Many of my new business calls focus on:

• The differences between marketing and PR
• What does media/PR for an author look like
• Why reviews are hard to come by
• What leads to sales
• Fact vs. fiction in terms of book tours
• Why advertising doesn’t directly sell books but why you should still do it
• Why social media isn’t for everyone and building a platform takes a long time
• Why the word viral should be used minimally
• Why I can’t promise one’s book will be a BookTok sensation

Here are a few articles in recent months that every writer should carefully read.

On Book Reviews

The New York Times, Dwight Garner, Where Have All the Book Reviews Gone: What the rise of A.I. and the gutting of books coverage across U.S. media will mean for literature

On Book Tours

So You Want to Write a Book/ Substack, Rea Fry, A Book Tour Isn’t About Selling Books: The Paradox of the Modern Book Tour

What Actually Sells a Book?

C-SPAN’s “America’s Book Club”: Author Ann Patchett discusses what she believes drives book sales.

Summer Reads in 2026

Town & Country, Emily Burack, The Hottest Beach Read of the Summer is Nonfiction: Forget packing a romance or a multigenerational family saga in your tote. Summer 2026 is all about narrative nonfiction and buzzy memoirs

On Book Identity and Discovery 

Writing, Marketing and the Universe with James Blatch / Substack: The New Rules of Book Discovery

What’s Your Social Media Book Content Saying?

Attention Economy / Substack, Leigh Stein: On Pity Marketing

And How Does That Make You Feel? BookTok and “Emotional Weather Reports”

The Point, Selen Ozturk, Common Readers: Booktok’s Critical Values

Have you read anything on book marketing and PR that you’d like to share? Drop it in the comments below.…

Book bans didn’t make the headline so much in May, save Texas. That state is trying to resurrect the proposed book rating system, which would essentially ban books, including many classics. AI dominated the headlines and not just in publishing. The Association of American Publishers is working to stem the tide of books that are pirated using AI. CEO of Barnes & Noble says he’s okay with selling AI-generated books, with one stipulation. Major publishers are suing Meta for infringing on authors’ copyright by using books to train AI. It’s not just print books that are being hijacked by AI. YouTube is crawling with AI-produced audiobooks, Spotify’s move to audiobooks is going gangbusters, but is AI actually a threat to audiobooks? Hachette employees have unionized, read what the employees have to say about it. Register of Copyrights in D.C. has been fired just two days after the Librarian of Congress was fired. The Authors Guild condemns the administration’s actions.

AI

The New York Times’ take on the Meta copyright lawsuit

The Association of American Publishers’ take on the Meta copyright lawsuit

Barnes and Noble okay with selling AI-written books

How AI Is Changing the Publishing Industry

Barnes and Noble’s CEO triggers call for boycott for selling AI-written books

Association of American Publishers establishes partnership to protect against piracy

Audiobooks

Audible opens a bookless bookstore

YouTube crawling with AI-produced audiobooks

The AI threat to audiobooks

Spotify’s move to audiobooks is working

Spotify launches an audiobook creation tool powered by elevenlabs

Book Bans

Texas asks court to resurrect book-rating law

Libraries

After cuts, library advocates call for increased funding for 2027

Publishing

Author faces backlash over including Israeli character in new book picked for Reese’s Book Club

Is Substack now the new book tour?

Charlamagne tha God and modern Black publishing

Conversations with Hachette workers after unionizing

Is the book world too obsessed with tropes?

Are Hardcover Books a Dying Art?

Sweeping default judgment against “anna’s archive” pirate site

Association of American Publishers say first quarter publishing industry up 0.9%

Authors Guild condemns firing of Register of Copyrights in D.C.…

I am not a serious yogi.

This feels important to establish before I say anything else about yoga, because I don’t want you to picture somebody who wakes up at 5 a.m. to flow through an hour of sun salutations before practicing crow pose. Earnest respect for the people who do wake up at 5 a.m. for sun salutations and crow pose: you are built different than me.

The way I’m built is more like a ramshackle old rowboat. I float except for the times when I’m sinking. I do yoga except for the times when I don’t (there’s a joke about boat pose in here somewhere)(I hate boat pose). I write except for the times when I’m not writing.

But like the rowboat keeps bobbing in the waves until someone drags it to shore, I keep doing yoga, and I keep writing.

Balance Does Not Equal Stillness

I do yoga because I have been stiff as a ramshackle old board since childhood (shoutout to my high school PE teacher who called me “remarkably inflexible for a female”). Because I’m inconsistent in my practice, I’m still stiff as an old board, but probably less stiff than I would be if I didn’t practice at all.

Ironically for someone stiff as an old board, I really enjoy tree pose. I like it in part because I can find it, lose it, and find it again within the same breath.

Here is what I mean: in tree pose, we balance on one leg, with the other foot pressed somewhere against our inner thigh. We press our hands together at the heart or reach our arms up high, and we try to be still. Beginners think stillness is the goal—that a good tree pose is one where nothing moves.

A good yoga teacher once asked our class if we had ever seen a tree be totally, completely still.

The answer, of course, is no: thick trunks may stand firm, but even a branch bowing under gravity or a leaf catching a tiny air current is still movement.

Similarly, tree pose is a continuous negotiation. Our feet press into the floor and the floor presses back. Our ankles make tiny adjustments. Our gazes—our drishti, the fixed point we’re supposed to stare at—holds steady while the rest of our bodies are making micro-corrections so subtle they’re nearly invisible.

Sometimes we even lose our balance …

This matters not only in terms of readability. Machines already write well enough for many applications. Eventually machines will write fiction indistinguishable from human-written fiction, though it will be necessarily and always to some degree imitative. (So is some human-written fiction, frankly, if we’re honest.)

However, humans are humans and machines are machines. What, exactly, do human beings bring to the page that machines cannot? That, in turn, leads to the question, what exactly does it mean—biology apart—to be human? There is lived human experience, of course, but even more than that there is human consciousness.

Philosophers have tried to define it. Brain and computer scientists have struggled to understand its mechanism. For fun, you can go down the rabbit holes of “episodic memory”, “punctuated equilibrium”, “instinct inference”, “mental time travel”, “integrated information theory”, “recurrent processing theory”, “global neuronal workspace theory”, “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” (maybe skip that one, I’m told it’s wrong), and so on but come no closer to understanding what human consciousness is, never mind how it operates in the brain. Even thinking itself is a mystery. The truth is, scientists have no idea.

There are, however, qualities of humanness which machines do not have. Animals may or may not have them to limited degrees—again, scientists have no idea—but the fact is that certain qualities distinguish us as human. And here’s my point: those qualities can be more strongly built into your fiction, regardless of your story type, style, intent, or your commercial pathway.

What follows is my hypothesis of the Seven Qualities Which Comprise Human Consciousness. After explaining each, I’ll suggest prompts to grow their applications in your current WIP.

The Seven Qualities Which Comprise Human Consciousness

1. Self-Awareness. At any given moment, I perceive myself to be in a certain emotional and mental state. I have a view of myself which will be different an hour from now, a day from now, and ten years from now. I have an understanding of myself—a temporary definition of “me”—and I am aware of it.
    
   In the story moment you are writing currently, what is your POV character’s view of himself/herself/themselves? What does it mean to be “me” in this moment? What is that

I wrote a lot of words that day, but I wasn’t present in my real life.

It’s a pattern I’m not proud of.

Living with a novel in progress means carrying around a hidden universe that can simultaneously feel like a gift and a burden. It’s my job to hold and shape this imagined world long enough to make it real for readers, without losing myself in the process.

Slipping into a story world can feel glorious, but it can easily become unhealthy if we slide too far. So how do we maintain a balance between the real and the imagined? How do we stay committed to our writing, but also make sure we answer those important calls?

Tension Between Real and Imaginary Worlds

I often wonder if everyone can tell I’m carrying a dynamic universe in my mind. When I’m on the subway or in yoga class, is it obvious to the people around me? I worry that bits of this world are oozing out of my ears when I’m not paying attention, or that fragments of it will escape when I sneeze and someone will trip over them.

As a novelist working on my fourth book, I am constantly living with at least one invented world bouncing around in the confines of my skull. I may look like I’m casually waiting for the light to change at an intersection, but really, I’m probably deep in conversation with the characters who live in my head. It’s a lot of responsibility to keep them fed, to serve up poetic justice when necessary, and to create well-timed obstacles to keep everyone alert. I want the world to be lush and vivid and full of texture, so I serve as city planner, historian, architect, ecologist, therapist, and many other roles.

It doesn’t take much to yank me out of the real world and drop me into my imagined one. The crunch of dried leaves under my feet in the park, the scent of lilacs in the spring air. When I’m away from my manuscript, I feel it tugging on me. At social gatherings, I sometimes pretend I’m …

You can do anything. You can write a book. You can get an agent, if that’s what you want, a real powerhouse. You can get a great advance. You can click with your editor in a life-changing way. You can emerge from the editing process with a beautiful book, a wonderful book, a book readers will love. You can write a bestseller. Then you can write another one, a second book that readers embrace just as warmly as the first. You can do this over and over. You can be a career writer for the rest of your life.

Is it hard to believe statements like this? Impossible? Well, in some cases, of course it is. Things like selling thousands of copies aren’t truly within our control. When I say “anything is possible,” I don’t mean it literally.

But I want you to believe it, for yourself, just for a while.

Writers seeking publication go through so many tough times. The “query trenches” can be so disheartening, so full of rejection. Once you’ve published a book, things aren’t much better: you still spend so much time worrying about whether your book will be well-received, and even if it is, the chance for disappointment with your second book is right around the corner.

The world will tell you that you can’t have the dream you want. Writing your book will be demoralizing, slow, rocky, or worse. Life will get in the way. Agents will reject you. You will have disappointing experiences with editors or other people important to your process. Your life’s work may be met with either a sea of negative reviews or resounding silence. Copies of your book will sit unpurchased. The odds are against you at the beginning, in the middle, the whole way through.

More than likely, you will hear, over and over, that what you want is impossible.

So, for a while, don’t listen.

Try the exercise. Tune out the voices saying that you can’t and tune in to your own voice telling you that you can.

Believe that you can make it happen. Believe that your mind is capable of a masterpiece. Believe that your book will find a grateful waiting audience. Believe that rejection is temporary, because it is. Believe that no one can stop you but you. Believe that your work deserves publication as much as anyone else’s. Believe that your idea will …

I collect hobbies.

In true ADHD fashion, my interests are expansive, my search history littered with deep dives into any number of subjects, and my living space full to the brim with all the stuff one accumulates if they are, like me, attempting to fully live up to the idea of becoming a “Jack of all trades” (and master of none).

(Also, in truly circular fashion, one of the hobbies I’ve collected, much to my mother’s chagrin, is the hobby of collecting itself– books, but also various dolls (American Girl and Disney collectible dolls primarily), along with cute mini-backpacks, quirky overalls, and of course, supplies for all my non-collecting hobbies).

While writing is the primary creative pursuit that I’ve been known for among friends and family, dating even as far back as late elementary and middle school, it is not the only one I’m interested in.

This past year in particular, I’ve found myself drawn to non-written art forms, partly as a reprieve from having to think about the current state of the world, and partly in the hopes of rekindling a love of creating for its own sake, for my own curiosity and satisfaction, separate from the pressures of commodification (aka the publishing industry).

As I was pondering what to write for this post, I began thinking about these two other art forms (crochet and watercolor painting), and what, if anything, they have to teach me about writing, particularly as I continue to struggle with writing my next book.

Crochet is something I first picked up a few summers ago– as much to my own surprise as my family’s, given the ill-fated childhood attempts of learning knitting from my mom and grandmother, and a history of disaster as it relates to sewing (once, in an attempt to sew a hole in the crotch of my jeans, I managed to sew both legs of my pants together. And yes, this was hand-sewing. I don’t even have the excuse of using a sewing machine).

I started with beginner amigurumi (stuffed animal) kits from the company Woobles, then quickly moved onto more complicated and interesting patterns from Etsy. If you’ve read some of my past posts for …

Maybe it’s the current state of the world: the term troubled barely touches it. For me, there’s also the phenomenon of growing old, and the need to accept the inevitable changes in body and mind that come with ageing. Clocks are ticking loudly on both global and personal levels. On the latter, my current inability to focus on the next writing project may be down to depression, anxiety, or plain exhaustion. Maybe all three, who knows? The Muse does not wait around until you are ready for her inspiration; she comes and goes at her own will, and if she drops in only to find you unwilling or unable to listen, she heads off again to wherever Muses hang out in their time off. I imagine a glitzy cocktail bar (The Constellation?) where the seven of them regularly catch up and exchange side-splitting stories of their encounters with humankind. Clearly my writer’s brain is still working on some level, because that thought conjures up a monstrous bartender, a motley crew of other customers, a babble of voices. Thalia and Erato are shrieking with laughter, in danger of spilling their champagne. All seven wear gowns like those featured at the recent Met Gala.

Muse or no muse, at this moment I am actually writing, thinking I can at least manage a blog post, even if the next major project exists more in my mind than on the page at this point. Small steps, folks. It helps me to write in the company of peers, away from home, at least some of the time. Especially today, when my next-door neighbour is loudly demolishing a brick wall in preparation to rebuild. Our writers’ group is gathered in a quiet area of a public library. Not far off, small children are discovering new books with the help of a kind librarian. The vibe is positive; the company is good.

I’m trying to follow my own advice about getting through the fallow times. Fields are left fallow for a season or more to let the soil regain its natural health, to build up nutrients. For writers, the fallow times might be seen as allowing us not only to …

You’re working through a draft and things happen that you didn’t plan—and you had a plan, or at least you thought you did. A character is acting out of character. You’re questioning whether the story is the genre you thought it was when you began. You type out words that seem to have come from the ether. Crows appear whenever two characters try to tell each other the truth.

If you’ve lived some shade of the above, have you wondered what it means when a story seems to have a will of its own?

We may feel frustrated by our inability to write to plan, by our tenuous grasp of the story. We might even feel shame for losing a sense of control.

But what if these little blips on the radar aren’t so much signaling what’s lost as what’s possibly been found?

Meet Abductive Reasoning

Decades ago, I was part of a critique group that included a member who used to joke about how story fragments would come to her. “What’s that?” She’d feign trying to tune a radio to nix the static. “Come in, muse, but more clearly this time! Over!” We’d all laugh, but at the time I hadn’t yet experienced the phenomenon myself. I did, shortly thereafter, when the story I was writing suddenly apparated a dead twin. (Hello, namesake from my debut novel.)

We don’t build stories only by planning forward. We work like investigators by noticing the unplanned fragments offered up by our minds, then inferring what might be behind those fragments and if they might be a key to making the whole story gel.

My favorite example of this is Brunonia Barry, whose NYT’s bestselling novel The Lace Reader, had a twist that made people gasp—and made Brunonia gasp, too, when it first appeared on the page. Here’s an outtake from the two-part interview I did with her in 2007.

About two-thirds of the way through the draft, the ending I’d planned changed. I’d had it outlined, but it didn’t matter. I remember getting to the big surprise—a surprise to me as well—and yelling, “No!” In retrospect I would say that I’d always been writing it so that the true ending would work—I just didn’t know it. I had to leave the story for about two weeks. I got up and walked away, and said, “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”

Jane Austen offers deep insights into human behavior, even in the person of her most minor and unlikeable characters. One seemingly throw-away line that has haunted me for years comes out of the mouth of Lady Catherine de Bourgh. While criticizing Elizabeth’s skill at the pianoforte, she remarks on her own history with the instrument, “If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.”

On its face, her comment assumes a grand superiority and a certain tone-deafness. Does she really think her exalted social status translates to superior capacity, even in skills she’s never acquired? What makes her disparage Lizzy’s skill in the same breath that she invites her to come play more often in her home?

Underneath Lady Catherine’s arrogance I see a sad vulnerability in that verb “should.” Today we use “would” in this context: if this had happened, then that would have followed. But here the verb is “should.” What if we read the entire sentence with today’s meaning? “I ought to have been a great proficient” holds a lot more wistfulness than judgment.

I love music. I had the talent and the inclination to play piano, but I never had the opportunity to learn, I sense her possibly saying here. My life path ought to have included great proficiency in this musical skill, but I never had the chance to try. Also I’m sad that this soulful-eyed, confident, and articulate young woman of lesser breeding has supplanted my only child in the affections of a young man I’ve known and valued since his birth, but that’s a separate issue. Or is it? Lady Catherine yearns for two things she does not have. The window for obtaining the first–extraordinary musical skill–closed long ago. Now she sees the second one closing as well. No wonder she is spiteful and petty in her assessment of Lizzy’s piano playing.

We can all imagine we’d be good at something we’ve never actually tried. Those who do anything well make it look effortless. Longing for proficiency can make fools of us all, but inclination does not equal mastery.

Not even if you really, really want it.

Not even if, like Lady Catherine, you have incredible taste and a lot of money. And relevant to us: not even if you read a lot.

Which brings me to writing. Someone sent me this Ira Glass quote at the start …