Why Your Memoir Won’t Sell

memoir won't sell

Of all the projects I’ve heard pitched over the years, memoir is the category with the most intractable, hard-to-solve problems. Partly this is a function of what memoir is: something that’s very personal. People have a hard time achieving distance between the meaning and importance of their life’s events and the commercial market that might exist for it.

What I’m about to write may come off as cold and insensitive. File it under “tough love for writers.” It’s not that your life is unimportant or without value. Quite the contrary. Everyone has a meaningful story to tell, but not everyone’s story (or writing) will find an agent or receive a commercial publishing deal. Many memoirs ultimately have to be self-published. Here’s why.

The memoir is the first piece of writing you’ve ever attempted.

It’s often said that a writer’s first manuscript never gets published; it’s the third, fourth, fifth (or later) manuscript that gains acceptance by a publisher. While this principle is common in relation to fiction writing, I think it applies to any type of story. If your memoir is the first thing you’ve written and finished, it’s unlikely you knocked it out of the park on your first try. Of course, anything is possible. The more experience you’ve had as any kind of commercial writer or storyteller, the better your chances.

Your memoir is primarily pain focused, or an act of catharsis.

This problem often goes hand in hand with the first. Someone has experienced something traumatic, and as part of their therapy or recovery, they write about the experience. Before long, they have a book-length work, and friends and family say (as a form of well-meaning support), “You should find a publisher.”

You probably shouldn’t. If your writing was:

  • undertaken as a way for you to deal with a painful experience
  • if that painful experience is in the recent past (within the last few years), and/or
  • if you have no other writing experience or ambition to publish …

… then publishing a memoir is rarely the next best next step. It’s great that you’ve used writing to aid in recovery, but it doesn’t mean you have a book that will appeal to agents or big publishers. (Unless you’re Hillary Clinton and you lost the 2016 presidential election.)

Your memoir consists of diary or journal entries, letters, or other ephemera from the past.

Don’t do it. One of the fastest ways to get a rejection is to pitch your book as a collection of entries from a diary or journal you kept or a family member kept, or letters sent and received.

If you’re a celebrity, notorious for some reason, or otherwise in the public eye, these materials may hold interest to a general readership. But for the most part, a collection of journal entries is going to elicit a quick rejection from those in publishing.

Use diaries, journals, and other personal written materials as the basis of research to write a narrative-driven story. But don’t use them as the story itself, or use them very sparingly within a larger narrative.

Your memoir is really an autobiography.

This happens the majority of the time I read a memoir chapter outline or synopsis: it begins in childhood and ends in the present day. In other words, it looks more like an autobiography.

Most memoirs should be limited to telling a story about a particular period in time. A distinctive lens or angle is applied, and many facets or times of your life will not enter into the picture. You might use flashbacks or flash-forwards to include critical moments, but even so, the narrative must have a clear focus, or a beginning-middle-end, that isn’t defined by the day you were born and the day you started to write your life story.

Sometimes you can get away with something very broad ranging, but it requires tremendous skill.

You’ve written a series of vignettes.

A vignette is a story that stands alone and is little more than an anecdote about your life. Some memoirs consist of nothing but back-to-back vignettes. They might be beautiful and touching vignettes, but the manuscript lacks a narrative arc. There’s no real story; there’s no question that keeps us turning pages.

Some celebrities or well-established authors can publish essay collections or something that looks like a collection of vignettes. People love to reference David Sedaris, as well as Erma Bombeck, as a way to say, “But look how popular they are!” But you won’t get the same latitude if you’re a relative unknown.

You’ve written the memoir of someone else.

You have a family member and they have an amazing story to tell. But they’re not a writer, or they don’t care to write it (or they’re dead). But you’re motivated to do something. So you embark on writing the memoir (or sometimes biography) of their lives.

This type of project is unlikely to go any further than your own desk unless you self-publish it. There is great value in writing and self-publishing such a story for the family legacy, but unless you have a track record of writing and publishing amazing stories about (or for) other people, editors and agents will likely pass.

Your story is like a million others—and the writing just isn’t special enough.

This is the hardest and most awful thing to say, yet it’s true: “Sorry, but your story of addiction or cancer survival or loss of a child just doesn’t seem that special.” In other words, your story sounds like everyone else’s story. It’s not written in a way that makes it stand out—or it could be written poorly. The only antidote to this problem is to either become a better writer, or to find a more interesting story to tell.

So, what should you do if your memoir has a problem?

The first step is realizing and accepting this problem stands in the way of you getting an agent or a big, commercial publisher. Then you can decide what compromise you’re willing to make. Your key options are:

  1. Self-publish the book. You can still have a satisfying and successful experience of publishing your book, and it doesn’t have to cost you much money. (In fact, I suggest you avoid investing too much; it’s money you’re not likely to earn back.)
  2. Write another memoir—one that fits what agents and publishers want. Learn how to build a compelling narrative arc. Avoid the pitfalls of memoir. Try starting afresh with this list-making method.
  3. Hire a development editor or coach to help you revise your existing manuscript. This can get very expensive, and there’s no guarantee that the investment will lead to a publishing deal. Here’s how to decide.

For more tough love on memoir, I highly recommend this agent roundtable published in Writer’s Digest in 2010. It’s still relevant today.

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Lynne Spreen

Great points, and BTW, your title of your post should get some kind of marketing award. Tough love indeed, and necessary. I’d add two other points: if your book isn’t written like a novel, with dramatic tension, pacing, character arcs, etc., forget it. And if there’s no lesson, no takeaway for the reader, ditto. Unless you’re relating the details of a life so wildly interesting on its face (growing up as a child of Michael Jackson, for ex.), people will be looking for a nugget of learning. Even Cheryl Strayed’s journey included a theme.

Desertphile

It makes me wonder if HDT’s _Walden_ could find a publisher these days.

Richard Stuart Gilbert

Wise advice here. As a writing mentor used to say, “Writing and publishing are separate.” I hope even those who want to self-publish will take the implication in this post that studying and practicing the highest craft is the path to art.

Sallie Rodman

Jane,
We met at the Yosemite Writer’s Conference many years ago and you had words of wisdom then. I agree with most of your comments, however, sometimes people seek out memoirs just to know they aren’t alone in their process. I agree it has to have sharp writing, tension and good characters. But for us widows seeking solace, reading someone else’s story can help us to go on. It certainly helped many I have met on my social media grief pages. Just keeping it real and telling it like I find it. Love your pithy writing. You were tough at Yosemite and you’re tough still, but we writers need that.
Best,

Desertphile

Douglas Preston loves my memoir and said he “could not put it down.” He even read some of it to his spouse….. which means I must remember to blush the next time I see them.

Neil Larkins

Wow. Now I’ll have to read your memoir. Oh. This is 5 years ago. Oh, well.

David Michael Rice

Darn: a few months ago I threw out fifteen copies of my memoir, as I published a second edition. It would have cost only about $4 to send a copy to you. I will attempt to attach an image of Doug to this reply, but I think images are not accepted. His spouse took the image without him knowing.

doug-reading.jpeg
C. S. Lakin

Jane, this is so terrific. I find myself explaining all these points to my clients who’ve written memoirs. Now I can just give them a copy of your post and direct them to your site. Thanks so much!

Roberta Codemo

Good advice. I’m a cancer survivor and have been contemplating writing a memoir. Yes, I know there are a million out there. What sets mine apart, I believe, is what I’ve chosen to do with my life post-cancer. I’ve become an advocate, I write about gynecological cancers, and I’ve produced a one woman show. The experience changed my life, in a good way. Whether that’s enough, I don’t know. But this piece has made me think if I have something to contribute to the market.

Marie Fricker

Very painful to read this blog, Jane. But I believe you.

Susan Taylor Brand

Yes. That’s exactly how I feel. And yet … I knew these things. Intellectually. Sometimes you need them brought home by repetition. As Garrison Keillor wrote, “We know right from wrong. But knowing is not the problem.”

Ruth Harris

Let me add our experience writing a memoir that did sell. Michael Harris (my DH) wrote a memoir about his experiences as a young soldier sent to “observe” the US H-bomb tests in the South Pacific. THE ATOMIC TIMES was published by Random House and became a NYT bestseller in its e-edition BUT it took Michael many false starts and 50 years (literally) to get enough perspective, access to previously classified material, find a voice, see the dark humor + a novelist/editor wife (that would be me) to ensure, as Lynne says above, that the book provided the dramatic tension, pacing, character arcs of a novel. In an interview with Anne R. Allen, Michael talks about the pitfalls he encountered in writing his memoir and offers some tips.
http://annerallen.com/2012/09/an-awesome-awardplus-story-that-took-50/

THE ATOMIC TIMES is available on Kindle and at other major ebook vendors. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004H1TLQ2/

Shellie Blum

Very interesting, thanks!