This is the most common question I hear when it comes to publishing, so I thought I’d kick off this series of posts by jumping straight in. The TDLR is no, BUT…if you think that means you can stop reading and get back to writing in your personally constructed validation bubble, I’d reconsider.
That probably came off a little harsh, and that’s because it is. Pitching a book is hard work. Pitching a memoir is even harder. Unless you’re an important public figure, nobody is going to pick up a memoir based on author name alone. So, pitching a memoir without a platform is completely doable, but it’s not easy.
I understand if my advice is not considered particularly valuable, given I have never published a book before. My expertise comes from a few years in the publishing industry as well as my certification in book coaching. The skills needed to help a writer publish their book aren’t the same as those needed to write a book (though I’d like to think I possess both). I’ve studied what a writer must do to compensate for the lack of a social media following in order to sell their book, so let’s talk about it.
If you’ve done any agent research before, I’m sure you have seen agent prerequisites like “looking for writers with 100k followers or more” or “must have an established social media following.” Let’s be clear here, many agents will not even look at your manuscript if you do not have an established audience prepackaged in the form of a social media following. However, this is not the norm. Most agents, in fact, are typically so interested in new voices that they’re well aware that you may not have a significant social media following. They might not be interested to hear about your following at all unless you are at the influencer level.
So, what do agents actually want to know about? They want to see that you know your audience, the work you are ready to put in to engage with your audience, and the proven methods you’ve developed to make this happen, if you haven’t already. These methods could be: writing guest blog posts or opinion pieces in journals relevant to the subject matter of your book; guesting on a podcast around the topic of your book; starting an email newsletter to stay in touch with your audience about your topic; or, hosting live events your audience is likely to attend.
How would you apply this to memoir? Think about the subject matter you’re covering. Is it about sports, family trauma, travel, grief? Brainstorm the kinds of communities that would, in our ideal scenario, engage with a story of that content, regardless of who the author is.
The key word here is engagement. An author could have 10k followers and have little to no interaction with their followers on a day-to-day basis. You could have only 100 followers, but communicate with all of them regularly and count on them to support your work.
As I said, this is still work, it’s just of a different kind. Perhaps it’s easier for writers who do not enjoy the more toxic aspects of social media, or simply do not wish to learn how to navigate it. What will make you stand out to agents and editors is your in-depth knowledge of your audience and how to reach them. Social media is just one of the many ways to do that.
And let’s be clear: as I mentioned last week, if the blip of a TikTok ban is any indication, any of our social media followings could be gone in an instant. It’s important, especially now, to develop multiple ways of connecting with your audience, preferably with at least one evergreen method (email marketing, personally hosted blog, or any other personally maintained, subscription-based platform). A TikTok following of one million but zero email subscribers could have meant nothing in the span of a few hours.
I’ll be talking more in the coming weeks/months about the steps to getting your memoir published. For now, you can download my FREE memoir marketing workbook for some additional insights and a kickstart to drafting your book proposal. Feel free to reach out with any thoughts/questions about this topic in this rapidly changing industry.
Photo by Pixabay.
Hanna Etu 