It's more complicated than that

November 3, 2023 12:38 AM

Literary It Girls may have the standard markers of what we think of when we think of an It Girl: they’re beautiful, stylish, and social, with a certain je ne sais quoi. But what really makes them influential is the creative ways they stage and elevate their work — both on the page and in persona. from The Makings of a Literary It Girl
posted by chavenet (27 comments total)

“It didn't feel very true to who I am, and it didn't really yield the enthusiasm for the book that I wanted or the readership: the cool, young, enthusiastic readers who I felt would be a good fit for my work,” she says.

Okay, so some years ago one started regularly hearing the critique framed as "oh, this book/product/idea/practice has been disparaged because it is done by young women, we should stop defaulting to the idea that what young women like is bad and stupid because this is misogynist". This sounded pretty good and reasonable.

Since then, sadly, we seem to have reverted to the mean, where "young women" means "popular, thin, normatively beautiful, gender-conforming, rich, mostly though not always white, straight except for a leavening of thin rich femme queer women who are sexy to men and appealing to straight women" and "things young women like" has reverted to "accessories, trendy parties, shopping, beauty, going out to trendy bars and keeping up with fashion". I do not feel that this is an accurate picture of young women as a whole.

Obviously popular thin rich young gender-normative women who like to read are just as adequate readers as anyone else, but the moral force of the critique is kind of eviscerated when it's just more about how the cool girls are indeed very cool and fashionable. There's no reason you can't have a book party at a trendy bar and give away promo items, but when I think about the value of reading and writing, it's not "this is one more site for being really, really on-trend".

I mean, it's not new, it's just new framing; if you read anything about cafe society there have always been zeitgeisty rich women who have the latest book in addition to the latest clothing/hairstyle/vacation/drink, but again, it's not feminism or a boost for girls, it's just cafe society.
posted by Frowner at 4:28 AM on November 3, 2023 [23 favorites]

Even in its decrepit state, Twitter managed some serious Discourse about this article. It was mostly what you'd expect, but (as always) the best way to make a small fortune in publishing is to start with a large fortune. Whether the critiques were feminist or misogynist, I'm not sure what to say, though the majority of the commentary I read was from women. Most of what I saw was more instrumental than political in nature, given the state of the market right now.

I was at a writers conference a few weeks ago where an author who's actually been quite successful did hire a publicist who accomplished amazing things for her. She's gone from self-publishing to notable bestsellers and spots on national media, and her publicist did have ideas outside the usual run of PR ideas most authors pursue. And it all cost thousands of dollars, of course, though the gamble appears to have paid off. Most authors (the ones I know or follow online, at least) won't or can't devote thousands of dollars to this kind of stuff.
posted by cupcakeninja at 4:42 AM on November 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Also a lot of this is about the consolidation of publishing, rising rents and the collapse of middle class jobs - you have both an intensification of "arts jobs are for rich people because you can't afford to live on the salaries" and "we, a consolidated publisher (even if we have a cool imprint) want a return on our investment, how can we successfully choose, launch and sell a book to an affluent audience, probably the same way we would sell a shoe, a perfume or a nightclub".

Needing to be cool to be seen as artistically worthwhile is a burden to a lot of people who produce good art. I know a talented actor who is fat, for instance, and no matter how good they are they just won't get the roles that match their talents, because you can't have a fat protagonist unless the whole story is about the tragedy/empowerfulment of their weight.
posted by Frowner at 4:46 AM on November 3, 2023 [16 favorites]

The article suggests DIY is a reaction to publishers not backing authors with (consumer) marketing or promotion; it feels like a glaring omission, then, not to say what impact DIY promotion has on sales, or even how readily accessible the sales data is to these authors/literary it girls. Treating a book launch like a wedding when you don't also have oversight of the impact data is a ridiculous financial risk, which can only really be absorbed by someone with a rich partner or (as discussed) generational wealth.

What scant research is available suggests that the publishers' marketing budget is the only reliable predictor of a book's success. I'm sceptical of traditional publishers possibly misrepresenting authors they've heavily invested in as DIY, organic successes - which I've seen happen - but I'm also wondering what the measure of success is for the writers featured, beyond their public image seeming enviable to a particular audience.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 4:59 AM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Needing to be cool to be seen as artistically worthwhile is a burden to a lot of people who produce good art.

1000%. I am sure the British acting scene has many problems, but one reason that I enjoy watching Acorn & Brit Box is for the greater diversity in actors' identities, bodies, etc. There are still barriers and stereotypes, but I can think of any number of instances of people on screen who don't fit anyone's definition of "cool" and aren't played for laughs. Unlike, you know, much of U.S. TV.

it feels like a glaring omission, then, not to say what impact DIY promotion has on sales, or even how readily accessible the sales data is to these authors/literary it girls

Truly, and yet many (not all) people who claim to know what's what say that you should do X, Y, or Z to promote your book. It's a little nightmare, and many authors out there who have been successful state that the breadth of what publishers can do is simply not available to self-pubbers or small press folks.

(Ironically, Ballad of Peckham Rye, many people with generational wealth could presumably subscribe as individuals to Nielsen Bookscan, the major industry tool for measuring sales, and thus could theoretically know something. It's not a perfect tool and does not capture certain kinds of data--e.g. sales from stores and events that do not provide data to them--but it's not generally priced for individuals. Not to mention that fact is not merely a glaring omission in the article, but it's a missed opportunity for what could have been a neat sidebar to the article.)
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:15 AM on November 3, 2023 [5 favorites]

Never begrudge anyone for making a living, but it would be sad if being cute and cool became a key filter for success as a woman writer they way it always has been for women musicians, and which is now in such contrast to how well ugly and/or dorky men are doing in music.
posted by MattD at 5:26 AM on November 3, 2023 [15 favorites]

Not to mention that fact is not merely a glaring omission in the article, but it's a missed opportunity for what could have been a neat sidebar to the article.

Which, I guess, would also ruin the mystique; is it cool and stylish to care about Nielsen Bookscan? I'm pretty sure the article's discussion of poor publisher support was meant to serve the limited purpose of implying the writers are using initiative to overcome a challenge rather than, well, flaunting wealth.

I do wonder what mix is in play of having exceptional access to business tools and also it *not mattering* in the sense of being a rich person's pastime rather than an attempt at livelihood.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:03 AM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

I found the article interesting. It's about a very specific subset of new writers (like Frowner describes, largely "popular, thin, normatively beautiful, gender-conforming, rich, mostly though not always white, straight except for a leavening of thin rich femme queer women who are sexy to men and appealing to straight women") but working within the same constraints of the current publishing system like minimal PR budgets for most new authors. The article described a bunch of what sounded like amazing launch parties, but it wasn't always clear to me if those were people paying with family money or what.

I was also struck by this snippet, where the author's main concern is in curating her audience correctly, to reach the cool readership she wanted:

For Rowbottom’s first book Jell-O Girls, she took a more traditional approach to marketing — which usually involves bookstore events and often doesn’t even include a book tour. But it didn’t feel true to who she was, nor did she feel like it was particularly effective.

“It didn't feel very true to who I am, and it didn't really yield the enthusiasm for the book that I wanted or the readership: the cool, young, enthusiastic readers who I felt would be a good fit for my work,” she says.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:05 AM on November 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'm somewhat sympathetic to the point on curation. Publishing isn't great at attending to fit, beyond comps, genre, and very broad readership demographics. The trad approach does seem to be either entirely ignoring the book, or throwing everything at a lead title to reach a barely differentiated mass of readers.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 6:24 AM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

In a way this reminds me of an article posted on metafilter back before the pandemic about a platform service laundry company called, IIRC, Washio. Their whole thing was that they only wanted to hire hot young people with nice cars to do the laundry pick-ups, because their clientele was too precious to encounter a middle-aged launderer in a a Kia*.

So here the whole thing is that you either have to be rich or look rich to succeed as an author, you have to commission perfumes or custom LL Bean bags or whatever kind of bullshit because the "young women who talk to each other" aren't, eg, the kind of young women you or I might know in life but affluent young women who want books geared to the outlook of affluent young women and who only want to be reminded of struggle or failure if it's dressed up in whatever literary approach is palatable. So either you're well-off and of course you can commission a perfume, or you have to pretend you're well-off and scramble to commission it and go into debt while maintaining a pose of ease and success.

*A real litmus test here - do you identify with the worker or the rich customer? Me, I think about being deemed too old and poor to do menial labor and want to reach for the guillotine, but I guess a lot of people just fantasize about some out of work model breathily delivering their clean underwear.

Again the fragility of the rich - they don't just want to exploit and enclose and hurt and steal, they want you to hide the signs of poverty, victimization and suffering, to love them for their theft, to slobber all over while kissing the ring, etc.
posted by Frowner at 6:32 AM on November 3, 2023 [9 favorites]

Yet another way in which the world has run away from me. I'm the old-fashioned kind of author who does not wish to be perceived. Even if I had money for this kind of thing, it would be mutton dressed up as lamb. I am not adjusting well to a society in which artists have to be brands. I just want to write books and be paid for my effort. Christ alive.

The most hopeful example for non-cute creatives, I think, is Chuck Tingle. He created a whole alternate universe for his persona, and people have grown to love it, even if they are not particularly interested in dinosaur-on-Bigfoot action.
posted by Countess Elena at 6:36 AM on November 3, 2023 [12 favorites]

I don't get the complaints, it's not shocking that a good looking, fashionable young woman would promote her novel by throwing a party with her scene friends or curating some looks on Insta--or that the results would show up in Nylon.
posted by kingdead at 7:38 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

This is a reprint from an article written in the 1980. Or 1990. Or 2000... isn't it? Pretty Young Thing capitalizes on being Pretty and Young. Story at eleven.

The more interesting story is where these writers end up in ten years.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:58 AM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

It must be really expensive to do a book launch at a club. I've heard some writers on twitter say they made 5000 dollars over five years from one book. So how much money must these books be making??

I actually found the article boring and depressing. How many books/novels about young women wanting to be Instagrammers/having plastic surgery do we NEED? If you looked at trendy books written by women, you would think that being a woman makes you only capable of Instagramming, getting plastic surgery, worrying about being "unfuckable at 30" and then freaking out about how it makes you an Unfeminist. Just humblebragging about being hot and desired by men.

Like seriously.... woman authors and women as a whole think about faaaar more than internet points.
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 8:00 AM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Yes I too prefer the rugged rawboned midcentury publishing industry, where if you wanted a perfume associated with your writing you damn well got out the chemistry set and developed it yourself, rather than commissioning it with the help of a PR firm.
posted by mittens at 8:04 AM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

I grew-up/ went to high school with a girl that became, in the early/mid 2000s, a literary it girl in her mid/late twenties. She was good writer, like a surprisingly good, given that it had never seemed like anything she was interested in prior to becoming a celebrated novels. She was also quite rich and conventionally beautiful. The latter point was made in pretty much every article about her for a few years. That always felt misogynist as hell to me, even as I felt plenty envious and irritated by her success at the time.

Being a writer is hard work. Being a great writer on the page is infinitely harder. Becoming a successful, published, bankable writer who is also, on the page, a great writer is well-nigh almost impossible. I could be bitter all day about people using their all of their privilege and advantages to accomplish that. But who am I kidding? If I had a modicuum of charisma and trust fund to throw at the process, I'd be the most shameless self-promoter on the block
posted by thivaia at 9:00 AM on November 3, 2023 [6 favorites]

it feels like a glaring omission, then, not to say what impact DIY promotion has on sales, or even how readily accessible the sales data is to these authors/literary it girls.

For context: one of these books has almost 20,000 sales on BookScan (the industry database, which generally undercounts by at least half but is useful as a relative measure) in two years, and one has under 350 in four years. The others are in the 700-1000 a year range, which is not impressive but not quite in the realm of embarrassing. The conclusion I would draw from this is that these parties and merch have zero effect on sales (not even a little surprising, everyone knows events and swag don’t move books but rather demonstrate publisher investment which is useful information for sales reps) but rather that if you’re already a party type gal, a book is a good excuse for a party. Again, not too surprising, though probably something I’d be crankier about if I didn’t know one of these women in real life and find her charming.

All traditionally published authors have or can get their own Bookscan information, by the way, but not other people’s for comparison, and unless you’re asking for it specifically, you’ll only find out your real sales twice a year. No author is able to access totally reliable information on how much any individual party/podcast appearance/ad campaign affected sales and exactly what would have happened without it, nor can any publicist, nor can any human. So you kind of might as well throw yourself a bash.

(I mean, not me, I’d rather die, but if you think it sounds fun.)
posted by babelfish at 10:19 AM on November 3, 2023 [8 favorites]

]
It must be really expensive to do a book launch at a club. I've heard some writers on twitter say they made 5000 dollars over five years from one book. So how much money must these books be making??


Nope. It’s really expensive to do a book launch in a hotel ballroom. Doing a book launch in a club, if it’s the right club and the right day of the week and a no-host bar with guaranteed publicity, could be free.The only cost would be the giveaways, and it’s possible to get sponsorships for some things like that (not all).

I work in an industry where having the right kind of book is what you need not as a way to earn royalties but as a way to establish yourself as a credentialed person. This seems very similar. These women are obviously been extremely clever about finding low cost promotional opportunities that sounds like they come out of an influencer handbook. Dey may have ‘commissioned a perfume’ and that may have cost money or it may not but I’d bet dollars to donuts she gets a split of sales.

Older mefites May remember that Paris Hilton started out as a rich teenager showing up at parties and getting photographed in the society pages, then she did some modeling, got a famous boyfriend, a reality tv show, and various other money-making adventures including, by the way, perfumes and a book. These people don’t start off with the advantage of being a super rich heiress, but they are hustling from the same playbook.

And you know, more power to them. 🤷‍♀️
posted by bq at 12:05 PM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

All traditionally published authors have or can get their own Bookscan information, by the way, but not other people’s for comparison, and unless you’re asking for it specifically, you’ll only find out your real sales twice a year. No author is able to access totally reliable information on how much any individual party/podcast appearance/ad campaign affected sales and exactly what would have happened without it, nor can any publicist, nor can any human. So you kind of might as well throw yourself a bash.

Yeah, I get my sales figures twice a year - not necessarily automatically, I have to chase sometimes - and in theory, my UK publisher is willing to provide them more often on request, but in practice they don't. My leverage for making them is limited. I can purchase a sales report myself for £108. I have access to Amazon Author Central for ranking. I don't think any of this is particularly good data for judging impact, and I'm aware it's within normal industry bounds.

I don't have a problem with someone throwing a party; I do have more of a problem with it being framed as a response to poor marketing support from publishers, as the article does in a kind of throw away way, when the value to authors of paying out-of-pocket for it is skimmed over.
posted by Ballad of Peckham Rye at 12:14 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

The most hopeful example for non-cute creatives, I think, is Chuck Tingle. He created a whole alternate universe for his persona, and people have grown to love it, even if they are not particularly interested in dinosaur-on-Bigfoot action.

I think Elena Ferrante is also pretty aspirational in that regard.

For what it's worth I also don't think that Stephenie Meyer or Collen Hoover are being read for being glamorous and thin.

I won't blame anyone for using any angle they can think of to get their name in print, but that's probably because I don't think it really conveys that much of a competitive advantage.

If I ever had to do any market segmentation for a novel, I'd rather target the rather less social, rather less stylish girls, who don't get invited to that many parties, because they'll have more time to actually read my books, write reviews on goodreads, maybe a little smut for AO3, post themselves crying their eyes out on book-took,... if I could write that sort of book that makes someone cry their eyes out of course, which, at the end of the day, is always the bigger concern.
posted by sohalt at 2:40 PM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

people have grown to love it, even if they are not particularly interested in dinosaur-on-Bigfoot action
sometimes it's Bigfoot-on-dinosaur action, let's not be crypto-normative

“Writers have to advocate for themselves like never before. You can't be the hermetic enigmatic Salinger Pynchon type anymore. You have to sell yourself. I taught at Sarah Lawrence recently and the kids were like, ‘How do you become a writer?’ and I was like, ‘Have generational wealth,’” says [Madeline] Cash [co-founder of Forever Magazine & commissioner of "a line of merchandise from Drink More Water for the release of her short story collection 'Earth Angel'"]. “If you don't have rich parents, being a writer is one part talent and two parts networking. Being a writer in 2023 is also being an agent and editor and PR girl.” [Cash is a Sarah Lawrence alumna.]

Thanks for posting, chavenet. It's interesting to see how the gears work nowadays. The first time I noticed a writer "It Girl" turning up seemingly everywhere was back in the '80s, with Tama Janowitz. (The writer It Boys got better press.)
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:30 PM on November 3, 2023 [4 favorites]

I love this as a new, fun approach to book promo! Kinda reminds me of the parties that surround Fringe or other arts festivals and also serve as promos for shows that are part of the festival.

Is it only young hot Instagram girls doing this or does it just look like this because it's Nylon?
posted by creatrixtiara at 6:43 PM on November 3, 2023 [1 favorite]

Oh wow, I loved Tama Janowitz for the space of those first couple of books...and then I think I haven't thought of her again until your comment, Iris Gambol!
posted by mittens at 7:58 PM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Slightly snarky summary: salon lit is finally getting around to the tactics already common in YA lit (find:"tok": 0) which are old for SF&F. No? BPAL has been doing perfume collections for books for aaaaaages.

(The actual authors seemed pretty sane in the direct quotes, especially at the end of the article. )
posted by clew at 10:39 PM on November 3, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yes, I was just thinking, I have a friend who's an F/SF agent for some authors of recent moderate fame and these tactics sound familiar.
posted by praemunire at 11:41 PM on November 3, 2023 [2 favorites]

“I think it's easy to get discouraged in publishing, but as the current paradigm crumbles, it presents an opportunity to do whatever you want,” says Alic. “There are no rules, no one knows anything, so it's important to get creative, try new things, and not take yourself too seriously.”

If you replace "publishing" with something like [posting music on YouTube], it makes me think that books/writing have yet to find a platform to allow someone to be plucked from obscurity into viral fame (or at least some degree of significant public awareness) that even comes close to matching what YT has been able to do for musicians (or does it exist and I am just ignorant of it?)?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 7:04 AM on November 6, 2023

I thought that was BookTok.
posted by clew at 10:04 AM on November 6, 2023 [2 favorites]