How to stay hopeful (and cynical)
"Selling a book is a special process but the realities of the commercial landscape are not." Author Bri Lee on how to keep the romance (with your work) alive
Psst. To get the most out of the Hyphen newsletter, it’s all about joining the membership community! Join as paying subscriber for £1.74 a week (cheaper than a coffee!) to unlock and read all posts. You’ll gain access to the full hub, comment section, bi-monthly Sunday Scroll round-ups, plus access to book giveaways and more. It’s a really wonderful community and I’m passionate about writers being paid for their work.
You can love what you do, and yet: the industry can sometimes squeeze you dry or swallow you whole.
The work itself can be heavenly — tip-tapping away in a café playing Fleetwood Mac — but the business side of things can be pretty cut-throat. Once your work is sold, you become a commodity — so how do you strike that delicate balance between loving your work and following your heart vs. being part of a big machine that equates your success with dollar signs and sales?
According to a piece in The Bookseller, even top authors (who have in the past been Richard & Judy Book Club picks) are struggling to get book deals. The market is tough right now. When rejection strikes, when the Industry decides you aren’t relevant right now; it’s these times we have to dig deep more than ever to believe we matter, art matters, connection matters.
To tackle this juicy topic — how to stay hopeful (and cynical) when it comes to making your art — we have a special guest writer on The Hyphen: best-selling Australian author
! (I really admire Bri. She is the author of three non-fiction books and a debut novel The Work. If you’re a fan of Taffy Brodesser-Akner, which I know a lot of you are, I urge you to grab a copy. She also writes on Substack).Over on Bri’s newsletter, I have written a guest piece all about the expectation around women to mine their personal lives to promote their work — where is the line, and can we push back on it? A topic I’ve been thinking about for a while. Read the piece here.
Hope you enjoy both pieces! xo
How to stay hopeful (and cynical) about making a creative project — by Bri Lee
Back in 2016 when I’d quit my law job and decided to try to ‘make it’ as a writer, I got a job in a beautiful little independent bookstore in Brisbane called Avid Reader. Every week I saw dozens of new titles come into the shop. We had two tables for new releases—one for fiction and one for non-fiction—and shelves lining the walls for all the others.
I think a lot of writers—particularly young or emerging ones—would avoid a lot of confusion and heartache if they had the benefit I did, of working in a bookstore before getting published.