered? Kindly comment beneath my friend’s wall art of David Bowie’s hairstyles.