How Publishing Your Nonfiction Book Can Be Like Flying Through a Blizzard

Today’s publishing advice comes to you from the shores of Puget Sound, where my team and I gathered for our annual retreat. We were talking about travel mishaps when my executive assistant Daneka spoke up.

“Back in the day, my dad was one of the gate agents that had to deal with delayed flights and irritated passengers. One day, there was a big snowstorm so none of the planes could take off. Most people knew it was a weather delay and that they’d get an update when it stopped snowing. But this one customer in my dad’s gate area would get up — every half-hour or so — and ask for an ‘update.’ 

“My dad couldn’t really do anything, but this customer was getting more and more pissed. 

“What do you know now?

“Have there been any changes?

“Finally after a few hours, the customer lost his cool. He asked my dad, ‘When is it going to stop snowing?’”

My team all laughed at this punchline because, obviously, Daneka’s dad didn’t know. 

He wasn’t a meteorologist. He didn’t have an up-to-the-minute forecast. 

Instead, Daneka’s dad suggested that the customer call Mother Nature for an update — which made everyone else in the gate area laugh and clap. Because the weather? Completely out of his control as a gate agent. And yet — this particular customer was holding him accountable to it.

And this bit of the story is why I’m sharing it with you, because in addition to being funny this story is similar to book publishing. 

I’m an expert in helping entrepreneurs like you get book deals, but there are a ton of factors outside my control. To be honest, there are so, so many blizzards in the tiny snow globe of traditional book publishing. 

For example — the presidential election. Every four years, literary agents stop submitting book proposals to publishers after September because everyone is distracted. No one knows what is going to happen in November. And that is the snowstorm for a handful of my clients who recently finished their proposals and have to wait.

Another storm is social media algorithms and online marketing strategies. If you’ve been an online entrepreneur for a minute, I bet you remember social media and email hacks that used to work to get followers and clients . . . that are totally ineffective today. Changes in the online landscape can be a ground stop for those who are in the process of creating and testing content to grow their audience and author platform.

Similarly, your personal choices and mindset can shape the environment you experience.

When I asked for feedback in July, I received so many amazing questions that I will answer in upcoming blog posts. But I also got heartbroken messages from folks who had invested too quickly in shady publishers, who self-published without considering the consequences, or who clearly didn’t slow down and read what I’ve been sending about who I am and the work we do. That’s your own personal snowstorm — and each of you reading this post gets to decide how much you want to pay attention and how much you want to shovel out.

Lastly — and probably most importantly — I suspect this lack of control and agency creates a ton of frustration and anger among authors. Similar to the customer in Daneka’s story — you want to know when it’s going to stop snowing, when you’re going to have an audience big enough, when the publishing gods are going to finally accept you. It can be easy to rail an industry that is opaque and doesn’t move the way you expect it to. Or seek someone like me to answer every question and solve every problem even though I’m not the right person to help you. (I’m talking to you, folks who are writing novels, children’s books, and memoirs.)

But the reality is: Publishing IS opaque, slow, uncertain, and in lots of ways unknowable. And that’s true even for me as an expert. In a way, the book business is exactly like Mother Nature and her snowstorms. 

All you can do is control what you can control. Especially your mindset, your approach, and what you do in the meantime. 

Because spoiler alert: That customer demanding answers?

Got on the plane at the same time everyone else did.