Be Authentic, They Said. Sell More Books, They Said.

It's 2010, and I'm at a writer's conference, sitting in a workshop on marketing a debut novel. The session begins with real talk of dismal sales numbers and the unlikelihood of Oprah coming to save us. The well-dressed speaker begins with talk of Seth Godin’s book Tribes, but as his Red Bull kicks in, his focus veers into Glengarry Glen Ross “always be closing” territory.

(Hard Truths About Getting Media Attention.)

"Once you hook 'em, you're in. Tell them what they need. Create desire. Do not let them go," the presenter says with the confidence of a good-looking man.

A hot creeping anxiety has me fidgeting in my chair. If anyone had asked me why, I couldn't have articulated it clearly. It would take me years to put into words the reason I wanted out of that room.

I take a sip of water, and watch the woman to my right scribble sales lingo that is new to me—and likely to her, as her shorthand is off. “Capture the lead” becomes “Capture Lede,” and “nurture connections” becomes Nurture!! with two exclamation points.

The speaker tells us to get a Twitter account—so quaint now—and to be authentic. 

“Authenticity and relationships," he says, "are the key to book sales." Next to me the woman underlines this sentence and circles it twice.

We are told to say hello to the other attendees and start a newsletter. Share emails. Make friends. As I smile and hand over my contact information, I wonder if these people are my new writing buddies, or my first leads?

Both, I guess. Although I doubt if the tattooed man on my left—Kyle@Kylewriteshorror.com—is interested in my newly released novel about a pregnant woman stalking the pedophile down the street. He tugs at his nose ring. I fiddle with my basic yellow highlighter. Later, I suspect we will toss the impossible-to-read contacts we collected.

Sixteen years and seven books later, the nonspecific unease I felt in that conference room remains. It has taken years to trace its darker roots, especially as the peddlers of sales messaging have softened their rhetoric into what they call respectful urgency. The old one-sided pitch—“You have problems that need my fix”—has become the pseudo-collaborative, “Let’s identify your pain points.” These careful euphemisms aim to inspire trust, but their language, at best, works to bypass resistance and at worst, erodes the intuition so many of us are already conditioned to dismiss.

I finally started to understand an unsettling parallel. As a woman who has experienced violence from men who used confidence, concern, and offers to help as bait, marketing phrases never sound innocent to me. "You can trust me." "I can give you a ride." "I'm only trying to help." My nervous system hears a pattern, one that alerts me to potential danger.

I am also a mother of daughters and an educator in health psychology, which means I have spent years helping people recognize when manipulation shows up in human form. Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear was useful in teaching that danger can arrive dressed as a person offering to solve a problem. 

The vocabulary of sales training sounds uncomfortably familiar to de Becker's warning signs that predict violence.

And as for charm and niceness, well, Ted Bundy was notoriously charming.

Marketing borrows the language of care, but its aim is to control. It's a sleight of hand that appears as a friendly handshake but ends in a transaction.

In my personal life (the life of a people-pleaser who grew up ignoring her unease for someone else's comfort), it wasn't easy to start putting myself first. To risk coming across as rude, or unfriendly, when a vibe didn't feel right. I'm not surprised it took some time. We've all experienced controlling language where the consequences of that rhetoric are as small as an impulse buy, and have nothing to do with real danger.

My issue is with the moral theater of authenticity, with the instruction of performing warmth, access, and friendliness with a secondary agenda: to move a product. Engaging in manipulation instead of speaking out against it.

As an author who must sell her books, I’ve tried to reconcile this by refusing the language of sales and instead nurturing real relationships. I created a nationwide author’s co-op. My personal tagline is "Come Sit By Me." I've visited book clubs, libraries, conferences, and workshops. I've happily and sincerely talked to hundreds, probably thousands, of people.

As you might expect, that many connections cannot be maintained in any real way.

I am reminded of a painful interaction with a woman who felt led on by my charm and niceness. She confronted me by saying, "You've encouraged me to keep in touch, and then you don't get back to me. Or, when you do, you say you are unable to get together."

I felt backed into a corner, defensive, angry. Didn't she understand? When I said, "Keep in touch," I meant sign-up for my newsletter. When I said, "I hope you're doing well" as I signed her book, I wasn't ready for a deeper conversation about hardships. But of course she didn't understand. I have a great smile.

After a moment, I admitted to her that she was right. I said, "I'm sorry. I'm having difficulty balancing my writing time with keeping up relationships. I'm trying to figure that out." Her response was a look of pity, like, I'm sorry you're such a mess. That's too bad.

The interaction pierced me right in my authenticity.

Since then, I've followed other, less engineered advice based on organic discovery to build an audience and ultimately move books. I've published essays in large media outlets. I’ve gone viral and sold a few copies of my books, but not enough to matter. I learned the lesson that readers who nod along are not necessarily readers who buy.

If I want people to purchase my books—and I do, because my career in writing depends on it—I have to talk about purchasing my books.

And if I refuse to harvest data while pretending to be a friend, if I refuse to turn myself into a sales funnel wearing concealer and sincerity, what exactly am I supposed to do?

That question is even harder today because my next book is about a woman who mistook charm for safety. She's essentially the woman I offended, and I lived inside her character arc for over 300 pages as I forced her to change.

I would like to say I have found the answer: market with transparency, using honest language.

To say, "Here's what I made. Here's why I think it matters. I hope you read it. If you don't, that's okay."

I don't know if a writer can survive and scale by refusing what marketing calls strategy.

What I do know is this:

I am still that woman in that conference room, sixteen years later, staring at the word Authenticity. I'm still handing out cards, circling relationships, being careful with what I promise. And I’m still unsure if the people next to me are a lead, a friend, or just someone trying to get past my defenses for something else entirely. 

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