A Failed Author’s Epiphany

I'm a frustrated author. I've written 12 books. My top seller reached around 230 copies. Agents and publishers won't touch me. They have good reasons, at least in the modern age. Not only do I not check the boxes, I actively aggravate the mores of the day. It isn't political, where my books talk about policy it isn't recognizable in any standard way. I'm not in somebody else's camp. No, it is what I write — or rather the perspectives I write it from. Rather than #ownvoices, I believe in #allvoices. I believe writing across cultural and gender and other lines helps build bridges. And I'm good at it. One agent said about my latest book "This is amazing, but it could never be published." @SusanQuinn actually did the proofreading of that one and she loved it too.

None of this is meant as a complaint. It is meant as an explanation. I could look at the publishing industry and say, "They don't like me very much - or even care about me." I could throw up my hands at the unfairness of it all. But I could also look at it and say, "I wonder how many great authors are out there who also can't break in."

Maybe those authors have full-time jobs and can't slavishly compose queries. Maybe they don't have the credentials (or other backgrounds) agents and publishers want. Maybe they aren't photogenic. Maybe nobody follows them on social media. Maybe their books can't be boiled down to one-line pitches and three-sentence summaries.

But maybe, just maybe, they have fantastic books. Page turners you can't put down. Stories that challenge and engage and demand to be talked about.

And if they do? How could those stories be made to succeed?

I came at this question with an enormous amount of humility. Not about my writing, but about book marketing. Books are a terrible business. Millions of books are written a year. Everybody is clamoring for attention. Nobody has time. And, with rare and famous exceptions, nobody pays attention to the books that lack the big name publisher, the press junket, the friends of friends who get it on the talk TV shows. Cover polishing and blurb writing only provide so much credibility. Even the big boys by and large aren't quite knocking it out of the park. Penguin may have an EBITDA of 14.6%, but Hachette is at 3.2% and HarperCollins at 7.6%. And this is EBITDA, before boiling down to net profit. Considering how much of their product is basically digital, those numbers are terrible. Tesla makes actual rolling cars in a market that was squeezed throughout 2023 and they still have an EBITDA of 11.3%.

Google this ain't.

Not only are books a terrible business - I'm terrible at it. I've gone so far as to walk around downtown Seattle with a sandwich board (0 books sold). I've visited bookstores (0), posted on social media (close to 0), held book signings (these went pretty well, but I didn't have enough of them). I've purchased Amazon Rocket to analyze categories and keywords (0). I've built websites and social media (close to 0). I've made video trailers (0) and done audio readings on podcasts (0). Heck, I've even been profiled in the Jerusalem Post (yup, 0 copies sold).

All of this and my bestselling title still only hit 230 copies. That's only not terrible when you consider that the average self-published book sells something like 8 copies (or so I've heard).

So, I've come at it with humility. I can't make the existing system work.

I'm not alone.

So what if there was another way to provide validation? What if there was another way to build an irresistible tsunami of interest? I've been working on a project to attempt just this for the past 7 months. But even with all that work, it wasn't quite clicking. Then last Friday, in a fit of unbelievable pre-Shabbat creativity that followed 20 years of failure, I think I've developed a truly powerful model.

We're still in stealth mode, so I can't share much. But I'm excited to share that Snowball Reads (www.snowballreads.com) is now accepting submissions. We have some more backend word that needs to be done, but I'm seeking to build a catalog of about 15 books to put in the hopper.

Snowball isn't about Amazon tweaking or email lists. This is all about the writing and dealing with structural inefficiencies and weaknesses in the publishing world.

If you know somebody who has a great yarn (fiction or not) that would get people talking — I want to know about it.

And, I think they'll want to know about us.