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NEW EROTICA FOR FEMINISTS turns ONE today! What a wild ride from January 2018 (when we wrote the @mcsweeneys piece) to today, a year after the book's publication. Here's the piece that started it all, and a little thread on what I learned about publishing https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-erotica-for-feminists
First off, the initial title for the piece was "Porn for Liberal Women" which is inaccurate (porn is visual, erotica is written) and limiting in its scope (to just liberal women, people who would click on something with "porn" in the title). Changing that to be broader was MAJOR.
I actually don't think we would have ever sold a book with that initial title. At no point in the pitching and publishing process was it suggested we change from New Erotica for Feminists - people really loved that phrase and it felt right as the title for an expanded book.
After the piece started to go viral, we quickly were contacted by @SceptreBooks in the UK with an offer. We used that offer to talk to a few agents, landing on the AMAZING @sraihofer, who was a perfect fit for us. She was referred by another client of hers, who v graciously...
...gave us info about agents, negotiating, + advances. That author was @sarahcpr, who is incredibly supportive of other writers and comedians. She published her THIRD book the week before ours - HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL WITHOUT HURTING MEN'S FEELINGS https://www.amazon.com/Successful-without-Hurting-Mens-Feelings/dp/1449476074
That was huge for us, to have someone help us with connections and tell us what to expect. Because now it's the end of February, 2018, and things are happening FAST. We sign a UK deal, and then start to write a book proposal to get a US publisher.
We...did not know how to do that. Our agent gave us a lot of notes over a two-week period, we looked at examples, and we imagined how to turn an 800-word piece into a full-length gift book (also: learned what a gift book was). Once we learned the pieces of a proposal...
...we could write it, but that was part of the publishing process that seemed very mysterious to us. I actually went on to write a class for @CatapultStory discussing how to quickly write a book proposal from a viral piece so other people didn't need to struggle with the process.
In March, we get the proposal out to numerous US publishing houses. We had a LOT of interest due to the UK deal, the viral piece, and, I'll be honest, a great proposal. We ended up taking a series of meetings, many of them on the same day in NY, going between publishing houses.
When I got home from that day I started crying, because it had honestly been the best day of my career to date. After so long of trying to get in to pitch people on my work, to be invited in with SO much interest was truly amazing. I think about that day still!
We decided to sign with @PlumeBooks, a Penguin Random House imprint who has published other authors we admire, like @annehelen and @dopequeenpheebs. It's the end of March. The first draft is due...the first week of June. That gives us about nine weeks to get this baby done.
So we ( @fionaleslie, @bigu, @carriesnotscary) started writing! We brought it up into sections and sent them along to our US and UK editors in bunches, so they reviewed while we kept writing. This felt good - we would cycle back and do some rewrites, while still pushing ahead.
We aimed to write about 12,000 words of jokes, knowing that 10,000 or so would make the final book. We also started working with the great @auntsarah_ on the book illustrations! We knew her from @The_Belladonnas, and she did the illos starts to finish in THREE WEEKS. An icon!
Then the timeline started to get crunched again - normally, you have about a year after you turn in a draft to start doing promotion, sending out advanced copies, writing pitches in support of your book, starting to make people aware of it long before it comes out.
We turned in the first full draft in June, did rewrites through August, and the whole thing was locked in early September. The book came out in NOVEMBER. So we had two months rather than a year to start hustling.
This is where I really wished I knew more about publishing. Just the sheer learning curve and amount of work we did in those two months (contacting libraries, independent bookstores, setting up events across the US, reaching out to outlets and trying to get press)...
...was overwhelming. We ended up setting up over 20 events, 16 of which I did personally, from NY to Chicago to London to Portland to Maryland to RI to Ohio, etc. Luckily, I've been a producer for almost ten years so I knew how to handle the logistics and market but WHEW...
...setting up and executing that many events in a three month period was A LOT. I spent so much time sitting at my computer sending emails in September and October, having no idea how much was too much, if we were doing enough, if it would pan out, etc.
That's a really hard thing about publishing - there's really no way to know what will move the needle and where's the best place to put your time and energy. I definitely ran myself ragged from September to February of 2019, doing every event I was asked to do, every interview...
...and I'm glad I did! Once we started doing events, it was so great to connect with people in person, see their favorite vignettes, their response to the book as a whole, hearing people laugh at readings. I LOVED doing book events - I wish I had done even more!
Book events are also a great thing for indie bookstores - you bring in their network, they bring in theirs, you produce an event for them, and they sell the books. We partnered with a lot of amazing indie bookstores, including @booksaremagicbk in Brooklyn, where we had our launch
And then @wcfbook in Chicago, @Loyaltybooks in Maryland, @BooksandBooks in Miami, @booksandbookskw in Key West, @TheBookLoft1 in Columbus, Rough Draft in NY, Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston - and more! All the bookstores were so gracious and lovely and supportive.
Big takeaways for me for when I do this again (when, not if!):
1. If you want to publish a book someday, write down interesting things you see in other book's publicity NOW. What did their events look like? Which indie bookstores did they use? Which outlets covered them?
1. If you want to publish a book someday, write down interesting things you see in other book's publicity NOW. What did their events look like? Which indie bookstores did they use? Which outlets covered them?
2. Study the marketplace. Which covers look great online? Which catch your eye in a bookstore? Which titles are you drawn to? Do they have a subtitle? Are they short? Punchy? Intriguing? Clear? This is especially important for gift books, which can sometimes be impulse buys.
3. It's hard to release a finished product, even if you love it. I always thinks of more things I wish we had added, additional topics, formats, parodies, etc. But it's something physical that captures a moment in time, not meant to evolve forever. And I'll always love the pizza.
Now we're here! Lots of events, readers, social posts, and sales later. Please keep us in mind for holiday gifts, and it really helps if you loved the book to shout us out on social media and rate and review us on Amazon and Goodreads. Here's Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/New-Erotica-Feminists-Satirical-Fantasies/dp/0525540407/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
And here's Goodreads (I NEVER read a Goodreads review after being warned by other authors not to! Very proud to have stuck to my guns on this one): https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/40965605
Thank you to everyone who has supported on this journey so far, and everyone who has bought, borrowed from the library, read, and shouted out the book. To see so many friends, former students and people only peripherally in my life come out was the best part for me!
A huge thank you to @BabyDMarie, who we hired to help us with our book club kit ( https://www.neweroticaforfeminists.com/bookclubkit ) and marketing/research/reach out, and she crushed it. She is also an amazing writer herself, so the perfect person to work with on your own book.
Massive thanks to @crmonks and @mcsweeneys for publishing the short piece that started it all, and for being so supportive throughout. The short piece appears in the new anthology Keep Scrolling Until You Feel Something, which you should buy immediately:
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Scrolling-Till-Feel-Something/dp/1944211721
https://www.amazon.com/Keep-Scrolling-Till-Feel-Something/dp/1944211721
