The Truth About Publishing: For Authors

Snappy answers to gut-wrenching author questions

I taught a class called “The Intimate Memoir” in May, about the craft and possibilities of writing about intimate life, erotic life, be it comedy or tragedy.

At the end of the course, I entertained publishing questions. Many of the students are published authors, and authors have work questions!

Q. Should I pursue audiobooks and audio licensing? How do I begin?

Get immersed in a medium before you produce or make choices about any of your work.

Listen to some of your favorite stories, classics, children’s work, titles you know well.  That’s the most pleasurable way to learn a lot, quickly.

It’s all free at the library. You’ll have thousands of choices.

Then: Read the customer reviews on Audible of the titles that strike your fancy. You will learn a great deal from the customer reviews, who do not hold back.

Q. What are the essentials to marketing a new book and getting it reviewed?

Visualizing the market, as in seeing their faces in your mind’s eye.

Understanding your audience.

Make it real. Create a character study of a few people you imagine reading your work. What do they read? What do they watch? Who’s their favorite author?

Look at your comps. (Comparable titles).

Don’t send letters to everyone, send to the few people who are making a difference in your milieu.

Participate genuinely in the world of those you’d like to become colleagues with.

Q. What do you do when your published work is edited in a way you REALLY don’t like?

It’s not “you,” this is unfortunately a common rite of passage.

Ask a few trusted people to read the published piece and see if they are as alarmed as you. Get a reality check.

Publish it again the way you want to, when you have a chance. Yet another argument for a blog.

Q. What does every author needs to know about publishing contracts?

It’s the publisher’s duty to say what they want, the best of possible worlds, for THEM. It’s instructive to you to find out what they think that is.

It’s then the author’s duty to say the same. What do YOU want? Don’t react, have your own idea. Set down, without personal digressions, what you like or don’t like, when you redline and reply to an offer.

Then the negotiation begins.

Ask for response date. Manage expectations. Set clocks.

Q. What is actually inside the average publisher’s brain?

To be frank, the first thing in their brains is Inside-Baseball stress unique to their company that you’ll never understand. It could be crippling or enlightening— but since you, the author, have no effect, march on to #2.

Secondly, they think about Audience. Who do they think that is, in your case? They study comps. Comps equal Sales. Are they looking into a new market? Servicing an old one? Supporting a complementary work? Boosting a political or ego connection? Find out.

Finally, there’s how they regard talent - your work ethic, your behavior, your comm skills and professional courtesy. They will put up with a lot if you sell. If you don’t, it’s curtains. This is one thing you have a lot of control over. Your professional behavior will speak volumes.

Q. Ebooks and self-published authors — how do you scale it up?

Ebooks are essential, as promotion, as sales, as reaching out to the world.

For prolific authors, it’s their income lifeline. People who have more than 5 titles in ebooks are the ones who need to take a second look at how things are doing.

Because the industry is so mercurial, it’s hard to keep up a healthy ebook portfolio without help and discipline.

Take regular stock of your product pages, your covers, your reviews, and use promotions to push one title over another. The market is so volatile you cannot ignore it for more than a month before something new is percolating.

Q. Can one use the compost of one’s real life to fuel one’s writing - even if your family hates it?

One great thing about traditional book publishing is that it will take at least a year to get anything published. Hindsight is huge, and editing will address many of your hot, present-day issues.

As for journaling, do whatever you want. It’s your improv space. Respect its generative qualities and appreciate the distance between that and final publication.

Q. How do you move your platform and dodge the internet censors once they tie the tin can of “Not Safe for Work” around all your writing? Or portray your writing as harmful?

It’s a bad situation, ane claiming “harm” is the favorite blade of the internet censors and the political opportunists behind them. Divide and conquer, their favorite line.

It’s isolating because writers outside of the firing squad have NO IDEA. They think the slippery slope will never come for them. They’re wrong. Sex workers and political organizers are the main targets, but the speed at which the targets get interchanged is Orwellian.

Standard defensive advice: Cultivate and backup mailing lists you control. Keep your cadre with you. Get accustomed to starting over (you already have) and realizing that people WILL follow you.

Get a physical address where you can safely receive mail.

Q. What are some sources to submit to anthologies?

Go to the best local bookstore you have, for starters. And then, if you are in a small town, travel to the best bookstores of the big city. Look at their selection of relevant periodicals and anthologies.

And, go to the local library, whose reference librarians will be delighted to help you with the same.

In each case, they are in the profession of staying up to date. Ask them to show you current literary fiction journals and magazines.

Browse them and choose the ones you’d actually read.

Then start participating in them.

Get the “Best of” anthologies each year and look at where everything was originally published. Those are your targets.

Q. Is there a difference between putting together a proposal for a small nonprofit press versus, say, an academic press?

Not really. A proposal which focuses on audience, market, and clear perspective will always be welcome. Learn how to write a pitch letter and proposal; a good one will take you anywhere.

Q. How important are letters of references or recommendations in getting one's work read by an independent press?

They’re wonderful if they’re a direct and genuine connection. Not necessary. A gift.

Q. All the creative people I know are freaking out about Generative AI right now. Are you?

No. You should be freaking out about the royalty system collapsing.

Q. What do I do about the naysayer voices from my childhood?

It’s very astute that you see it. Always look back at that, your grievance diaspora. Nearly every rejection or put down you face today, will reference something that happened a long time ago. Figure it out therapeutically, and hold your frame.

Q. Susie, I’ve really enjoyed seeing you in action as an editor, you’re super fast and ruthless and insightful.

Oooo, ruthless! Thank you. That’s the dream compliment.

Q. My work banned, at, get this: the West Edmonton Mall. Now what?

Ha! It’s a great trophy for you. Publicity gold.

My partner grew up in a fairly small town, and his crowning youthful achievement was being banned at the Steven’s Point Airport.

Remember, there is always someone else in town who wants to capitalize on your adversary’s misfortune.

Q. I published a kinky story in my college journal. It was “reported” to the campus morality squad and I had a series of visits from the actual police over a two week period. It had a profoundly chilling effect.

Sickening. Shine a light on it whenever you can. These people need to be shamed.

And for others, when you see an artist who’s been shamed or banned for their work, REACH OUT. If someone on the hot seat hears from even one person who sees the truth of the matter, and the hypocrisy, it makes all the difference in “carrying on.” Those little signals of support from friends and total strangers give an artist hope.

Always emphasize that these attacks happen because of territorialism and jealousy, it’s rarely about the so-called issue, be it “sex” or anything else.

Q. How Do you know when you’re Ready to Submit a Manuscript?

Focus-group it— Writer’s style. Face the public with excerpts, short stories.

Has your work been handed to an editor? — have you been edited? If not, you are not ready.

Your pitch letter will need to be clear, strong, and meet industry expectations.

You will need a calendar to follow, to keep the submission process going.

Q. Do I need an agent? How do I get a credible agent?

Agents are important once you have significant money coming in and assets to manage. You’ll need help.

When you really actually need one, they’ll be knocking on your door.

Q. Susie, you talk about “writing the perfect pitch letter.” But I’m shy and introverted and I don’t think of myself as a good salesperson at all.

That trait doesn’t get you out of it, I’m afraid.

If you want to publish for an audience, you’ll need to cultivate, hire, or trade your services for good salesmanship.

Otherwise it’s like saying you like to skip rope without the rope.

In reality, one of those three possibilities usually does happen. Authors come out of their shell with a little help and encouragement, some guides. Or, they hire people to help them. Or, they have talented family and best friends who they approach: “I’ll do your book if you’ll do my taxes.”

And yet: there is a good lesson in knowing that there is publishing without a commercial audience.

I always remind myself and my students: “You don’t have to write for the public.”

Read my Devil’s Argument Against Publishing, in How to Read/Write a Dirty Story. It is freeing to realize you have a choice. There is self satisfaction in writing and publishing for oneself.

Q. My corporate job is overwhelming, and it is also a profession of rules and confidentiality. I find myself exhausted with no mojo for my own creative writing.

You’re ahead of the game to even admit it. Congratulations. Yes, your job has killed your mojo. Structure time away from it, and know that when you do step away, your talent will come back. It takes time. And like grief or great love, there is no substitute.

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