The Irresistible Peril of Publishing
The Irresistible Peril of Publishing
Sara Billups
Late one night many years ago, my infant son started to cry and couldn’t be consoled. An hour passed, and nothing else worked to calm him, we got in the car and started driving. We drove east through cornfields and towards a circular cloud with a thunderstorm inside. A storm contained in a floating orb, a cumulonimbus with lightning shooting through its veins like an aorta or an electric eel. My son had long since stopped crying, but we kept moving towards the cloud.
Sometimes, writing has the same pull. It’s often a drag, always a practice, but those of us who write or do any kind of creative work are often moving towards a hovering story that’s always a little more east, a few miles further ahead.
Somewhere along the way, many of us think about writing a book.
To secure a traditional book deal in 2020, it doesn’t matter if you are the next Denise Levertov or Anne Lamott if you don’t have a hearty Instagram following. Publishing is a business, and regardless of whether or not you or your agent pitches a big 5 New York house or a traditional faith-based publisher, the same industry truth applies: books are made to be sold.
Staff at Christian publishers may pray before an acquisitions meeting, but in an era when Christian bookstores are closing and belts are tightening, at the end of the day book contracts typically go to people who will sell the most books. On the other hand, major secular houses and small literary presses are less likely to publish work from folks writing from a clear Christian perspective. To identify as a Christian and write a book for a New York house, here is your best shot: expose a part of the church that’s broken, then slip in at the end that you’re a person of faith, in a blandly palpable way, and a secular house may bless the book.
I’ve heard anecdotally that book contracts to first-time authors make up only 20% of each sales cycle. Some book deals are given to people who are not writers by trade, but those with a recognized name and a message to tell that they put in the form of writing — “here is my revelation or post-tragic reflection, here is an insider’s look into a vice or addiction, here is a memoir of my career.” Writing is the medium, not the craft.
Meanwhile, there are many fine writers who are told “keep going” by agents but can’t nab a book deal with a small online reach or a tiny number of newsletter subscribers. I’m a member of a few online groups filled with emerging writers. Every month or two in these spaces, I read a post that looks something like this:
“I feel called to write a book, but I don’t have a large enough platform, so I can’t get a contract. What should I do?”
Comments are filled with people who can relate, and I am one of them. “Keep writing!” We tell them. “Try a lead magnet! Beef up your mailing list!” “Have you considered about a giveaway or guest blog post?”
Eric Benjamin Ham
Those of us that clear the hurdles by building up enough online engagement to publish a first book may be given a small advance. Advance money typically goes toward promoting the book, with a launch #squad on socials, giveaways, and maybe a book trailer. You will only make enough money to begin a career as a working author if your first book does well and you secure a multi-book deal, and it’s a total grind.
Why do so many of us want to be published in the first place: what’s at the heart of that impulse? What’s the root of the tug? In a 2017 TED Talk Anne Lamott sums up why writers write: “you’re going to feel like hell if you wake up someday and you never wrote the stuff that is tugging on the sleeves of your heart. Your stories, memories, visions, and songs … in your own voice. That’s really all you have to offer us, and that’s also why you were born.”
Lamott doesn’t say we’re born to publish books. In fact, she warns against publishing to fill a void. “Publication and temporary creative successes are something you have to recover from. They kill as many people as not. They will hurt, damage, and change you in ways you cannot imagine,” she says. “It’s also a miracle to get your work published ... just try to bust yourself gently of the fantasy that publication will heal you. That it will fill the swiss-cheesy holes inside of you. It can’t, it won’t. But writing can.”
As a Christian, I believe we need people to write about faith and culture, in spite of the emotional toll the publishing process may bring. More of us that are alert to the division and brokenness in the American church, and still writing about the pursuit of a deep relationship with God. We need more spaces to publish writing that explores this space, and a model that supports our voices.
I think of the line in Levertov’s poem The Springtime: “They have a great space of dark to bark across.” She’s writing with desperation about change, life and death. But I began to wonder, what do you do when you’re writing about Christianity from a different place, a middle place, and the dark you’re barking across is exceptionally wide?
How I make decisions, interact in the world, and think through ethics and culture is plainly rooted in the teachings of Jesus. I know how that sounds, and what cultural currency it could cost me in some circles. But I also know that when you write honestly, cards face up, about where you’re coming from, people tend to make space for you. I have a simple faith in a complicated world that my eyes are open to, and I hold both at the same time. But that also means there are few publications or publishers for people like me to land.
Essentially, I’m in the same place as any other writer, jumping through hoops, leveraging connections, and writing a book proposal to sell an idea to an editorial board. I am in no seat to judge while I jockey for a slot on a fall release list and try to save myself from the slush pile.
But instead of just showing up or competing, I’d like to champion other writers in this third space, writing about the tension of belief in Jesus in a culture when, against all odds, we really do.
Who are those of us in this scrappy cohort writing to, and how do we find each other? The traditional and Christian publishing models haven’t been disrupted, and many new voices can’t break through. We need a different way forward for Christians who are exploring topics that may be too insider for traditional media and too countercultural in faith-based spaces.
Here I am, and maybe you are, too. We’re in the middle, looking for each other. The woods are wide and we’re scattered on the path, but it leads to a clearing.
What if writing is never a career for most of us, but a practice that chooses us and encourages many? Those of us with eyes open, published and unknown, moving towards the storm. Telling better stories. We are here, we write because we are writers. God, do we ever believe. Help our unbelief.
Sara Billups
Writer & Co-host of Ebenezer Podcast
Photography by Elle Suko
