How to Develop Your Writing Brand, with Jane Friedman

HOW TO DEVELOP YOUR writing brand? You need one, you know. Oh, you didn’t know? Well, listen to Jane Friedman, my personal favorite authority on all things having to do with the business of writing, as she leads us through why and how to develop a writing brand. Listen in and read along as we speak to a fine authority on every aspect of the business of writing. 

Marion: David Leite is off today, so it’s just me and my guest, the great Jane Friedman. Let me introduce you to her. Simply put, Jane is the only person I send anyone to with questions on the business of writing. Why? Because she has 20 years of experience in the industry, specifically with expertise in business strategy for authors and publishers. Jane’s newest book is a wonder. It’s entitled The Business of Being a Writer. In collaboration with the Authors Guild, Jane wrote the Authors Guild Guide to Self Publishing.

In addition to being a columnist with Publishers Weekly and a professor with The Great Courses, Jane’s blog, supplies the single best advice on all aspects of the business of publishing. And I’m not alone in feeling this way. Her expertise has been featured by The New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and more. In her spare time, she writes creative nonfiction, which has been included in the anthologies, Every Father’s Daughter and Drinking Diaries. Jane, welcome to QWERTY.

Jane: Thanks so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Marion: I’m delighted to have you. I’ve been reading your stuff forever and we’ve corresponded over the years and you’re just the person that I send everybody to. So let’s talk.

Jane: Okay.

Marion: In your book, The Business of Being a Writer, you directly take on one of the dreaded words that some writers absolutely eschew, brand. How to develop your writing brand? Your brand seems to be helping writers succeed. So first of all, wow. And second of all, thank you from all of us. And then a further thanks for the honesty of your work because unlike a lot of the people I see online, you tell the truth about how writers can succeed and you don’t simply give them hollow cheers like you are a writer when you say you’re a writer. You give them facts Jane. In fact, the very first pages of your new book addresses the single greatest mistake many people make when dreaming of a writing career, and they believe they’re the exception. And that they, despite all the proof to the contrary, will be able to make a living as a writer from a single book. So let’s talk about this. How prevalent is this idea and how dangerous?

Jane:  It is very prevalent for anyone who’s basically an outsider. And one of the reasons there’s this problem is very few writers speak frankly about what they earn. Publishers, agents, anyone related to the publishing community, they rarely get really specific about number of copies sold, advance amounts, what their earnings are like on sales. And so there’s kind of this, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a veil of secrecy, but it’s just not talked about in the open.

Marion: And it’s not understood, right? I mean, people don’t really understand when somebody says, I got $100,000 advance. Break that down for us a little bit. Let’s just get right into that. What does that mean?

Jane:  So if you received an advance that’s $100,000 you likely had an agent representing you. They’re going to take 15% of that off the top. So now you’re left with $85k. Let’s take out another 20% to 30% for the tax man.

Marion: Let’s not, how about we don’t?

Jane: Well, I’ll leave that to each writer’s discretion.

Marion: Yes, yes.

Jane: But now we’re down, I have to do math on the fly here, but…

Marion: So we’re down by another $16,000.

Jane: Yeah, thank you.

Marion: So we’re down $66,000.

Jane: And that $66,000, that’s not delivered to you in a lump sum. It’s broken up over several payments over usually one to two years. Sometimes you don’t even get that last installment until after the book is published, depending on the contract. So you you’re getting maybe $20,000 to $30,000 a year for that book. I don’t, depending on where you live, I don’t know that you would consider that a comfortable annual wage. And we haven’t even gotten into some of the expenses that you might have incurred to write the book, especially for people writing nonfiction. There may be research or travel permissions, things of that nature.

Marion: Right.

Jane: Which often, that’s the author’s burden. It’s not something the publisher pays for. And you don’t get any money after that advance unless the book really, really sells well.

Marion: Right, you got to earn that out.

Jane: Exactly. So the figure often used is that 70% to 80% of books don’t earn out their advance. And that’s not considered a failure by publishers. But I don’t think many writers realize that that’s kind of the standard.

Marion: So it’s not all a bummer message in your book at all, but I think that’s just a really great place to start. You’re just very honest with people saying it’s not the one single book. You think that this book is going to make you the rest of your life’s earnings and it’s not. But here actually is how to have a writing life and what you do is you strongly lay out how we can succeed and you suggest we piece together a writing life that’s satisfying. And here’s my favorite word of your message, sustainable. And it seems to me your point is that many writers don’t have a plan. Is that what you’re saying?

Jane: Most do not. They haven’t given it much thought. As you mentioned earlier, they are hoping to be the exception or the lucky one. And there’s a lot of flailing about, an expectation that they’ll get the same advance for the next book perhaps or they’ll somehow hit the jackpot in terms of awards or grants or fellowships. Of course it’s all quite competitive and those things take a lot of time and effort to obtain. Many writers, especially those who have MFAs or PhDs, they kind of know that most of their money from day to day is going to come from teaching or they try to get a teaching job, especially with literary writers, poets, short story writers, essayists, that’s been a tradition now for decades. And so those people aren’t necessarily flailing about. But probably the more you get onto the commercial side of things, there’s this expectation, oh, I’ll write and publish a book a year and that’ll be a living. And it takes years, as I emphasize in the book, it takes years to reach that place.

Marion: And you say that we need to be “strategic, smart and efficient.” And I love that. It’s all about how to develop your writing brand. It’s a great message. It’s true. And you engage in freelancing, you do online, you do freelancing, you do online writing, you do editing, online teaching and you have an affiliate income. In other words, you cobble together a living. Me too. We both write, teach, provide instruction online through our blogs. And I think we both agree that each of those serves the other and that learning the business of writing serves writing itself. But I’m just not sure everyone agrees. Most of my literary friends do not blog. They do not use social media. So what is this weird line in the sand? And I mean it’s too easy to say they’re such snobs Jane, what’s wrong with them? Because it’s not that simple. It’s just there’s this idea that I won’t do that. And I think it gets back to that whole brand thing, but I don’t know. What do you think?

Jane: Well, some writers feel like if you’re a proper writer, you’re earning money from the writing itself and you are devoted fully to the practice of writing and producing art. And if you’re doing something else, it may detract or it may be getting your hands dirty and something called marketing or branding or…

Marion: Dirty, dirty, dirty work.

Jane: And I think part of it’s rooted in this myth that great work speaks for itself or that great artists are not going to lower themselves to trading and commercial activity of some type or another. And this is just a very, in my mind, privileged view. If you have this view, it probably means that maybe you don’t have to have a day job or maybe you have a rich spouse or you have a family inheritance or you have things that have made money, maybe not a pressure point for you. Speaking personally, money has always been a pressure point for me. I didn’t grow up with much. I had to put myself through school. So when I went out looking for jobs, it had to be a paying job. I wasn’t going to get help from anyone else. So I think sometimes the initial attitudes that we take going into this can make us immediately more comfortable with the idea that this is going to have to to earn me a buck or otherwise I can’t do it.

Marion: Yeah. I think I hear everything from people. One of the things I hear is, “Well I shouldn’t be blogging anyway. I mean it’s going to scoop my own work. I mean if I use that story on my blog, I’m giving it away for free. Why would anybody pay for it?” So what do you say when people say that to you?

Jane: Well, this is where there are kind of different considerations or worries that people might have that can be legitimate. So I’ll use the literary example again, like if you’re a poet or you’re writing short stories, it is true to some extent that if you want to be considered by the literary publications of the day, if that’s your goal, the Paris review or the New York, or these really fancy publications, they do not want to see that the work’s already been published in any form. And so you do have to kind of pay attention depending on your genre or what you’re trying to accomplish. I look at blogging and some of these other social media activities where you’re, I call it creating content. I know content is another one of those words that some people give the side-eye too, but I use it because it’s so flexible.

It’s like water that can flow into any sort of vessel. So I put content on Twitter or Facebook. In any event, all of these things to me are ways of being seen, being part of a community, engaging with people in between books or in between larger projects so that I don’t totally fall off the map of people’s awareness, but a lot of writers really prize basically going dark or going off into their garret and writing in privacy, being in isolation, being the creative genius up on the mountain and then coming back down and bestowing the world with their gifts, which I’m being a little bit facetious and poking fun there. But I think that that attitude is of course greatly in conflict with the idea of being on social and putting things out there to be available to build a community. I think there are ways to make those two things align better. I think you can have a little bit of both and I don’t think one has to damage the other.

Marion: Yeah, I don’t either. I mean, I actually think it’s the possibly the greatest time in the history of the world to be a writer. I think I look at these opportunities as exactly that. I’ve published four books with four of the biggest publishers in the world. And each time out I learned the limitations of their promotion. And I said to myself, even when I was 26 and published my first book, I could have done a better job promoting that book. I didn’t know of what I spoke at the time, but I was right to some degree and then learned subsequently to do that. And then when this world came along of these variety, this menu of ways on with which to engage with community, I was kind of delighted by it. And I’ve met some astonishing people.

I met you online. I’ve met a lot of people. The people who taught me to teach online, the people who gave me advice on whether to do this or that online have all been people that I’ve met online. And so I find that to be a thrilling adventure. But I guess we can always tell people that the business is a great adventure and they may or may not try it. But you make a great and wonderful point and I want people to understand who you are. You don’t just talk about business. You say flat out that all the business acumen in the world can’t make up for inferior writing.

So let’s talk about that. I mean it ultimately, it always does come down to the good writing and it’s whether it’s in a garret or on the street corner. You still have to write well and you can come down from the mountain or you can put it up on Instagram. But your great advice is quite simple, which is to read. So the question becomes read what? What do you think you would best be telling? What would people best be reading to write well?

Jane: For writers, really focused on producing work that will earn a living, that will get on The New York Times list, that will have commercial success, let’s say, or be chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s book club, then you’re really probably going to be reading contemporary fiction that is appearing in those places. So looking at what’s being done, understanding if what you’re writing is in conversation with those things, is saying something new, bringing something fresh to the conversation. You don’t want to be coming up with a story premise that really is already been done a few times over already and such and such books by these popular authors.

I run into this all the time with clients where they think they’ve got this great story and it’s really just something that came out last year and they’re just not reading widely enough to realize that their ideas kind of warmed over. So for commercial fiction, I think it’s really important to be reading what’s currently selling and what people are talking about. If you’re on the more literary end of the spectrum where maybe the commercial demands aren’t really top of mind for you, you’re more focused on producing what I would call art or literature with a capital L, I would say read, read very widely. Read what you’re drawn to. Read weird stuff. I don’t, I’m not even sure that it matters.

Marion: That would make such a great t-shirt Jane. “Read weird stuff.” I’ll see if I can get one made for you.

Jane: Thank you. I’ll wear it in Austin.

Marion: Yeah, well they’re kind of doing that there already, I think. I think that’s their brand. Yeah, but you’re right. Read weird stuff. Yep.

Jane: So it’s, for me though, I work mainly on the nonfiction side of things. So obviously I write and report on the publishing industry and I engage in journalism. I’m also writing some creative nonfiction. And so for me it’s not so much about reading books on the bestseller list, but it’s reading magazines and online articles and being really deep into my niche and understanding who are the other people that I’m likely in conversation with in this niche. I have to know. And of course I do know, the other five or six really important people who are tackling the same issues.

Marion: Such good advice.

Jane: Yeah. So if you’re in a nonfiction, trying to cover a nonfiction category, you’ve got to know who the other experts are in your circle.

Marion: I think that’s true. The best writing advice I ever got, I was lucky enough to meet my literary idol 30 years ago. His name is William Kennedy. I love his work. He’s still alive and writing and lives here in Albany, New York. And I cornered him in a bar one night, 30 years ago and said, should I get an MFA? And he said, no, you should read the interviews in the Paris Review.

They’re there, they’re affordable. And it was an extraordinary awakening for me to start reading them, 60 what, 67 years later. That magazine is still publishing quarterly and in each issue there’s at least two interviews. And going back 67 years, if Ernest Hemingway’s your thing, you can get the interviews with Ernest Hemingway. You can get an interview with William Kennedy, you can get an interview with Mary Karr, you can get an interview with somebody who published yesterday.

But I’m interested in what you say to people when they say… For me, I really took that advice very seriously and I do it almost every day. I read a piece. Or a whole one, so no MFA for me. What do you advise…

Jane: It’s kind of the question.

Marion: In the literary world when people say to you, “Should I get an MFA?” What do you say to them?

Jane: I find it’s sort of like the question do I need therapy? And if you have to ask, then maybe you do.

Marion: Yes.

Jane: I find that the MFA is needed by people who really desire that experience or they feel like they can’t possibly give themselves the time unless they make that sort of really large scale commitment like this is what’s going to get them the focus, the discipline to get the work done, to do what they need to do.

Marion: Yep.

Jane: So it’s not by any means a requirement, but I find that some people they won’t set out, they won’t achieve their goals unless they’re put into that community or into that position where they have choice.

Marion: It’s a good answer. And speaking of community, I think we both love The Authors Guild. I really think that it’s a wonderful organization and I always tell people to join. And years ago I went to one of their many round table experiences where they taught us about how to promote books and they explained to me there at the table that writers write books, publishers print books and bookstores sell books. And then they asked us, do we notice what’s missing there? The point being that publishers do not really do a great job of promoting books. And you said it this way in your book, I loved this. “That to publish is easy, to get attention is hard.” And so here’s the question I have to ask you much like the MFA question, when you’re at a dinner party, what do you say to someone who asks you right then and there, “How do I publish my book?” What’s your dinner party answer to that question?

Jane: I usually answer with a question, which is what do you want to get out of publishing that book? Because some people, they haven’t thought through what it is that process or that goal is supposed to accomplish for them. There’s so many different types of writing and publishing goals and often people shouldn’t even be thinking about a book, writing or publishing a book. They should be instead considering a podcast or a blog or a newsletter or a business or something that’s not a book. It’s just, even though we’re at this really funny point in time where books still hold a lot of cachet and authority, that’s where the word author derived from authority.

We have all of this respect and admiration for people who write and publish books. And I’m not saying it isn’t justified. However, in the internet age, in the information age that we’re in, books are being published in such massive quantities, like a million plus titles per year. It is not really in my mind, a prestigious thing at this point to write and publish a book. It’s another drop in the ocean. So I try to push people to think about why is it that a book is the best vehicle for what it is you want to accomplish? What’s your goal in doing this? Is it really supposed to be between two covers and put on a shelf? So I always try to examine people’s assumptions around what the book’s going to do for them.

Marion: What a good answer. That’s so helpful. And I think within that idea of this book publishing explosion, and it is with so many publishers, so many small publishers out there now in particular, we have to understand, get back to that word, that dreaded B word brand. We need to know how to develop your writing brand. And your phrase in your book is beautiful, “Brand is expectation.” I really liked that. I got it right away. But maybe it’s not that easy to get. So can you just riff on that for a minute? That brand is expectation.

Jane: Yeah. So if I say Stephen King, what do you say?

Marion: Horror.

Jane: Yes. One word horror. That that is expectation.

Marion: Ah, you get what you’re looking for. Yeah, right of course it’s expectation.

Jane: Yeah. So if he starts writing something else, he should probably do it under another name.

Marion: Well, his book on writing for instance, I resisted it for a while because I thought, Hmm. And then I thought really Marion, really? Are you really actually asking what does he know about writing? Are you really asking that? So I had a funny minute with it right before I dove into it because my expectation is horror.

Jane: Yeah.

Marion: And that was also the limits of my imagination when it came to him. So there you go. But expectation. And you speak of doing an inventory of who we are. And I think that’s the way you get at your expectation to inventory what it is that you do well, what people seem to be willing to listen to. You ask three critical questions. You ask us to ask ourselves three critical questions, what satisfies or furthers your creative or artistic goals, what earns you money and what grows your audience. And I thought that was just a beautiful way of looking at it and so helpful.

So I run the full transcript of these podcast interviews so people can actually sort of excerpt that, they’re like can they give it a pull and put it up on their walls. Because I think those are three fantastic questions to ask yourself. And you see you really tout having a series of small successes versus one fabulous manuscript. And with that in mind, I think you can answer those three questions. I think it’s a hard series to answer if you’ve still stuck on this one idea of one big book. But if you think about a series of small successes, you can actually plot that almost on a chart of what satisfies you, what makes you dough and what grows your audience. Right?

Jane: Yes. And I think I may say in the book as well about these questions that it’s pretty rare for you to do something that would kind of give you a satisfying hit on all three levels. You’re often making trade offs or compromises where you might not earn any money for something, but you’re trying to build some visibility or reputation in a particular area where there’s just not commercial potential for you yet. And then there are other things that you’re just going to do for the money so that you can support work that’s not very well paying. So there’s always that kind of shifting. You have different career moments or moods when you have to shift gears.

Marion: Absolutely. I’ve written for free. You’ve written for free, right?

Jane: Oh yeah.

Marion: I mean, “Oh yeah” is the only response to that, but not anything that doesn’t drive forward my brand. I feel very strongly. I’m very determined to stay in my field and in my lane and to further that. But writing for free on a larger site, the invitation is a grace. Absolutely. So speaking about questions that you ask, I laughed out loud. I actually was drinking tea. So there’s a bit of a mess on my keyboard because I actually was like hot tea in my mouth when I read your section on the nonfiction book proposal and you suggest we need to answer these three strategic business questions: “So what?” “Who cares?” And “Who are you?” I said to myself, “Gee Jane, direct much or what?” So what do you mean?

Jane: So what is really pushing people to define why this book, this topic, this thing matters right now. What is its currency or relevancy in today’s marketplace to today’s audience? Who cares is diving deeper into that audience that you’re targeting? Who are the exact group of people who find this topic relevant, who are going to be really excited to spend their $20 on reading this book? And who are you is why do they trust you to be delivering this book on this topic that matters to them? Usually you have to be known to them in some way for them to buy the book. That’s like one of the most, I think it’s the number one determining factor of whether or not someone buys your book is whether they’ve heard of you before. So when you’re pitching an agent or a publisher, they’re of course evaluating your platform, which is shorthand for your visibility in the market.

And sometimes it gets boiled down to social media, which isn’t necessarily wrong, but I think it’s oversimplified if you just look at it as social media because it includes your whole network of contacts. It includes all of the experience and expertise that you’ve gained over a career. It includes speaking and teaching and offline things in addition to your website or your blog or your social. So when we talk about who we are, especially in a commercial frame of mind, when you’re talking to a publisher that who you are has to not just be your education or your credentials, but also how well people know you in the community.

Marion: Yeah, I agree. So let’s, you just mention social media. So let’s talk about social media. You have a simple taking of the pulse exercise you suggest that I just adore. You ask us to simply check in with ourselves on how the activity makes us feel. So applying that, I mean I’ve heard everything in my years online tweet, don’t tweet, pin, don’t pin, Insta, don’t Insta. But my favorite new one comes from a serious book editor at a big serious publisher who says, “It’s not about numbers, it’s about how many followers you have. But it’s about engagement. It’s if and how you answer those readers one at a time.”

And I’m thinking applying your standard to that. Picturing that. How am I going to feel if I have to answer 20, I mean how many followers does one have on Instagram? How many? It’s a remarkable suggestion, but I get what she’s saying. It’s my engagement as you just said, who am I to them? So how do we achieve that on social media?

Jane: It’s not straight forward. This is one of the most difficult topics to talk about because I find social media use so personal. The way that people succeed at it is so individual. You can’t copy the way that I handle Instagram or Twitter. I can’t copy how Roxanne Gay does Twitter for instance, she divulges so much about her life. From my perspective, I would be mortified if I ever offered out that much information about what I think and feel about both topics and about my own life. I just wouldn’t be able to do it. But are either of us wrong in our use? No, absolutely not.

Marion: You’re on brand actually.

Jane: Yeah.

Marion: I know both your work online and on social media and yes, that’s your on brand.

Jane: So it’s, I think I go back to a word that you brought up rightly so earlier, which is sustainability. When you’re looking at social, what is it, what sort of engagement can you sustain? Because the key is consistency. You have to be able to show up consistently over very long periods of time in order for it to have a payoff. So if it’s not sustainable and you’re not enjoying it, you’re not going to stick with it for the amount of time it takes for you to see whatever benefit you’re hoping for, whether that’s selling books or building relationships that help with your next career step.

Marion: Absolutely. So some number of people are listening solely for you to answer this question and you know what the question is, how do you find an agent? So let’s be literal literally. Where do you find them? I send people to poets and writers database sometimes. What do you recommend?

Jane: My favorite resource is publishersmarketplace.com, which does cost money. I think you can subscribe for $25 or $30 a month, but that’s all you need. You only really need a month. And it has a deals database where agents report on the books they’ve sold and you get a really nice capsule report, which is the title of the book, the author, a one sentence pitch line or log line. The agent who sold it, the publisher who bought it and this just that one, these aren’t more than like, I don’t know, 50 or a hundred words, these deal reports. But when you can run a search by genre, category, keyword, it goes back to the year 2001, although don’t go back that far. It’s a different publishing world.

Marion: Yeah.

Jane: And you start to see what’s selling and who’s selling it and to whom. And you can identify very quickly, a dozen, two dozen, even three dozen agents who would be right for your work. And then you can go check their websites, see if they’re open to submissions. You also, because you’re looking at those deal reports, you start to develop this client list for these agents and points of reference that you can mention in a query letter to make it, you can show that you’ve done your homework and you know what you’re talking about.

Marion: Well, thank you. I can talk to you all day, but I know you’ve got work to do supporting other writers, so I’m going to let you go, but not without really just saying it’s a joy to finally talk to you. I’ve been reading you forever. I’ve learned so much and you are a gift in the world, so thank you so much.

Jane: Thank you, Marion.

Marion: You’re welcome.

Thanks for listening. The author is Jane Friedman, found at her website. Her newest book is The Business of Being a Writer, found wherever books are sold. I’m Marion Roach Smith and you’ve been listening to QWERTY. Subscribe wherever podcasts are available. QWERTY is produced by Over it Studios in Albany, New York. Reach them at overitstudios dot com. Our producer is Adam Claremont. Our assistant is Lorna Bailey. Want more?

Since not everybody is hearing able, I run full transcripts of all the episodes on my website, which is where you can also learn about the many online classes I teach in how to write memoir. Meet me there.