Debut Novels Failing to Launch

[Danny McG]

. We're championing Nicholas Binge

That's good to hear, I've always been a binge reader

 

[Montero]

@Stephen Palmer I really hope that baked beans in a white wine sauce is joke. I'm assuming it's a joke, but for a moment I imagined what it might taste like and well, yech.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

@Stephen Palmer I really hope that baked beans in a white wine sauce is joke. I'm assuming it's a joke, but for a moment I imagined what it might taste like and well, yech

How about crispy fried grubs. Nom nom.

 

[Montero]

Vegetarian. I eat bug food, not bugs.

 

[ColGray]

Publisher marketing seems like the crux of, We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

There was 1 model for making a successful book: ARCs to critics and tastemakers and let the positive reviews roll in.

That there aren't a tiny handful of people who are the tastemakers (NYT, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, etc.), and that, broadly, there isn't a single tastemaker, is only a problem for folks who lack scale, critical thinking skills and access to the internet.

The Lookback Window, which The New York Times called “gripping and savagely beautiful,” he got the impression that because he “wrote a very gay, very queer, very explicit book,” he says, his publicity team believed that he “would know the people to whom the publicist or marketer should connect.” But he didn’t. “I’m a writer; I’m not a BookTok person,” he adds. “I don’t have that set of knowledge.”

Dear publisher: how many unpaid interns, between the ages of 18-25, do you have on staff? Do they like books? Are any of them active in the socials? Hey, maybe spend a few hours and compile a list, by genre/focus/like/audience category, and develop this stuff. I can confidently say (from personal experience) that nearly every consumer products company and PR agency has done this and keeps it current--and without interns.