“All Others”: The Memoir Writers Who Keep Going

Photo by Rosie Kerr on Unsplash

Today’s post is by author Tiffany Graham Charkosky (@tiffanygrahamcharkosky).

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A few years ago, when I was in the throes of revising my memoir manuscript and query, I read Jane Friedman’s article “It’s Not As Bad As You Think” on The Brevity Blog. Jane analyzed all of the memoirs that were reported to Publisher’s Marketplace in 2022. She broke the books and authors down into six helpful categories:

1. Celebrity memoirs: written by people who are already famous
2. Current events: books with unique takes on items buzzing in the news
3. Platform-focused: books by people who are largely known for their online following, such as influencers, podcasters, YouTubers, and other creator economy people
4. Media angle or connections: books by people with built-in media recognition or who work in media already
5. Established writers or authors: books by people who are already well-known professional writers
6. All others: books by people without an obvious platform or marketing-related reason for being published.

Of the 159 memoirs that were sold in 2022 according to Jane’s data analysis, 22% of these books were written by celebrities, and 21% were written by established writers. Surprisingly, the largest share fell into the “All Others” category at 23%. Jane surmised that these books, written by people without large platforms, fame, or obvious connections, must have been sold based on the merit of the writing or story itself.

I’d be lying if I said I read this article once and moved on. Instead, this article became a beacon for me. I reread it dozens of times over the next couple years. Each time, it was motivating for me, a literary nobody who was plugging away at a memoir. With a full-time job, two children, and a memoir-in-progress, focusing my limited creative time on developing my online presence seemed like it would take away from the work of producing a book worth querying in the first place.

That 23% represented 36 books. It represented books I’d actually read, seen reviewed online, or displayed in the library where I worked. I stopped looking at platform as an illusive thing I needed to overcome and asked myself if I thought I could be one of 36 people to sell a memoir project.

My memoir was about genetic testing and everything that came after a test predicted a future I’d do anything to avoid. As someone who could, at best, become a figure in Jane’s “All Others” category, who read constantly about how hard it is to sell memoir and how literary gatekeepers used a lack of platform as the raison du jour for passing on projects, “It’s Not As Bad As You Think” was a data-driven reminder that as long as I made my story as good as I possibly could, maybe I wasn’t crazy for thinking I could land a book deal.

I gave serious attention to the marketing and promotion portion of my book proposal, digging both deep and wide into who my potential audiences could be and how I hoped to connect with them. I rewrote my manuscript countless times, wrestling my scenes into a narrative arc that made sense, and I killed so many darlings I had to create a document I titled “Graveyard.”

I also got lucky, with mail-order genetic tests becoming increasingly commonplace and the questionable business practices of some of these companies being in the news. Books need to be well-written and they need to connect, somehow, to the times we’re living in.

As a querying writer, it’s impossible to know how your book compares to the thousands of others also making the rounds. Querying literary agents felt like applying to Harvard, but with an even lower acceptance rate. (Harvard’s acceptance rate in 2023 was 3.5%. My success in querying literary agents was 1.7%.) But someone out there had to be getting these deals, selling stories that were captivating enough on their literary merit to earn those spots. Jane’s article was a reminder that even if the odds were low, only the audacity to keep going would tell me how my book stacked up.

I’m happy to share that in 2024, I sold my memoir. Living Proof: How Love Defied Genetic Legacy, comes out today. 

I still have well below 1,000 followers on Instagram and never had the bandwidth to get into Twitter/X. I’ve been humbled over and over again as I learn a new industry. Selling the book is one thing and it’s another thing altogether to get the book out into the world. It was one thing to be on the outside of this industry looking in and another to be barely in the door and asking others who’ve been at the party for years and years to make a little room for me.

But Jane was right. In retrospect, it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Either that, or she gave me a different lens through which to see this landscape and the pep talk I needed to stop thinking and keep going.