"The persona of the author can be very marketable, right?"
Parasocial relationships in the second edition of Inside Cover
Welcome to the second edition of Inside Cover, a column about literary goings-on, trends, events, and gossip.
I'm going to run the column for free for a few weeks to get your feedback. If you like it, let me know with a heart, comment, or subscription upgrade. If you don’t like it, let me know what you’d like to see change. Your feedback is important to me!
This edition of Inside Cover includes: Simon & Schuster launching a web series to rival Hot Ones, a report out from Sophie Kemp’s book launch for Paradise Logic, and commentary on parasocial relationships.
“The persona of the author can be very marketable, right?”
Last week, The Cut asked Can Simon & Schuster Become the A24 of Books?
The TL;DR: S&S has a new publisher, Sean Manning, who wants to change the way books are marketed to attract more readers, starting with a web series to rival Hot Ones.
Here’s how the article opens:
On a recent March morning, the Simon & Schuster video team is huddled in the best-sellers corner of McNally Jackson, taping its upcoming web series, Bookstore Blitz. Sean Manning, the flagship imprint’s new publisher, supervises from the sidelines. The concept of the show is simple: Guests get $100 and five minutes for a bookstore shopping spree, a sort of literary Criterion Closet Picks.
Today, the team is filming 28-year-old Brooklyn novelist Sophie Kemp, who is here promoting her upcoming debut, Paradise Logic. Kemp scurries through McNally’s labyrinthine two-story display with the S&S video crew trailing her, racing against the clock. “This the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life,” she deadpans. A few minutes later, she hauls a pile of books to the checkout counter, including David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster, of which she says with a smirk, “No comment.” Manning laughs.
“The persona of the author can be very marketable, right?” he says as we walk to his Rockefeller Center office. “You kind of want to know who people are.” Manning, though, is a private person.
A few days before that article was posted, I saw this note from
responding to on parasocialism with writers and creators:Overall, I feel like autobiographical fiction (autofiction) has become more popular in the past few years.
Maybe it's a symptom of the shift towards "own voices" in literature, and authors making it clear when they're writing as a member, not an observer, of a community or culture.
Maybe it's because we have increasing access to authors on Instagram, TikTok, and Substack. These are professional, not just personal, accounts!!
I’m curious what will happen to authors, particularly young female fiction authors, if their personas are marketed more?
So I went to Sophie Kemp’s book launch for Paradise Logic to ask her.
Paradise Logic is a hilarious, surreal, and devastating journey into the mind of Reality Kahn, a 23-year-old woman on a quest to be the greatest girlfriend of all time. She would be a zine maker, an aspiring notary, the greatest waterslide commercial actress on the Eastern Seaboard. She would receive messages from the beyond in the form of advice from the esteemed and ancient ladies magazine, Girlfriend Weekly.
Do you feel like you're marketing yourself alongside your book? How does that feel?
I do think I'm marketing myself alongside my book. I've always been really ambitious about my art. I've been writing publicly on the internet since I was 14 years old. At some point along the way, I started curating some sort of online persona, and started writing in a way that showcased a very specific (but not inauthentic) part of my personality. I think it's been useful, but the version of myself that I'm putting out on the internet or in the world in general in a professional context is very different from how I am interpersonally with my friends. And the version of myself I am when I sit down to write fiction is also really different from who I am in any sort of public / professional capacity. I think some of it is protective. A lot of it is practical. It can feel kind of weird! But I do think it has worked for me, and I wouldn't do anything differently.
You reject the label of autofiction for your novel. Do you think people want you to be the main character, Reality? How do you feel about that?
People definitely assume that Reality is the same person as me. I think in general, readers are quick to assume that if a character has any sort of biographical information in common with the author, then it must be some form of autobiography. It's such an easy out! And I don't entirely blame them for it! A friend actually just texted me about an interaction with a bookseller she had when she mentioned that she knew me. The bookseller asked: is she actually this quirky in real life? As if a work of fiction is automatically mimetic of an author's consciousness! I do not write autofiction. There is a talking snake in my book. I love the writing of Sheila Heti and Ben Lerner (I was tremendously inspired by 10:04 and How Should a Person Be when writing my novel) but my writing is very, very different from theirs.
Let me know what you think in the comments. Will Simon & Schuster become the A24 of books? How should authors personas should be marketed? Do you have parasocial relationships with the writers you follow?
This section will focus on less on paywalled articles and more on experiences or interesting bits friends have sent me. Think books I’m reading this week that you can pick up, too, or events that I might stop by.
The paperback launch of Worry is this week! Alex Tanner is having an event at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn to celebrate. OBC members got early copies of the paperback, but if you couldn’t make the author event you should drop by.
I’m reading Big Fan by Alexandra Romanoff. I was inspired to pick it up after
posted that she has a romance novel coming out with 831 Stories in the fall. It’s cute so far.I went to the Margaux book club and listened to Aria Aber talk about Good Girl. Aria is so cool. I think we need her to come to Open Book Club. Has anyone else read Good Girl?
I have unfollowed as many influencers as I can. Similarly, I don't need a new parasocial relationship with an author. No offense at all, Sophie, you seem so cool and smart and I loved reading what you had to say!!!! I look forward to reading your book, too. But I don't need to know the context of all in which it lives and what came before it.
I think right now we all focus a lot on what came before. I think trends like cancel culture want us to. Like I'm afraid to recommend a song without first checking to see if the artist is a self-identified Nazi. So I think I am overwhelmed by context. I want less connection and history with people I don't know and will never know, and more connection in real life. Like I just want to read the book and yap a little, that's all <3
The irony of Manning saying the persona of an author can be very marketable, that there is cash value in knowing who they 'are' and the closing sentence explicitly saying he is a 'private person' is loud and hilarious.