Behind the Publishing Curtain

Is the same thing that's in front of it

Hi friends,

Thank for all your kind words about my head! I’m feeling much, much better and now just catching up with regular life. I wanted to talk today about something that’s been buzzing around my (pre-concussion) head for a while, and just finally gelled into something I can verbalize. (Maybe the concussion knocked it into place?)

You might be reading this newsletter, whether it’s your first one or your 300th, because you hope I am going to give you the secret to getting published. I mean, there are a lot of people online (especially TikTok) who say just do this one thing or the secret advice that got me my agent/book deal/appearance on the List. Those people might be right! That thing might have been the one thing that worked, for them, to thrust them into the writer’s life of their dreams. Good for them!

There’s this old SNL sketch Adam Sandler did where he plays the owner of Romano Tours, selling bus tours for retirees. It’s a joke commercial. But at the end, he says basically if you’re sad at home, you’re going to be the same sad person in Italy. The tour will not change who you are. It just takes you to Italy and back.

Raise your hand if you know what I’m going to say next. A book deal will not fix you. You’re the same person after the book deal as you were before. There is no Publishing VIP section waiting for you after you get your agent or your deal. You don’t get a membership card or special discounts. Everything’s the same, except you wrote a book/it is available for sale.

Similarly, for those without an agent or deal (yet), there isn’t one thing that’s going to work for you and usher you behind the publishing curtain. No one’s gatekeeping this secret from you, because that secret doesn’t exist. Writing, publishing, the whole industry is a crapshoot where one thing works one day and not the next. The system wasn’t designed to specifically work against you. The system wasn’t designed. The system is just writers on one side and readers on the other and publishing trying to hit two moving targets at once.

SO, as you are envisioning your goals, as you are hoping and daydreaming and wishing to be behind the publishing curtain, however you define it, I want you to realize, too, that there isn’t a magical publishing door you walk through that means you have arrived. That you’ve reached a point where you can do anything you want and everything will be easier from then on out. Getting an agent is not the doorway you pass through that ensures you’ll get a book deal. Getting a book deal is not the door you pass through that ensures you’ll get another book deal. I was speaking to someone who was shocked to hear that I wasn’t sure if I would write another non-fiction book after Write Through It comes out. Surely with my platform and this newsletter and all the things people assume I have (power, knowledge, friends), surely I would be guaranteed as many book deals as I want. NOPE. I don’t know what will happen after this book. I’m going to think of some ideas! But zero books are guaranteed to sell, for me and you. One deal does not beget all others.

Yes, it’s annoying and demoralizing to think about! It’s not fair and it’s not fun and it sucks! But what other creative field does guarantee success? How many actors were super famous for a few years and then faded into obscurity? How many one hit wonders do you have on your favorites playlist? Did you automatically buy their next album just because you liked that one song? No. Why? Because no one can make you buy anything you don’t want to. And you don’t buy anyone’s album/book/movie/whatever because they tried real hard or because you know they want you to. You buy things for many, many different reasons, and artists/the industry hopes they have something you’ll like among their many offerings at any given time.

The point here is not to crush dreams but to temper expectations. You’re going to work hard for a long time, if you want to be a published writer. There isn’t a summit that spits you out on a plateau. Uncertainty and hard work are the norm, not the exception. That you are experiencing those things doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong or someone else has dropped the ball for you—it just means you’re a normal writer like everyone else. No one has the definitive answers about what you should do and what will happen or what the perfect path should be for you to reach your goals. Your agent or publisher cannot do one specific thing to ensure your success, either. No one has that in any other areas of our lives, so why should publishing be any different? Once you accept that there are no answers, it frees you up to figure out what’s right for you and what goals you want to reach. Want to write a book a year? You can do that! Want to publish a book a year? Well… you don’t have control over most of that part. Can you handle that as a goal even if there’s no certainty?

The point of this post is to ease your anxiety about being right or perfect or whether you’ve done or not done all the things to reach your goals. You probably have. Those things don’t guarantee you’ll reach your goals because nothing does. You can run your best race and you still might not beat the other guy. But didn’t you still run your best race? Was beating the other guy the only goal? I could write a thousand metaphors for this. When we start putting our publishing-expectations in terms of how we measure success/expectations in other areas of our life, it really shines a light on how outsized our publishing-expectations are. I think that’s because we spend most of our publishing-lives alone, at our desks, in front of our screens. We see others’ success and think they got it so easily and that we should, too. We don’t see those people sweating over their keyboards for years. We just see their “significant deals” and think they have the thing we don’t have—the idea, the team, the support, the money. Sometimes it’s those things. And sometimes it’s not. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ No one knows. Even that guy who whizzed past you on the first lap. For all you know he could have been training for years.

Stop thinking ok, when I get to this next point, everything will work out. It might! But that’s not really how anything works. When you get an agent, it just means you have an agent. When you get a book deal, it just means you have a book deal. Getting used to the uncertainty will make your writing-life so much easier. If you cannot ever get used to that uncertainty, well, it’s gonna be a tough road.

You aren’t alone in these feelings. WE ALL HAVE THEM. It’s happening to all of us. Even that person, and that one, and even me. When Stephen King writes a book, it’s probably going to hit the List. But he’s been publishing for over FORTY YEARS. He’s written over SIXTY-FIVE books. He’s one of MILLIONS of writers out there. If he’s your goal, or even one tenth of his success if your goal, you probably still have a long way to go. That’s ok. So do the rest of us.

XOXOXOOXOX,

Kate