Writing towards a book deal

Ambition and offering

Mary Magdalen anointing Christ's feet. Illuminated manuscript, c. 1500.

“To achieve the current iteration of the American dream, you’ve got to shout into the digital void and tell everyone how great you are. All that matters is how many people believe you.”

-Rebecca Jennings

These words came at the end of an article on Vox titled, “Everyone’s a sellout now.” It recounts the rise of the personal brand and the necessity of marketing your creative work in today’s creative economy. Elsewhere, Jennings writes of the inherent tension most creatives find in promoting themselves.

“It’s precisely the kind of work that is uncomfortable for most artists, who by definition concern themselves with what it means to be a person in the world, not what it means to be a brand.”

Art has always been commodified in some way, but now in order for the art to be commodified, the artist must also be commodified. The artist must “shout into the digital void,” be that void Instagram, Tiktok, or Substack.

—

“Mary came in with a jar of very expensive aromatic oils, anointed and massaged Jesus’ feet, and then wiped them with her hair. The fragrance of the oils filled the house.”

John 12:3 (The Message)

This past Friday I attended a concert for one of my favorite worship artists / singer-songwriters: Taylor Leonhardt, and a verse of one of Taylor’s songs stood out to me. It was the story in John 12 about Mary pouring the fine perfume on Jesus, giving him her own form of offering.

It struck me that her act of generosity should be a model for my writing. My prayer is that my writing is a fragrant aroma, a perfume given to God, a smell that attracts others into God’s house.

Is that possible? I think so.

—

I found “Everyone’s a sellout now” because of

Jen Pollock Michel

’s piece “The Day I Decided to Quit Book Publishing.” In it, she writes about today’s calculus of publishing and promotion:

There are fewer and fewer ways to publicize a book that don’t look self-promotional. What’s more, publishers are constantly evaluating book proposals, not on the content of the book alone, but on the platform of the author. Can this person write? Yes, it’s one question. But I’d argue it’s not even the most important one in the publishing calculus. Can this person sell? Now we’re talking.

In response to that piece,

Katelyn Beaty

—Editorial Director for Brazos Press and a distinguished writer herself—agreed in a note, writing in part,

It struck me that many of the most "successful" writers in Christian book publishing are at heart marketers, not writers. I don't mean that they aren't writing their books… but that the thing they are really good at is creating media-driven buzz around their persona and their product….

I just hate that we've created this business culture that disincentivizes good writers from writing good books.

It seems that so much of publishing—of writing—is now an act of self-promotion. Even when we are purposefully trying to write in sustainable ways, our eyes still navigate to our subscriber count or the number of people who liked our most recent piece, in part because we know that’s where agents’ and acquisition editors’ eyes go too. It’s both economy and psychology. We are incentivized—by publishers, by technology, by our own dopamine—to seek out attention.

—

“Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, even then getting ready to betray him, said, “Why wasn’t this oil sold and the money given to the poor? It would have easily brought three hundred silver pieces.” He said this not because he cared two cents about the poor but because he was a thief. He was in charge of their common funds, but also embezzled them.”

-John 12:4-6 (The Message)

I pray that my writing is that perfume, but is the perfume spoiled when ambition is mixed into it? Is it an offering to God when part of me—and honestly it’s sometimes a big part—is writing for a book deal?

I want to know if I am more like Mary—giving the beauty she had—or more like Judas—falsifying a care for what Jesus cares for but embezzling from him all the while. Am I posing as altruistic, pretending to be giving everything to God but really keeping back the portion that is my ambition?

How do I give God both my sacrifice and my ambition? My writing and my dreams? This Substack and my desire for a book deal?

Is it possible? I don’t know.

—

Back to that Vox article I shared at the beginning. Jenkins writes,

“Instead of spending the majority of our time on self-promotion, perhaps more of us could be focusing on finding ways to form solidarity among artists or among disciplines, especially in fields where there is no single industry-wide union that protects individual creators.”

This is something I’ve been thinking about for years now. What does it look like to use our collective creativity to leverage better exposure to good writing that doesn’t demand a writer’s fealty to self-promotion? Does it look like creating some form of guide? A manifesto? A guild?

I know it involves sharing work we believe in. And I know it also involves making promises to one another that—published or not—we will commit to the craft of writing.

Lore Wilbert

reminds us of that often in her own work and her encouragements. She wrote somewhere that her growth was not viral. She has been writing online for over twenty years and—through her craft and her authenticity and her consistency—has built a platform that can pay bills and publish books with. She is a model of what investing in our craft can look like, and she has been a generative force for many other writers—myself included—generously sharing her platform by sharing some of our work.

She proves it is possible to write and serve God at the same time.

—

There’s a small chance I’ll be pitching my book to acquisition editors in a few weeks. I just did like my thousandth edit on the thing this past weekend, and I’m trying to make my Substack look as put together and possible. I’m even making business cards with a QR code that links to Slow Faith, and I bought a URL: “slowfaith.co.” I want all of this to say, “This guy knows how to write.”

But, again, is that bad?

God, how do I pour out my perfume for you? How do I give you my ambition? How do I navigate the tension between striving and serving, writing and promoting? What does that look like?

Is, then, all of this possible? I think so. With God all things are possible, I believe that. But I’m not sure how to balance it all.

—

Jen Pollock Michel

finished her article about quitting the publishing industry with four ways people can support published authors so that they might be able to self-promote a little bit less.

Encouraged by that, I thought I would end with a few ways you can support the unpublished author in your life:

1. Share our Substacks. Share the newsletters that mean a lot to you! The best way to grow a subscriber list is through word of mouth.

2. Open our emails and engage. Agents and acquisition editors look at open rates and site traffic, so open the emails we send you (even if you don’t have time to read them!). If you have the time, leave a comment or “like” the piece on Substack. It really means so much to us.

3. Become a paid subscriber. Those of us who spend time writing these spend, well, a lot of time writing these. Sending over a few bucks a month means a lot to us and continues to affirm our desire to share our writing with the world.

—

I have gone back and forth about whether to end this piece with those three steps above because they are unabashedly ambitious. Is that bad? I honestly don’t know.

So I leave it to you—how do you balance ambition and sacrifice? How do we serve God while striving for goals? Is that possible when our ego is involved?

What are your newsletters? Why did you start them?

I hope you know I’m glad your voice is here.