Debuting: How Do You Measure Success?

A Conversation with Roohi Choudhry (part 2 of 3)

Last month, I chatted with my pub date buddy, Roohi Choudhry, about our experiences as debut authors. We met through Poets and Writers’ Get the Word Out Publicity Incubator and, since March 25, we’ve been experiencing being debut authors in tandem. Roohi’s brilliant novel, Outside Women, follows two women, separated by centuries, creating lives outside of patriarchal and colonial structures. I can’t put it down. Seriously, go get a copy! I had the chance to speak with Roohi about our experiences with everything from publicity anxieties to how we measure the success of our books. We’re publishing this conversation in three parts on both our Substacks (check out Roohi’s Being of Clay, Lover of Words!) over the next few weeks. In this second part, we talk about how we measure the success of our debuts and figuring out our identities as published authors.

Roohi

So people are asking me – or starting to ask me– “How is the book doing?” And I don't know how to answer that!

Miranda

Yeah, I don't know how to gauge it. Even if I go with the conventional metric of book sales, I don't particularly know how to judge my book sales right now, whether the sales are good for this book from this press at this time or not. And if I'm judging by my own metrics, which is more about the book finding its ideal readers – is the book finding the readers in the world that will love it, that I wrote it for, that need it? – I don't know how to measure that either. I don't know. I hope it is. How are you experiencing that?

Roohi

I feel really confused by it, because like you said I don't even know how to interpret book sales numbers at this stage. I don't think they tell you that so early anyway. But even if they did, I don't want to fixate on that. I think one of the benefits of being with a smaller press is that, obviously, sales still matter to everybody – there's no getting away from it – but they don’t have the same kind of laser-focus on sales. And the expectations of sales numbers are lower.

But then, keeping that in mind, how should I be feeling about my publicity efforts? Several months ago, I was going through this process of figuring out what success means to me, what I actually want for the book, and how I should make decisions about where to spend my energy. And I found that question to be so opaque. Every metric I would come up with would end up being another source of anxiety. I would end up on this train of thought of ‘what if I don't get this review, then the book won't find its readers.’ It felt like a trap to even think of less conventional views of success.

Miranda

One of the things that I've started doing is trying to remember the little dreams that I had for the book that have come true, the things where I thought, “Gosh, if it does this I'm gonna be so happy.” So, for instance, I’ve always dreamed of having a book in store on the shelves in Powell's here in Portland. And I got to see my book on the small press shelf and that was something that I set out as a marker of success for this book. And generally, what I'm finding is success with this book is so much about moments of connection with readers. I do a reading and someone comes up to me and talks to me about the book or something they're thinking about or a theme in the book that's resonating with them. Just connecting with people here in my Portland literary community. Getting messages from readers, or collaborating on a project with other writers, or having conversations with booksellers.

That, in some ways, feels like a gift of being in Portland which has this very warm literary community and that has felt really nice in terms of being able to experience what's happening with my book locally a little bit more than I think I otherwise would.

Roohi

Those little moments are so important! It's really helpful to keep them close because they can drift away sometimes with all the other anxieties. But even yesterday, a friend told me that he just finished reading the book and spoke about it at length and was really excited. And that felt so – I didn't even know how to absorb how amazing that feels. It is so rewarding in a way that I couldn't have even really predicted.

When I thought about success a while ago, I had this idea in my mind of “I want to clear the path for future books” – whatever that might mean. I guess I thought that if it meets certain markers of external success then that will clear the path for another book in the marketplace, or maybe I’d have a little bit of ease that I haven't had with publishing this book.

But now that I'm at this stage, I'm often feeling like I never want to do this again! People have asked me, what's your next book? And I do have stuff I'm working on and always will. But in terms of the publishing process – do I ever want to do that again? So now I think I need to manage this process in a way that makes me want to do it again. That’s what clearing the path might mean.

Miranda

That's so difficult. For me there's definitely been this sense of feeling that if the process were any bigger than it is now – I have a small book with a small press and, I don't want to say small ambitions, but, you know, I'm not going out on a national book tour – and I still feel massively overwhelmed. I would like the next book to have more reach than this one. I would like to do more on the publicity side for the next one. And that's something that I would need to really plan for much more intentionally.

Roohi

I'm also wondering what is the balance between the publicity activities that are necessary versus what we really want to do? I'm asking myself that a lot these days. Especially when it comes to the kinds of things that I’m told I “should” be doing as a debut author – are they actually even helping my book? Is whatever I’m doing just based on some probably-outdated idea of what sells books? Or am I doing it because I want to do it?

Miranda

I think that seems like a very good way forward. I mean we published the books. We did it. We did the thing. So why did we do that? And what do we want to do with that now? Maybe it's about creating what we want to create now, having published the book, rather than “Oh I have to do all these things because of this list or this blog or this award or these sales numbers.” Maybe it's more about continuing to do the things that we actually want to do and are drawn to create.

Roohi

I remember someone saying to me a long time ago that your first book is like a calling card. And I think it can be more than that – it can be postcard size maybe – because the book is saying a bunch of the things that we are passionate about and then allowing us to introduce ourselves and what we can do. But sometimes that gets lost in all the to-do lists and stuff.

Miranda

Life is so much that way! So much of the to-do list, all the things that you should be doing, must be doing, all the emails you need to send, all the bills you need to pay, all of it. But maybe it's about trying to find a way through that and hopefully not turning the writing into yet another item on the to-do Iist.

Roohi

I don't know if this resonates for you, but it's been hard to even figure out what I actually want to do. It’s harder to gauge that for myself than it used to be. This sense of overwhelm makes it harder to form clear decisions and opinions. So I’m wondering: how do I get back to a place of being clear about what I want?

Miranda

I think that's very true and for me that's very much about having such a high sense of stakes. For me there's a sense of, “Oh my gosh it's my first novel! What if I fuck it up? What if I don't do the thing, the one thing, that I should have done and then I look back and realize I didn't do the thing?” But maybe there isn't a thing and maybe the stakes aren't actually that high and maybe, instead, I already did the thing. We already wrote the books. We already published the books. They're already out in the world. Maybe everything we do now is just –

Roohi

– gravy! One of the lines that I find the most pernicious that I'm sure you've heard too is – “you only get to debut once.” It just really is not helpful.

Miranda

It's absolutely terrifying! That "it's your one chance" thinking.

Roohi

And then a little corollary to that horrible line is – “the first six to eight weeks after pub is everything, is make or break.”

Miranda

Going into my pub date – our pub date because we're pub date buddies – I had this overwhelming sense of, “Okay. It's the next two months now. Make or break.” And coming off the back end of that I'm feeling this immense relief. I did that part. That part is done. Anything that I messed up is already messed up. Anything that I didn't do is already not done. And I knew that coming off the other side of this I would feel less pressure. Partly just because everyone makes such a big deal of that first initial period of time.

Roohi

It could be interesting to have another one of these conversations in a year and see what we're saying then. But at this stage, I'm already feeling like – I think that was a lie! I’m noticing how many opportunities are still unfolding. At least two media interviews that I pitched so long ago are happening now. And other inquiries or possibilities are slowly revealing themselves. Obviously, some outlets run according to a certain schedule and they really are only interested for those first few weeks. But for everybody else, it's not like they're saying “well it's actually more than seven weeks now so forget it.” I finally heard from a bookstore that I was trying to get in contact with for ages and they said, “we’re going to put your book on the new fiction table.” And I was so relieved – great! It’s still new!

Miranda

That's terrible. It's been out less than two months and we're like, “Is it still new? Is it new enough?” Aside from the bookstore I did my launch at, I don't feel like my book arrived at bookstores until at least three weeks after the pub date. I think this is also a small press thing and I know there were some delays with certain shipments, but that was one where if I had thought, “Oh it's pub day and it's not in these stores. I guess it's never gonna be there.” That would have been very sad.

Roohi

I remember that in one of our Get the Word Out sessions, a writer asked Jennifer [the publicity mentor] – “when can I basically be done with pitching.” I think Jennifer said maybe six months. That feels like a long time right now when I want to be done already.

Miranda

One of the ways I'm trying to think of the next few months – so summer – is that I'm still a debut author who's just had a book come out. I definitely don't want to be spending the summer pitching and creating events and running around and doing that. But there are still things I want to do in that time period. It's a period where I want to think about how I want to transition into just being an author who has a book that's out in the world. What is that gonna look like for me in an ongoing way, beyond this initial book promotion space?

Roohi

That's so interesting. What does it look like? I also don't know fully. I spent so long saying, “no, I don't have a book yet” to that question.

Miranda

When I think about that it makes me feel really happy because I'm not in that space anymore. I'm still in that I-just-had-a-book-come-out space, but that won’t last forever and then I just get to be an author who has a book. And I get to work on the next one and do the author things that I choose and that feels nice.

An Exercise in Book Dreaming

This was an exercise that our publicity mentor, Jennifer Huang, took us through during our time in Poets and Writers’ Get the Word Out Publicity Incubator. They suggested that we close our eyes and imagine our publication date. What would that day look like? What might we feel? What would we want to feel? What would we want that day to be? Who would we want to spend that day with and what would we want to be doing?

People suggest all kinds of things to do on a publication day: Stay offline! Post on Instagram! Throw a party! Have your book launch! Stay home! Get out of town! Be with loved ones! Write! Don’t write! And, really, you can take any approach or any combination of approaches. What would a fulfilling publication day be for you?

I found this imagining to be immensely helpful in allowing me to consider the aspects of my publication date that I had some agency in and use that agency to shape my own experience. So much of writing is about dreaming something into being and an exercise like this allows us to do just that, to dream a day into being, to shape a small but important moment in our own writing lives.