In the months leading up to the April 2022 hardcover release of my book, Some of My Best Friends, I tended dutifully to the rituals of prepublication. I sent a gamely cheerful email blast to my contacts asking them to please preorder copies. I plastered my website and social feeds with graphics of the cover art. I retweeted, with genuine glee, every photo of a galley copy spotted in the wild. I was going to be a model citizen of self-promotion, giving my debut a fighting shot at selling well.
But there was one directive from my publishing team that brought me up short: to brainstorm essays related to themes in my book, ideally keyed to the news, which could then be pitched to various outlets to coincide with publication. I took the instruction as I had all the others — if it helped the book, then of course I would do it. But after losing several Sundays to a blank document, I realized that mining for soundbites felt deeply at odds with the work I wanted to put into the world. I’ve seen fellow writers nail this task, and I admire my peers who seem to have a knack for it. But of the many challenges involved in producing and marketing a book, the one I find most intractable is the idea that writing promotional essays is always an effective way to support your book.
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