Smoking Diary #39: How a Book Gets Sold

It’s 2:11am, and your narrator is just back from a booksellers convention in Baltimore, aka Charm City, aka home of The Wire and John Waters, not that you’ll see in that in the tourist material. We briefly interrupt our chronological telling of how a memoir gets written for a short (overlong?) tutorial on how books make their way to your local shelves — or don’t, as is often the case.

We talk: marketing and promotion, the mysteries of the bestseller list, the importance of pre-orders. Speaking of: THE ONLY THING THERE IS TO WANT is available NOW, and we’re making progress, but still so many women’s biographies to shove out of the way.

Come along as we spot a possum, ramble on about Baltimore’s beloved son David Simon and Dallas homegirl Jayne Mansfield, ponder the popularity of Dungeon Crawler Carl (accidentally called Dragon Crawler, apologies), and spill the beans on the soft-shoe required to sell a book.

REMINDER: Sign up for Love Anyway, a free Substack about the mysteries of love, written by your narrator. This Sunday: CRUSHES!