Web star, it girl, author
The reach of social media is broadening the scope of who we read
The second essay in Alana Massey’s spectacular debut, “All the Lives I Want,” finds the literary ingénue in a Manhattan strip club in October of 2014.
As she dances, she labours to maintain her “impossibly buoyant persona” and keep her soul locked away from the men “who demand so much more than what your title describes.” Massey’s customer, meanwhile, pushes for intimacy. He asks questions about her life and talks about his own. He doesn’t normally come to places like this, he tells her, and she shouldn’t either. He has no idea who he’s dealing with.
The woman he’s receiving a lap dance from is, in fact, a brainiac with a degree from Yale Divinity School — a megawatt talent with an impressive digital footprint, author of some of the smartest and most searing personal essays on today’s Internet. The only thing separating this pole dancer from her highbrow Brooklyn writer peers is 700 unsuccessful job applications, a debilitating depression and a $900 prescription that simply must be filled.
In the publishing world of yesteryear, the chances of us ever getting to read Massey’s insights were slim. But the Internet is changing that, throwing open the gates to those who, like her, have a compelling voice, a relentless
work ethic and — this is key — a ready-made fan base.
In this new, democratized version of publishing, book deals are ripe for the picking and writers across North America are capitalizing on the trend.
Kelly Oxford — the Alberta housewife whose witty Twitter account won her a book deal and a career as an in-demand Hollywood screenwriter — will soon publish her second collection of essays, “When You Find Out the World Is Against You.” In it, she offers candid tales of life with an anxiety disorder and meditations on the new feminism emerging on the Internet, including her own campaign against sexual assault, #NotOkay, which more than 40 million participated in.
Similarly, Scarborough’s own Lilly Singh, a.k.a. Superwoman, has parlayed 11 million YouTube followers into a deal for an advice book, “How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life,” and a feminist initiative, Girl Love, featuring interviews with the likes of Michelle Obama. Singh, who has suffered from depression, also speaks openly about mental-health issues.
Then there’s Cat Marnell, a brilliant magazine editor who chronicled her free fall into drug addiction for xoJane and Vice. Marnell became a sensation in Manhattan media circles in 2012, after her gut-wrenching essay on Whitney Houston’s overdose went viral. She won a $500,000 book advance and recently published “How to Murder Your Life,” a compulsively readable memoir that upends traditional recovery narratives, smashes stereotypes about beauty, privilege and success, and illustrates how addiction annihilates everything worthwhile in life, from friendships to human dignity.
That the Internet is broadening the scope of who we hear from, and consequently read, can no longer be denied. There’s now a greater diversity of voices than ever and this is overwhelmingly positive for women writers. Whether it’s a good thing for working-class writers, though, is another matter entirely.
The web-to-book phenomenon has been years in the making and its origins stretch back to the early 2000s. New York City agent Byrd Leavell, who represents Marnell, says these book deals now run anywhere from $100,000 to $1 million.
Leavell jumped on the trend back in 2004, when he tracked down Tucker Max, the creator of a wildly popular email list. The resulting book, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” earned a modest $7,000 advance but went on to sell two million copies.
“There weren’t a lot people looking online,” Leavell says. These days, of course, major agencies employ entire divisions of Internet talent scouts. But the formula for translating web fame to literary success remains hard to pin down.
“I have my own philosophy now and it’s always changing because of what I’ve learned from each book,” Leavell says. “It’s about the connection. What is the real connection that person has with their fan base? And is that person capable of doing a book that can work for people who’ve never heard of them?”
“The numbers are so often bulls---,” he adds. “You can have a gazillion YouTube followers and your book will sell like 20 copies. You have to have ways to look beyond the numbers.”
Still, there’s no question it’s essential to have an audience in place. “If you don’t have a platform and you want to publish non-fiction, then you’re not really in a place to get a deal in the year 2017.”
In recent years, there has been much hand-wringing from the literary establishment about the impact of the Internet on the quality of writing. But there’s no shortage of talent out there, as these new books will attest.
What we should perhaps be more concerned about is the economics of the web-tobook model, which transfers the heavy lifting of building a profile from publishers to broke authors.
Writers these days don’t just write books. They also have to find a way to balance building an impressive Internet platform — a vague concept, at best, and one that takes untold hours — with the tricky business of making a living in an economy where “day jobs” are rarely 9 to 5, rents are sky high and online essays often pay in the neighbourhood of $50 to $100.
Massey, for her part, has written about this topic extensively. Massey believes in paying dues, but says she thinks people shouldn’t have to sacrifice a living wage.
“I think that, in some ways, the intensity of the hustle and the competitiveness can be helpful in making talent rise to the top,” she says. “The issue is that it’s usually people who have a lot more money and education to fall back on, and parents paying their rent, who can write 150 $100 articles and cut to the front of the line. It’s a fast track.”