Whether it’s your first or twentieth book, independently or traditionally published, finding new ways to grow your readership can obviously be a tremendous help in achieving a long-lasting writing career. Given my extensive marketing background and having been raised in an entrepreneurial family, as an author, I’ve always enjoyed thinking outside the box to connect with readers and broaden my reach. With some creative brainstorming, I can attest to the fact that it doesn’t require a large budget to do that!

Here are a few examples that will hopefully spark your own ideas:

Since my debut, Letters from Home, centered on an exchange of WWII courtship letters, I was delighted to pair up with a popular stationery store, which was willing to donate a large basket of goods that I used for a cross-promoting giveaway. I then sought out online groups and local organizations devoted to stationery fans and the art of letter writing. As you can imagine, the gift basket giveaway was a huge hit in those circles and a fun, fresh way to spread the word about my release.

For Bridge of Scarlet Leaves, which involved the Japanese American internment, I connected with various Japanese American history museums and organizations, which kindly recommended amazing speakers with relevant firsthand experience, from having lived in one of the internment camps or having served in a Japanese American military unit during WWII. Our collaborative speaking events resulted not only in stronger attendance and media coverage, but also in an exceptionally impactful moment for all who attended. Additionally, promoting those events to professors of Japanese culture, heritage, and history at local colleges drew a good deal of student interest, along with opportunities for me to speak to classes and even entire schools in the months to follow.

Most recently, though not tied to one book in particular, I was struck by another collaborative idea. Combining two things I’ve long been …

Two well-known sayings from two different creative fields have been rattling around in my head for awhile now, and I think they wouldn’t leave me alone because when combined they clarify what can be a powerful aspect of writing. If you can put up with me geeking out on architectural history for a brief minute, I promise I’ll make clear what it has to do with writing.

The first saying—“god is in the details”—is a German proverb that was popularized in mid-twentieth century architectural design by modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. By this phrase, van der Rohe implied that architectural clarity and beauty was derived not from tacked-on ornamental details (think of the historic styles, like Classical, Baroque, or Renaissance) but from the integral beauty of materials and structure.

Van der Rohe’s buildings were studies in minimalism–not in order to be cheap, but in order to be precise. It’s that precision that gives them their beauty. In the Barcelona Pavilion (one of his early famous works) he specified a wall of patterned marble, but he demanded that the stone be ‘bookmatched.’ A stone block was cut in thin slabs, and the masons kept close track of the order of the pieces. As they installed the stone, the masons arranged the slabs in sequence like the pages of a book, opening them out from each other and creating a pattern from just the material and the attention to the details of its installation.

Both kinds of walls –those with historic details tacked on, and those with patterning intrinsic to the materials–could be beautiful. The marble wall, with its simplicity and ‘honesty’, expressed the spirit of the times of early modernism much better than did the added ornament of the historic styles.

The second saying that I couldn’t get out of my head is the ubiquitous advice to writers (often attributed to Mark Twain but without verification) to “write what you know.” There are voluminous interpretations of what this advice means; many can be boiled down to exhortations for writers to base their writing on their real lived experiences or observations and to honor the emotional truths drawn from them. There is also extensive criticism of this saying because it can lead to vaguely disguised mishmash memoirs of what a writer personally did, felt, or thought or to superficial stories that tack on descriptions of physical details to set …

Last month I asked you to help me distinguish between when satire lands effectively and when it merely mocks or punches down. Thanks to the generosity of this community, a robust conversation followed. I’ll reference several of your comments below, and I encourage any readers who did not scroll through that comment section to do so now.

I did not explain the full context last month, which is my ambivalence about some similarities between my work in progress and a recent best seller that, to me, seems mean-spirited toward the very people my book attempts to understand. Exhibit D, the reason for this post and the previous one, will come next month, not out of coyness but because I need to build my argument step by step. For now let me give you Exhibits B and C.

Last month’s Exhibit A, you may recall, was The Book of Mormon musical, a show that skewers religions and their origin stories. Its creators have never been adherents of religion, much less the specific church they parody. When questioned about the offensiveness of their show, they say that religions in general are “goofy” and Mormons are “cheesy.” We are expected to take these comments as self-evident truths that excuse the anti-religious bite of their satire. Responses are mixed, but it’s hard to argue with 15 years of Broadway success.

The Book of Mormon musical is both a satire and a mockery. As Julie Christine Johnson pointed out last month, “the latter is always cruel, with the intent to cause harm, hurt, devalue. Satire can punch down, too, but it can also be deeply instructive and impactful and revelatory when it ‘punches up’ into power structures, organizations, injustices.”

This month, let’s rotate ninety degrees. What are the differences between satire and other entertainment forms that take a comedic view of their subjects, without unkind mockery?

For Exhibit B, I give you The Ending Writes Itself, a 2026 satire of the publishing industry by Evelyn Clarke. It made me laugh out loud more than once — while wondering why anyone would ever want to become a writer. It shows the ways that publishing is brutal, unfair, and impossibly demanding; it depicts authors as desperate, self-hating masochists who would do anything for a shot at a deal.

I felt seen.

Okay, yes, it’s a tiny bit exaggerated. The fictional authors endure personal tragedy and …

Anyone reading this likely already knows that selling books is hard. According to a survey conducted by YouGov, only 27 percent of Americans over the age of 15 read at least one book in 2025. The same study concluded that the percentage of Americans who read for pleasure on a daily basis is declining at a rate of three percent per year.

It’s also not news that, in most cases, it is authors themselves who shoulder the bulk of the responsibility for marketing and selling their books. According to Publishers Weekly, a traditionally published debut author needs to sell between 3,000 and 5,000 copies of a title in order for a publisher to consider acquiring a second title. Authors whose books have been published by smaller, independent presses often need to sell between 300 and 1,000 copies of a title in order for it to be considered successful. Needless to say, regardless of how good a book is, the odds are not in authors’ favor.

There’s a ton of advice out there detailing best practices for marketing and selling books both online and in person. A lot of it is helpful. Some of it is unrealistic, at least if you’re not Stephen King. All of it is incredibly laborious, and any return authors might receive in exchange for their efforts is far from guaranteed.

In spite of that, my second novel was among its publisher’s best-selling titles for two consecutive years after its publication in 2023. I don’t have an agent. The book, a coming-of-age story, was published by a small press with limited resources. And while the novel was a finalist for three national awards, well, see the first paragraph of this post.

How did I accomplish this? After trying, and largely failing, to market the book to a general audience of readers who just might possibly enjoy coming-of-age stories, I realized there was a group of people who were almost guaranteed to buy and read the book. Going with a gut feeling, I switched gears and concentrated all my marketing efforts toward this demographic.

I’m a Franco-American, a descendent of the nearly one-million French Canadians who emigrated to the northeastern United States from Québec and the Canadian maritime provinces in the 19th and early 20th centuries to work in factories. Currently, there are millions of Franco-Americans living in New England and upstate New York. But for …

As I write this post, I’m less than five months away from the release of my eighth published novel, Perilous Beautiful World. I’m excited. I’m nervous. I’m trying to write another book. Because, as far as I understand how to be an author, that is what one does at this point. Isn’t it?

Or perhaps I should be idling. Or I should be making “content” for my “socials.” Or I should be assembling the materials I’ll want to use for presentations. Or recruiting a “street team” to help market my January release. I’m staying in Key West at the moment, so possibly I should be downtown every afternoon tossing back the tart, dry daiquiris that Hemingway sometimes drank, when he wanted a change from his usual scotch and soda.

You’d think that someone who first got a literary agent on Christmas Eve 2005, signed her first book contract in late 2006, saw her debut novel on store shelves in February 2008, first made the New York Times bestseller list with her fourth book in April 2013, and still has a viable career in 2026, would know by now how to be an author.

Sometimes I think I do.

More often, though, I think no one does. That it all is one big game of make believe.

**

I have been married to a fellow fiction writer for eleven years, and have a slew of writer friends, but the majority of the people I see on a day-to-day basis are normal people—which is to say they aren’t acquainted in the slightest with what being a full-time fiction writer entails. They don’t know the first thing about how the publishing business operates or how authors get paid or what actually constitutes success. (“I bought your book—it was on eBay!”) Many of them don’t read fiction, and some don’t read books of any kind.

Those who know that I’ve had numerous novels published, and who also know that I have a new book coming in January, nonetheless express surprise that I am in the process of conceiving and writing something new. “Don’t you ever rest?” they say. “Don’t you take time off between books?” I wonder if they also ask this of literally any other person who works for a living. When a brain surgeon has finished the painstaking job of removing a tumor, no one expects them to take some time …

In the interview, T asks Sarah about milestones, of which she’s reached many over the years. As she summarized her thoughts, Sarah made an observation that I’ll share below, and I’ve been thinking about milestones ever since.

Is the First the Best?

As I consider my own milestones, one of the earliest springs to mind. It was seventeen years ago this summer—so long ago that the means by which I shared the news with my wife in her office was AOL Instant Messenger (remember that? If so, I’ll bet these prompt sound-effects will take you back)—when I finished the first complete draft of my first trilogy.

The epic tale had been years in the telling, mostly as a sideline “hobby.” Many friends and family didn’t even know it existed. I worked as a carpenter during much of the writing of it, and only an auspicious (if painful) shoulder injury forced me to take the time and space to sit still and push through to the finish line.

I didn’t even pause to celebrate completing books one or two of that first trilogy, mostly because I understood that I wasn’t finished telling the story. There were times when I felt like I never would finish. So typing “The End” felt… incredible. Few of my accomplishments—whether writing-related or not—had been quite so satisfying. And by then I was damn-near fifty. Maybe it was because even I had doubted it would happen. Maybe it was because almost no one else knew it was happening—revealing that I had truly done it for myself and no one else.

Every instance of typing “The End” since is invariably compared to that first time. Which I think is why my wife and I so clearly recall the day. What we did to commemorate it has become our go-to celebration for finishing manuscripts (we procure steaks for the grill, fresh Caesar salad fixings, and top-shelf Cab to pour …

We are delighted to bring you an interview with WU contributor and prolific author Boo Walker, to discuss his latest release. THE ENGLISH BOOKSTORE IN BOLOGNA is out now, having launched this past Tuesday, and is already garnering great reviews and ongoing buzz, including this:

“Boo Walker delivers a sparkling, bighearted novel about reinvention, regret, and the risky magic of connection. Set against the irresistible charm of Bologna’s porticoed streets, his story features a band of misfit toys who embody the wit, longing, and beautiful flaws that mark their humanity. With humor and tenderness, Walker reminds us that it’s never too late to begin again―and that love, like a good book, can find you when you least expect it. A delight from first page to last.” ―Susan Wiggs, New York Times bestselling author of Wayward Girls

Ready to hear more? Here’s Boo!

Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?

BW: My sixteenth novel, The English Bookstore in Bologna, is about a group of misfit expats who find the missing pieces of themselves in a charming English bookstore in Bologna, Italy.

Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

BW: The seeds of this novel came to me while I was living in Valencia, Spain, as an expat. I’d met so many interesting people, expats like me who were basically running to or from something, and a story of such runaways came alive in my imagination. Then I read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin, and I felt a desperate need to write my own novel set in a bookstore. Considering I wanted to set the story in Europe, it was only natural that it would be an English-language bookstore. I ran into a snag, though. My publisher, Lake Union, didn’t bite on the idea. Fast-forward a couple of years, and I pitched it again because I couldn’t shake these colorful characters from my head. This time, I suggested I set the tale in the wonderful city of Bologna, and they jumped on it.

Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

BW: I have five featured expats with significant arcs in my story, four of whom have POVs. Sandy, the curmudgeonly bookstore owner, is arguably the most damaged. After years of suffering, she’s shut herself off from others. The only …

When I set out to start writing my first book in 2009, which turned into my debut novel, a vital bit of writing advice became my North Star in the whole process—a star that remains fixed to this day. I actually don’t remember where I originally heard it from, but it resonated, and I kept this advice in the forefront of my mind. It is something I now share with every student in every writing class and workshop I do, no matter if I am talking about novels or screenplays, because it is invaluable.

What is this magical piece of writing advice you wonder?

It is simple yet powerful:

When you are writing, pretend that you are telling the story to your best friend.

That is the advice!

When I started writing my first book, I was stuck on page four for weeks, without a clue how to move forward. Then I started saying the above advice, over and over every day, and slowly I started to write as if I was telling the story to my dearest friend.

So whenever you are wrestling with the words, the plot points, or staring at the blank page, think about trying to explain what is happening to your best friend. You may find that not only do the words start flowing, but you relax, and your voice strengthens. Because we are our most authentic selves with our best friends, the people in our inner circle we can laugh and cry with. When you bring that same intentionality to your writing, suddenly you aren’t writing anymore, you are sharing a story with someone you love.

That is something I personally strive for because it brings a different element to the work. It also helps silence your inner-critic and the “writerly” side of your brain. Because you don’t want something that feels written, you want a story that comes to life.

Now take a look at your manuscript and see if that is how you would tell the story to your best friend. Write from that viewpoint and see what happens.

I’m so grateful I was given that advice and held onto it, because it has guided me through the years with every book, and I hope it can help you too.

Do you have a top-tier piece of advice you have held on to over the years? Please share it with us. I’d …

Email readers, heads up! For the full effect, pause after the excerpt and decide: Would you turn the page? Vote and then scroll for the reveal!

Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page.

Here’s the question:

Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents.

So, before you read the excerpt, take 30 cents from your pocket or purse. When you’re done, decide what to do with those three dimes or the quarter and a nickel. It’s not much, but think of paying 30 cents for the rest of the chapter every time you sample a book’s first page. In a sense, time is money for a literary agent working her way through a raft of submissions, and she is spending that resource whenever she turns a page.

Please judge by storytelling quality, not by genre or content—some reject an opening page immediately because of genre, but that’s not a good-enough reason when the point is to analyze for storytelling strength.

How strong is the prologue opening of this novel—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer?

September 1933

Downtown Drugstore had a bell on the door that made a single tink sound when you opened it. Oxford Pharmacy had two bells on its door so it was more of a ta-tink, though nothing to startle over. But the Gathright-Reed Drug Co. door bore a foot-long strip of brass sleigh bells on its knob, which, when turned, sent metal balls clanging to announce somebody’s coming in the dang store so you better turn around and look see who it is. And if you did, you’d see me.

At the pay counter to my right, a heavy woman was buying something. Pripp, the nosiest of my sister Frances’s many friends. Her blond bobbed hair headed more left and right than down on this humid September morning. “Birdie, hadn’t seen you in a while,” she said. She was paying for a pair of rayons sized, I’m sure, extra-know-it-all.

“Hey, Pripp,”