Author Questionnaire

What a pain in the

Friends! How are you? I hope there is sun where you are!

So, my journey to publication is progressing apace, and I’m waiting for edits back on my full draft. (Please, Stephanie, take your time. I am HAPPY not to look at that thing for a while!) In the meantime, other wheels are turning, and the publicity and marketing machine is sputtering to life. I know that my cover is in process somewhere (eeeee!) and I’ve been asked to fill out my Author Questionnaire.

What’s that, you say? Many authors who’ve filled one out before will tell you it’s a long, pointless, tedious document that no one uses but that publicity makes you fill out. And they are wrong! It’s a very long, useful, tedious document that publicity makes you fill out. The publicity and marketing teams use this document, which could be a half dozen pages long, as a starting point to make your publicity and marketing plan.

What kinds of questions does it include? What’s your home town? What professional organizations are you part of? Do you have a newsletter? How many subscribers? Do you identify as any cultural, ethnic, or religious group? What is the phonetic spelling of your name? Are you on a first name basis with any booksellers? Among many others. There are no wrong, or required, answers and you won’t be graded on it, I promise.

It also asks for things like anecdotes in connection with writing your book. Some of your favorite authors and books. Comps for your book. Your bio. A brief description of your book. And other things that seem random but totally aren’t.

And when you’re asked to do this, it feels like homework! A huge worksheet right before spring break! Ugh, that teacher is the worst. And while I don’t think I would sign up to fill out extra ones in my spare time, and it is annoying and a not-quick-to-complete task, these things are actually useful and worth your time.

I filled mine out over a few days so that A: I could stop when I got bored and B: I could let ideas percolate and surface from the depths of my brain. I remembered something I forgot to tell my accountant at 3am last night, so sometimes it takes a while for the good ideas to arrive. You’re going to spend more time than you think and/or want to on these questions and it’s going to feel like hey isn’t this the stuff THEY’RE supposed to do?? Why am I giving them a brief description of my book? Shouldn’t they know???? And, like, no. Your editor could probably give them a brief description of your book, but they are doing so so so many other things! This is something you are capable of doing. Haven’t you said you just want someone to tell you what to do re: marketing and publicity? Well, this is it.

Even if you fill yours out fairly quickly, it can bring up a lot of ~~feelings~~ while doing so. You might not have a lot of answers to fill in! No newsletter, lackluster twitter following, not good at booktok. You aren’t alone! And when it comes to the part where you’re supposed to write down the name of every big shot/influencer/blurb possibility, it might make you want to run and hide! It can be very hard to ask people to blurb your book, and this form isn’t even the asking part. It’s just the hey maybe this person part. You aren’t alone in these feelings, either.

But (tough love time) you have to get over it. First of all, no one is going to see this except your publishing team. Second, no on is going to point and laugh and say omg they think BIG SHOT is going to blurb them ahahahahahha. Third of all, there will be a whole ‘nother discussion before actual blurbs (and influencer copies and all those things) go out, so this list is purely brainstorming and connection-making. It gives your team an idea of who you know (even if it’s no one) and who you want to know and that can help in how they sort the huge rolodex of contacts in their brains. They have to start somewhere, and this is one point where you can help them start. It also prevents a future instance of you saying omg they thought THAT BIG SHOT would like my book? What were they thinking??????? You can solve this by….telling them who you think might be interested in your book. You know your book best! Really!

You’re going to fill out this huge form and then…..little of that information is going to be used in a visible or recognizable way, and that’s normal. Mostly, it’s just because you aren’t seeing your team reach out to XYZ professional org or PDQ media contact. All book publicity and marketing is a buckshot approach—lots of things go out, few things hit the mark. This is normal! This is how it works for everyone! But if your team doesn’t have this information to even get started, then they, and you, will be just that much farther behind. Marketing and publicizing your book is different than any other book. Help your team by telling them what you know.

You don’t know what’s going to resonate with your specific marketer or publicist. You might write down a podcast you would love to be on, and that reminds them of a very similar podcast that they’ve had a lot of success placing authors on, and when that airs, you get a big publicity bump! And it happened because your suggestion lead to another suggestion, and you worked together as a team to get there. You might take a big swing and be like I really want to be a Reese Book Club pick and while they pitch you for that, they also pitch you for other book clubs and another one comes through and wow, that’s great!!! You just never know.

As far as process goes for filling this out, this is what I did: I went through and answered all the easy ones. For some, I went back to my book proposal (you could also try your query letter) and cribbed from there, including some description from the overview, comps, and my bio, edited for this purposes as necessary. When it came to blurbs, social media contacts, etc, you know what I did? I scrolled through all my followers on various platforms and wrote down any name I felt like I would not be embarrassed to say to their face “hey, I wrote a book! Can I send it to you?” Now, I know I am a little less allergic to doing that than others may be, because of my personality and experience, but if you can’t advocate for your book, who will? (And you very likely won’t actually have to ask this to anyone’s actual face, so don’t panic. Just email.) So, heads up Celeste Ng. You’re getting an email in a year or so, lol. You don’t have to do it this way, but if you don’t know where to start, maybe this will help.

Overall, when you get to the Author Questionnaire part, I hope you celebrate getting to that part at all—it might have been a long road! And I hope you can approach it with bemused acquiescence, like when you have to fill out a form by hand instead of typing it out. (You don’t have to do this form longhand.) Is it fun? No. Is it helpful? Probably more than you think.

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It’s a double pub day over here at Morhaim Literary!

First up is a fantastic middle grade novel by Caela Carter: The World Divided by Piper, about ambitious Piper poised to reach all her goals, until puberty hits. She’s been taking puberty blockers to manage her early onset puberty since she was six, and now it’s time to come off them. In a starred review. The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books called it an “updated Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret.” And it’s an amazing read.

And for something completely different, we have Lee Mandelo’s THE WOODS ALL BLACK, “an historical Appalachian gothic novella set during 1929 in the eastern counties of Kentucky. This one is, as the dedication says, for ‘all the brilliant angry fags and dykes and gender outlaws who came before, and who taught me how to survive,’” as the author says on Instagram. (See? Authors write the best blurbs.) It’s got monsters, too. And it is ALSO amazing.

Both these very different books are about gender and tbh, I love that about my clients and books in general.

XOXOXOOX,

Kate