“Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep, and you weep alone,” runs the quote from poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
Maybe not. The NY Times Bestseller list almost always has at least one example of ‘Misery Literature’. Misery memoirs (and their cousins family histories and autobiographies) have been made into major movies and won significant literary awards. And maybe because of that, and because all bets seem off in publishing right now, every would-be author with a compelling life story earnestly believes they too can strike it rich.
Or help just one more person who shares their situation.
Or at least vindicate the suffering they have either surmounted, or are still enduring.
And maybe they are right.
There is almost nothing like the thrill of finishing a piece of writing, whether it’s a poem, short story, essay, or novel – especially if it was born from a writer’s deepest, most personal experiences. But even better is having someone else read it and relate to it. Getting published and meeting that wider audience often seems like the next step.
But the cold truth about commercial ‘trade’ publishing is that its products have to be marketable. In some way. Books must strike some emotional nerve in a reader that whispers: ‘Keep reading. You want to know the rest of my story.’ They should also be well-written and coherent. Unfortunately, many inexperienced memoir writers are so emotionally involved in their stories that they can’t see when their writing is ineffective, awkward, off-putting, downright lunatic, or (I’m actually going to say this) whiny.
So even if such authors find the courage and necessary information to submit their works to major publishers or reputable small presses, they might get a rejection notice on the objective merits of the work alone. Or on the grounds that the house already has a similar book in the works or in its recent catalog.
That hurts, especially when it’s about words torn from the heart.
At that point, many misery memoir authors are at their most vulnerable to some outright scams and not-quite-scams that lurk around the fringes of the publishing world.
Some authors take the leap into self-publishing, improving their writing skills while learning on their own about formatting and marketing.
Some take what appears to be an easier way out, and pay for a vanity or subsidy press to publish their work for them. They might have found their publishers through recommendations from other vanity or subsidy-published authors, ads in writing magazines, desultory online searches, regional book fairs, or writing workshops more structured as multi-level marketing pitches than actual discussions of craft or good business practice.
Even that route is not a terrible thing, if done well. If the publishing fees (100% of the production costs for vanity, an allegedly smaller fee for subsidy) are not too high. If work and refund guarantees are not hedged around by clauses that effectively protect the publisher more than the author. If the publisher can show a website aimed more at book-buying readers than subsidy-paying authors. If the publisher can get well-priced books into bookstores (not just their online catalogs for pre-paid order), or to major reviewers and industry groups. If the publisher lives up to its claims of effective marketing – or is at least blunt about when most of a book’s marketing is really on its author’s shoulders.
Because of their emotional investment in their work, misery memoir authors appear to be one of the most lucrative target groups for unscrupulous vanity and subsidy publishers. These authors, if they are inexperienced about different publishing strategies, often spend thousands of dollars to publish their work, with little to no editorial guidance, bad formatting, bad cover art, ineffective marketing from their alleged ‘publisher’, and lackluster sales. Even more remarkable? These authors often submit subsequent manuscripts to the same or similar publishers. (What is the definition of insanity, eh? Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting a different result.)
I’m not posting links, because you’re supposed to be testing your Google-Fu skills. Look up Sunk Cost Fallacy and Dunning-Kruger Effect.
The senior citizen memoir, misery memoir, autobiography, self-help, and inspirational genres are still strong sellers. Because of that perception of success, they are also huge lures for authors With A Message.
There is information out there on how to publish well, at nearly any level of work effort and financial outlay.
Here are a few links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misery_lit
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/nov/20/misery-memoirs-constance-briscoe
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/12/self-publishing-cons_n_1203007.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201203/so-you-want-publish-your-memoir
https://www.draft2digital.com/
Added 12/03/2015: From literary agent Janet Reid (she of the famed Query Shark blog) comes this blunt but kind discussion of authors trying to sell their memoirs or life-experiences books.