Eat Less Sell More

My dangerously unscientific and very problematic roadmap to becoming a bestseller

Photo by Pawel Czerwinski on Unsplash

My new book comes out in six weeks. That means it’s at the printer, or maybe back from the printer and one is sitting in the publisher’s office waiting to be sent to me, and the rest are in a warehouse. This is the point where there’s really nothing more to be done, unless an early reviewer spots a typo of the magnitude of the time in 2010 a pasta cookbook listed an ingredient as ‘salt and freshly ground black people’, and it had to be pulped and reprinted. I’m reasonably sure there’s nothing like that in mine.

Now all there is for me to do is write articles that will appear in the media around the time of release, funny and interesting pieces that will make people rush to the bookshop in search of more of that sort of nonsense.

This means it’s the time I start to focus on what really matters. It’s when I decide it’s not enough to be a published author of four novels and one childrens’ book, I must be a much thinner published author of four novels and one childrens’ book, with fewer pimples on my chin, and nicer clothes. Because when a prospective reader stands in a bookshop weighing up whether to buy this or that new release, what is really going to sway them is which author is the smallest and prettiest and looks the youngest for their age.

To this end I am exercising like a fiend – lifting very heavy weights in the spare room and putting them down in a way that makes Drew rush in to see if I have had a fall, eating the same amount of lean protein as eleven dingoes, and only eating carbs once a day. I am not eating before ten in the morning or after eight in the evening, which renders me fairly useless for several hours of the working day. Now in the mornings all I am fit for is cleaning the house and drinking boiling water and lightheadedly typing things like that piece about the pope, which in hindsight has the manic air of the glucose-starved brain about it.

This is all very annoying, and even more annoyingly it is working and I have lost a few kilograms, which is making me feel powerful and mighty in a way that is a bit worrying. But soon I expect I’ll stop being worried because I will have killed off that part of my brain through lack of nourishment and I’ll be thin and dim and happy about it. Either that or I’ll give up and return to regular programming, being a bit solid and useful for balancing three or four children on a seesaw and finishing everyone’s chips.

Either way, I am aware it probably won’t make a lick of difference to how my book sells. I do see that, but it’s nice to have a goal that makes you think you have any control over the vagaries of the book world.

I’d really like this book to do well not only because it’s my job and if I don’t sell enough books I won’t be able to write another one, but also because I think it’s a really good book. Ugh, what an embarrassing thing to say. But it is. I think it’s interesting and clever and funny where it’s meant to be and emotionally wrenching in the parts where I want you to cry. It was difficult to write, it’s more complex than anything I’ve written before, and I really hope lots of people get to read it. For that to happen, I need people to know about it, and tell their friends. Word of mouth is the thing, so if you are the proud owner of a mouth that can make words, I’d be very grateful for your support in shouting about Your Friend and Mine when it comes out, or even before.

You can do that by preordering it through any bookselling outlet, even the one we’re not meant to use, either as a hard copy, an ebook or an audiobook. I think you can even request it at your local library, which authors love because we get money every time someone borrows it. You can mention it on social media, or share my substack, or write something nice about it with a spray can of orange paint on a queen-sized sheet and hang it from an overpass. Every little bit helps. They will help far more than me dropping a dress size, though perhaps not as much as me dropping two dress sizes.