So What's Your Book About: Learning To Talk About My Own Work

It has occurred to me, SheWriters, that I haven’t even told you anything about my new novel, SILVER SPARROW. And this dovetails perfectly into my challenge for this week—How to talk about my book. It’s a tricky proposition. I want something punchy that people can remember, but I also want to do justice to my project. When someone asks me "What's Your Book About?" I could answer that a thousand different ways. It's almost as bad as "Tell me about yourself." I have no idea where to start.

Here’s what my publisher has written on the dust jacket:

With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle.

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s two families—the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters—the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle—she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another’s lives.

At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best writers—think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye—Jones portrays the fragility of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their mothers.

As you can imagine, I cannot go around speaking about myself in these terms. (I can just see myself saying “Think Toni Morrison…”) But exactly how does a person talk about her book? There's no avoiding it. It has to be done.

There was a time when I would say, “Silver Sparrow is about bigamy.” Then people would say, “Like Big Love?” So then I started saying, “It’s about bigamy, the lying, cheating kind, not the religious kind.” This gets more to the heart of the novel, but the tone is off. It wasn’t a description, it was a pitch. And while it’s an accurate characterization of the subject matter, it wasn’t a true portrayal.

What I have settled on is not a one-sentence summary. I worked five years on the novel and I feel that I owe it more than a five-second run-down. I have been told a million times that you have to be able to talk about your book in ten words or less. I think that so many guides to marketing forget the fact that these books are our babies in so many ways. A novel is not just an object to sell. I would even argue that when we start to talk about it as an object, people think of it as an object. But when we slow down and speak of it as a lovingly crafted work of art, others will treat it the same way.

I believe the best marketing tool is your own sincerity. We do interviews, tours, book club meetings, et cetera because we want to connect with readers. If we’re speaking in sound bytes and jingles we are not respecting ourselves, our work or our readers. And without respect, there is no connection.

Now, when someone asks me about my book, I say this—

Silver Sparrow is about two girls that have the same father. One knows, but the other lives in the shadows. It’s also about the wives, the acknowledged one, and the secret one. I wrote it because there are many people who live this way, and I really wanted to try and figure out how people can connect with each other and overcome the shame, anger and hurt in order to take responsibility for their own lives.

Just now, I timed myself saying that and it took twenty-one seconds. My book deserves at least that much.

_____

Now, over to you, SheWriters-- are you comfortable talking about your own work? How do you describe your project?

Tags: #publishing, marketing, public speaking, publishing

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Comment by Katrina Spencer on May 11, 2011 at 9:18pm: For some reason, when I was a hairstylist I would go up to a complete stranger, remark on their split ends and hand them a business card. Now, when someone asks me what I do, I find it hard to say, "author", and instead spill out, "stay-at-home mom". So, don't get me started on talking about my books, I feel like I'm bragging and just can't get the words out. But the more I start comparing to hair, it really is the same. The constant hustle to get new clients can be likened to the constant hustle to get more readers. So I'm doing better at it.

Comment by Karen Sosnoski on May 10, 2011 at 10:07am: I enjoyed this post both as a writer and as a reader. I think you're right--when I've tried *too* hard to rush through my blurb about my novel, people I'm talking to seem to think I'm impatient and disinterested in talking to them and the conversation ends. Of course we can't go on and on (even when talking about real babies) but sharing some enthusiasm and personal stake is important as you say--gives the opportunity for the listener to hopefully connect.

Comment by Angela Tung on May 10, 2011 at 9:55am: your post was really helpful, especially this: "I believe the best marketing tool is your own sincerity." i'm trying to market my memoir now, and am having trouble striking a balance between being aggressive enough and not coming off like a jerk. i have to remember i've been most successful at marketing - whether it's other writings or myself on a dating site (haha) - when i've been sincere with a sense of humor. thank you for that reminder.

Comment by Lita Hooper on May 10, 2011 at 7:15am: It's tough for me to talk about my YA book since I'm trying to find a publisher and agent and I'm not sure if I'm saying the wrong thing. I know what it's about and I certainly know why I wrote it. But I'm very concerned that I will not articulate this in a way that will make the book interesting to others.

Comment by Judith van Praag on May 10, 2011 at 7:05am: Tayari, Brava! on distilling the essence of your novel in such a clear cut manner. My main struggle over the years has been to decide whose story I'm telling. I've shifted the protagonist role around between three possible stars, the leading man, the leading woman, the leading child. Was that true for you as well?

Or did you wind up using all of those points of view? And if so, did that in the end help you phrase the description?

Comment by Christine Siracusa on May 9, 2011 at 2:41pm: This is very hard for me. I am concerned about "scripting a response" and then I'm concerned about not scripting one. And I'm also never sure how in depth someone wants me to go. As you can tell...it's fraught. I wish I could find someone who could do it for me.

Comment by K.C. Blake on May 8, 2011 at 9:28am: No, I'm not comfortable talking about my books. It makes me feel like a door to door salesman and just about as welcomed. It's hard, but I'm trying to get over it. One thing I hate is that every time I tell someone the title, they think it is a Twilight rip-off. My book is nothing like Twilight. Besides that, I wrote mine first. Unfortunately, I didn't publish it until recently.

Vampires Rule has a different twist to the old vampire thing. You see, Jack starts off as a vampire but quickly turns mortal again. Then he has to face his most powerful enemy at a time when he can easily die. Mostly though the book is about him trying to retun to his family and his old life.

Comment by Ivana Milakovic on May 8, 2011 at 2:49am: I speak of my book as of a collection of 25 short stories, fantasy, horror, and fairy tales retold. And while it usually works, I am aware that in 25 different stories there's much more - brother-sister relationships, dreams, longings, children not fitting into the world they live in and seeking escape in the fantastique, superstitions destroying lives... And much more.

So I stick to the 25 short stories, fantasy, horror and fairy tales retold.

Comment by Colleen Green on May 7, 2011 at 5:50pm: This is definitely something for me to think about. It seems like there is a lot of work to do before you release your book or "labor of love" into the world. Right now I am trying to find a way to connect with the future audience of my novel. Any advice on this subject matter is greatly appreciated.

Comment by Tayari Jones on May 6, 2011 at 11:31am: My belief is that you can take your time as use as many words as you need. Have you noticed that we always talk other people with short attention spans. Other people that can't digest nuance. My guess is that there are more people than we think who are capable of listening to, and digesting several sentences at once and these are the people who will enjoy our work.

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