Making The Understory a Bestseller

Pulling back the curtain on publishing

I promised you I’m not going to spend the next six months hawking my wares, but I am assuming you’re reading this email because you’ve willingly subscribed to my words and therefore I’m assuming you actually want to read them. Can we have a little chat about things just to warm us all up?

It’s no secret that in publishing these days authors have to do most of their own marketing, which, if you know an author, any author, you know that’s wildly uncomfortable for their private little insecure artist self. To make it worse, the more we market what we’ve made, the more risk there is for a totally public flogging. I told Nate the other day that I don’t know very many other occupations where someone works hard in secret on something for several years and then the whole world gets to weigh in on its merits or flaws in public reviews on Amazon or Goodreads (maybe the film industry?). One might be able to separate the stars or the review from the self, but I don’t know many who can.

Anyway…all that to say, for an author like me it’s like having touched the stove multiple times, been burned and with the scars to prove it, and then willingly laying my hand on the hot stove again and again and again. That’s what marketing feels like to me. So if I’m acting a little burned, now you know why.

Over the next few months there’s going to be a few things that happen around here that I just want to be open about and especially why they matter. Here's the first one:

I’m going to ask you to preorder The Understory on repeat. And when you hear that, you, like me, will let it go in one ear and out the other. Why? Because that’s a job for another day, namely (we think to ourselves) for after the book comes out.

I’ve thought about this a lot for a lot of years and I think the reason we do this is because we’re deep down dyed in the wool capitalists who want to hold a tangible thing in our hands the moment we’ve spent our cold, hard cash for it. We also want every single person who sells something to really work for it, like really hard, because it makes us feel good I guess. Who can fault us? Especially with inflation the way it is right now. I don’t want to pay for an apple today that someone promises me will get here in three months. What if it’s bruised by then? What if I’d rather a strawberry then? What if the apple grower becomes a heretic by then? All things to consider.

But while we’re considering all that, consider this: most occupations pay a weekly agreed-upon-amount paycheck, it gets deposited into their account with nary a thought. Other occupations work on commission, meaning they’ve got to hustle a little harder for their weekly paycheck and the amounts are always different. Writing books is a little more like the second. We get paid an advance (which is a misnomer for most of us, because we only get a percentage of the “advance” at the beginning and most of it comes at the end), but most books never out-earn the advance. Meaning, most books will never sell as many books as it takes to get to the point of royalties. That’s facts.

If you don’t know how that works (because I didn’t), let me ‘splain real quick: Joey gets paid a hundred dollars in advance for mowing the lawns on two streets in his neighborhood (regardless of how many lawns he actually mows), and for every additional lawn he mows, the HOA promises him another 50 cents. There are twenty lawns in his neighborhood, and therefore he’s estimated to make about $5 a lawn. He gets to lawn #18 though, after a twelve hour day, is hot and hungry, tired and missing dinner with his kids, goes home and never gets to the last two lawns, let alone the additional lawns. Who would blame Joey? Mowing lawns is hard work and $5 is not a living wage. There’s one guy in their city, Chandler, who gets paid $100 a lawn, but because he gets paid so much, he’s able to afford a riding mower that sweeps up all the grass clippings in record time. He can get done ten times the amount of lawns that Joey can and is getting paid 20 times the amount, with the same exact result: both his and Joey’s lawns are meticulously mowed. What incentive does Joey have to do more lawns?

So if $100 is the book advance, lawns mowed are books sold, and 50 cents is the royalties made, there is just not a lot of incentive for most authors to keep mowing beyond what they determine to be a reasonable time for their limitation and families. They’re not getting paid enough extra to warrant the extra push, no matter how much they believe in their material. And there are the .5% of authors out there who get paid enough to afford hiring their own marketing and publicity teams, whose books are almost guaranteed to make the bestseller lists because of it. Are their books necessarily better? No. Is the system known to be rigged? Yes. Does that change anything? No.

Okay. So why does this matter =)

Preorders are for authors what one generous benefactor would be for Joey. Someone comes to Joey and says, “Listen, I know you’re a hardworking guy, just as hardworking as Chandler. The only downside is you work on this side of town and he works on that side of it. So I’m going to free and clear buy you a riding mower. I’m going to spend my hard-earned cash and get nothing back for my money except you can come and mow my lawn one time in five months. All I really get between now and then is the pleasure of knowing I helped someone I believe in get a little bump in his line of work.”

That riding mower changes Joey’s life.¹

Preorders are that benefactor for an author. They signal to booksellers, libraries, and readers, “Hey, this is one to look for.” They exponentially do the work the author is already doing. If only I am trying to sell the book (which is true right now), I’m not going to sell many. But if each one of you preorder The Understory, we make The Understory a bestseller day one.

If each one of you spend the exact same amount of money as preordering one book and preorder two books using this code (SAYABLE50) at checkout and then give the extra book to your friend, we double the books sold on day one. What is that? That’s the hundred dollar lawn that helps me buy a riding mower. That’s the generous benefactor. That’s the thing that will help me keep doing this work for a long, long time.

Listen, I know The Understory might not be for everyone. But here’s what some really trustworthy good people have said about it after they read it:

“A remarkably acute and resonant account.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“Rare and beautiful.” —Aundi Kolber, MA, LPC, therapist; author of Try Softerand Strong Like Water

“Powerful, poised, poetic. Wilbert preaches like a prophet and writes like a friend.” —Rachel Marie Kang, author of Let There Be Art and The Matter of Little Losses

“Part Wendell Berry, Eugene Peterson, and Madeleine L’Engle. The result is sheer magic.” —A. J. Swoboda, associate professor, Bushnell University; author of After Doubt

“Raw honesty devoid of cynicism.” —Amanda Held Opelt, author of Holy Unhappiness and A Hole in the World

“Concerned with the radical act of being.” —Drew Jackson, poet and author of God Speaks through Wombs and Touch the Earth

In addition, if you preorder The Understory and fill out the form for preorders here, you will get immediate access to the first two chapters, this gorgeous print by artist Stephen Crotts, and a first in line invitation to the launch group.

Also, if you preorder The Understory, here’s a gift for a free month of Sayable that you can proverbially hold in your hands right now =)

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don’t have words for much more.

1. I understand this is not a perfect illustration, but I hope it helps a bit =)