Dear fellow Misfits,
I hope you’ll bear with me this week. I’m going to be a little vulnerable and talk about my experience with the Christian publishing world so that you understand why I keep coming back to this “role of the artist” stuff.
There are as many paths to publication as there are people. My experience with two small publishers is just my experience. But I have learned a few things in the process. I hope the things I’ve learned are helpful to you if you’re an artist. If not, ignore it all and go your own way. You probably will anyway.
As always, if you have comments or questions, drop one at the bottom of this post or email me christiananoelwrites@gmail.com. I love hearing your thoughts.
Christiana
My publishing journey…so far
In 2016, I went to a Christian writer’s conference. Knowing the conference hall would be populated by publishers looking for new titles, I brought a few copies of a book proposal about the mystics and intentional community. I was hesitant to enter the fray so my friend Amy Peterson (no relation) slipped inside to talk to one of the publishers. Eventually, she waved me over, introduced me to the acquisitions editor (whose name was also Amy) and said the editor was interested in seeing my proposal.
We chatted. The editor was lovely. She took my proposal. A month later, she offered me a contract for Mystics and Misfits: Meeting God Through St. Francis and Other Unlikely Saints.1
I was offered a small advance. Which is normal for a small publisher taking on a new untested author. Even though I had a small platform, they were interested enough in my work that the platform wasn’t a hindrance. Yay! She handed me over to my development editor who did the bulk of my editing. She was encouraging, compassionate, caring, and just delightful to work with.
At the time, I had two school-aged children, a two year old, and I was pregnant with my fourth child. My advance paid for a few months of childcare. The rest of that year of childcare was paid from our savings.
Almost exactly two years later, in 2018, Mystics and Misfits was published. Happily, I made up my advance once the book was out (the joys of small advances are that you start making royalties sooner).2
And that was book one.
Book Two.
A few months after Mystics and Misfits was published I got an email from another acquisitions editor (a different publisher than the first) who found me through a friend’s social media. She wanted to chat about ideas I had for another book. I told her about a book I’d been mulling around about our culture’s aversion to death and what the mystics might have to say about it. She liked the idea and I told her I would draw up a proposal.
Now, at this point, I decided to send that proposal around to some other publishers too. This is normal. I didn’t have an agent but if I had, this would’ve been what my agent would’ve suggested.
I talked to a few slightly bigger publishers as well as the publisher of Mystics and Misfits. They were all very nice. They either liked the idea but didn’t think it would be the right sell and/or they noted my small platform and my small book sales.
Thankfully, the original editor who’d called me offered me a contract in February 2019 for Awakened By Death: Life-Giving Lessons from the Mystics. I asked for a slightly larger advance and she said yes.
I began to write, sending my manuscript back and forth to my editor. At the end of 2019, almost a year after I got my contract, I sent the entire manuscript her way. More edits were to come.
But you also know what was coming, don’t you? Yes, that’s right, the PANDEMIC. As I was finishing my final rounds of edits in March 2020, schools shut down, the pandemic began in earnest and my editor and I were having conversations about whether to change a book about death to reflect what was happening. We decided it was too early which was, obviously, the right decision. Like all of us, I was shellshocked and unable to process or foresee what the next two years would bring.
My publication date was set though: October 2020. Right before Halloween.
I began to market myself in earnest. And I fell into the IG/marketing rabbit hole: day after day making ridiculous (though occasionally funny) Reels, posting multiple Stories a day, creating images with Canva with my endorser’s quotes, tagging endorsers and other authors, starting a launch team, emailing podcasters, pitching pieces to magazines, roping my amazing friends into helping me with online Book events.
This is me taking weird pictures to market a book about death (or just taking weird pictures):
Despite all the work I did to put it out into the world, it did not sell very well. And after it was all said and done, my spirit sagged with weariness, with the drain of writing about death, with the need for affirmation, with the disappointment and energy it took.
Ok, stop.
It’s hard to calculate why certain books will sell and other won’t. But needless to say, my subject matter wasn’t the most accessible. I had some lovely people in my writing community helping me but the reality is that most artists these days have to do the bulk of our own marketing work. No one is going to do it for you. Unfortunately, for all the work I did, I’m sure there was still more I could’ve done. Also, publishers choose books each season that they market more heavily than others. Some of their other books, like mine, are considered backlist books, titles that will make up their lists in future years and that will keep selling over time.
Also, most pandemic books struggled unless they were steamy romances, dystopian novels, or books about racial justice (and yay for those books!). Neither my publisher nor I could’ve predicted a pandemic or that a book about death DURING a time of great grief and death was not what people wanted to read. Frankly, I read a lot of fantasy fiction and Jane Austen adaptations during the pandemic so no judgment there.
Then there is the style of Awakened By Death. I’ve been told more than once that a reader liked my first book better. It was more of a story and more accessible than a researched book about death. And that’s ok. It was a different book, more challenging to read in many ways.
I know there are many many writers who wished they could publish books at all. And I am very grateful, no matter what, to have two books published. My point is not to complain or discourage but to show you what it can take to be a “normal” writer in the publishing world right now. In a publishing world that is churning out 60,000 books a year, most of which will only sell “less than 200 copies per year and less than 1000 copies over its lifetime.”
The artistic pursuit can be both life-giving and demoralizing. As I said it an earlier post, if you have success, it can have consequences, and if you have some failures, it can also have consequences. For an interesting and articulate take on social media and the writing life, read Seth Haine’s latest The Dead and Dying Writer’s Society.
But here are some things I learned. Being a writer, or artist in general, has a lot of obstacles. On the one hand, the writing life has always had obstacles and challenges. And some people have undoubtedly had more obstacles in the publishing world than others. But there are also challenges that are particular to our time and place, namely the publishing world and social media.
On the other hand, art without obstacles is just observation. To create art, we must meet those challenges and meander through them, seeing through a different lens, one that is particular to us. The truth and meaning-making, in all their ugliness and beauty, cannot come without some wrestling.
If you want to pursue art, I don’t have to tell you to pursue it because you will if you can’t help it.
But here are a few things I’d recommend if you want to follow artistic pursuits like writing:
Don’t neglect your expectations. Most of us will not have bestselling books. It takes a heck of a lot of work to write and sell a bestseller and they can definitely be works of great beauty. But bestselling books are also not necessarily art. And even bestsellers are not a guarantee for an author. See this post from Misfits and Daydreamers for an interesting perspective from a best-selling YA author.
Don’t neglect your attentiveness (something artists need to hold onto) because then you will lose your artistic eye. Many thinkers are telling us that “resisting distraction” is the great spiritual discipline of our time.
Don’t neglect your community. My community of writers helped me in numerous ways before and after publication. But also, don’t neglect the community around you because you can know your own local community much better than you know the community of the whole world online.
Don’t neglect what makes you unique. Your voice, your experience, your relationship with God and how you see the world because of it.
If we really want to create, we will create. Not every piece of art is for consumption. Not every piece of art is for others. But still, it’s natural to want an audience for your creation. If you paint, don’t you want people to see your work? Don’t we often write for the benefit of others or to feel a little less alone? We can sing in our shower but isn’t it fun to sing with others? But an audience doesn't have to be thousands; it can be a true community, whether small or large, that is enriched by the art you offer.
Art has a way of making its path in the world, often beyond the artist’s control or knowledge. You never know how you are moving or impacting people when you send it out into the world with love.
Your task ahead, should you choose to accept it, is not to be a bestselling author or a famous painter.
Here is your task: whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart. Pretty good, right? I can’t take credit for it though. It’s a passage in the Bible that has been circling inside me for a few months. I told it to my son when I said he could quit violin and my heart broke a little. I’ve sang it to myself with this very catchy tune from Slugs and Bugs when I’ve felt discouraged with my work.
I hope it encourages you too.
I have to give credit to my friend Jessica Goudeau for coming up with that title. Originally I had titled it Mother Mystic.
An advance is technically a loan the publisher gives you which is paid back by the sales of the book. Until your book makes up the advance in sales, you will not receive any royalties.
What a gracious and kind way of communicating your journey. Thanks, Christiana.
I have enjoyed and grown from both your books and other writings. Please continue to share your life through your art with us🙏♥️