Surviving the Great “Flood” of March Books

Or, how not to lose your cool in a pack.

Substack Fam, welcome to a special birthday edition of Dwell! As I celebrate another turn around the sun, I feel grateful for having this space, and for all of you who follow along. So thank you, again, for being here. It means a lot to me. 

Before we get into today’s post, here are some cool things happening in VICTIM world: 

1. Publisher’s Weekly positively reviewed my novel and said, “This foray into the uses and misuses of victimhood bears fruit.” 

2. If the price of a hardcover has you hesitating over that pre-order button (I can’t blame you), Barnes & Noble will cut 25% off the price if you’re a rewards member (free to sign up) and use the code: PREORDER25 between today and Friday, Jan. 26th. 

3. If you’d like to get the book for free.99 (also don’t blame you), there is another Goodreads giveaway for 40 copies running from now until Feb. 5. Shoot your shot! 

Now, the main event. 

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Last week, in LitHub, Maris Kreizman, noted book critic and podcaster (RIP The Maris Review), pointed out something I’d begun to notice myself, and especially as I’ve been paying attention to the onslaught of Most Anticipated lists lately: There’s a ton of great books coming out in the first few months of this year, and a big glut of them are coming out in March, when VICTIM drops. 

Usually, Kreizman writes, she has about eight or nine books on her radar in a given month, and if she’s lucky, reads four or five. In March, there are 30 books on her radar. Mine, I’m honored to say, is one of them. 

Her list also includes well-established names like Percival Everett, due for a big breakout, thanks to American Fiction’s wonderful reception. There’s also Andres Dubus III, Cristina Henriquez, Téa Obreht, and Hanif Abdurraqib. Then there are a slew of anticipated sophomore novels from the likes of Xochitl Gonzalez and Jeannine Capó Crucet. We’ve yet to even touch the list of March debuts, which include novels by Vinson Cunningham and Alexandra Tanner. 

While on the one hand, it’s great for publishing that so many interesting books are coming out at once, Kreizman argues that what this actually means is that all of these books now have a smaller chance of breaking out. Why? Because they’ll all be competing for critical attention amid the decreasing ranks of book reviewers and the ever-shuttering book review sections in magazines, newspapers, and online outlets that they once called home. (For further proof, just peep what the LA Times did yesterday, cutting over 100 staff members, including their books editor.)

“Thirty titles is beyond the scope of one person or one publication to adequately cover even a few of them, and the more books that come out at once the more that might fall through the cracks of the critical eye entirely,” Kreizman writes.  

March is usually a slower month in the publishing season, and, generally, a good time to launch debuts. But this year, with the election looming, an election we all expect to be an ugly mess that will almost certainly push out whatever juice is left for the coverage of literary fiction, publishers are releasing their big guns earlier in the year, instead of the fall when they normally would. It makes sense. Catch the reading audience while they still have the mental capacity to enjoy a novel, and before they’re too busy screaming at their television. 

You might be wondering: As a debut novelist who finds himself in the midst of what is expected to be a “flood of great books” breaking against the shores of a literary scene bereft of critics, how do I feel? Am I panicking? Do I wish I had a different pub date? 

The answer is no. Not really. 

Aight, aight. I won’t front. When I first read Kreizman’s piece, the first response came from my animal brain. The part of the brain that tells me I must hoard resources for my own survival; that says if another man is eating, they’re eating food I could’ve, no, should’ve been eating. Luckily, I was able to strangle that part of my brain to silence pretty quickly. (I’ve gotten good, lately, because I’ve had a lot of practice, in the run-up to my novel’s release.) 

After that, I felt fine. 

This is partly because I’m just excited Kreizman's piece even names my novel in the first place. But more importantly, it’s because the piece, and the idea that my book will compete with a pack of others for limited resources (in this case, critical attention), made me reflect on my experience as a competitive cross-country runner in high school. 

Not to be cocky, but ya boy was quite good—Bronx Champ in ‘08, and I made it to states that year, too. But alas, that was well over a decade and minus 20 pounds ago, and this post isn’t about my glory days. What is pertinent are the lessons I learned about how to effectively run a race. Lessons that have come in handy lately. 

The first lesson is about pace.   

If you’ve never run track or cross-country, you may not know that one of the most anxiety inducing things you can do is stand at a starting line with a bunch of other kids and stare at a referee holding a little gun up in the air and wait—each second feeling like a year—until they shoot it. At my cross-country races in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, the starting line was especially intimidating because of the sheer number of people—some races had as many as 200 runners. When the gun went off, the hoard of us sprinted across a wide field and into a narrow little path that led us into these treacherous back hills with inclines famous for setting your legs on fire. 

I learned during my four years as a runner that there were a couple ways to approach this funneling process. There were the kids who would start sprinting toward the narrow path like their life depended on it. By the time we were in the back hills, though, those kids, almost always, were the ones you’d end up passing by after mile 1 or mile 1.5. The ones walking and gasping for breath. 

Then there were the kids who started off at a comfortable pace, somewhere in the middle of the pack and slowly, precisely, made moves; passing people, and finding themselves at the front. These kids had confidence in their ability and were smart enough not to run like a maniac when the gun went off, smart enough to realize the race was quite long, and there was plenty of time for them to work.

In the very beginning of my career as a runner, I was squarely in the first camp. I’d give it all I had from the outset, and limp my way across the finish line. By the end, though, when I was quite good, I had learned not to become too overwhelmed or intimidated by the big crowd I started with at the beginning of the race. I learned that just because someone broke ahead after the gun, doesn't mean they’ll fare well by the end, and conversely, just because I’m beating someone at the outset, doesn’t mean they won’t zip past me when I least expect it. 

So, how do I apply this lesson to publishing? 

Well, in the case of this coming March—and spring and summer, really, since most readers tend to stumble into a bookstore whenever they do—I’m reminding myself that whatever happens with the “performance” (a word I hate to associate with literature) of my book at the outset, won’t necessarily dictate how it fares when all is said and done. 

Like a cross country race, the publishing “race” is long—in fact, one can argue it never really ends. I mean, think about how many writers we can name who never lived to see the critical success of their work? Think about how many writers you discover for the first time five, ten, twenty, or even fifty years after their book came out? 

I constantly find myself encountering excellent writers and works published many years ago that I simply hadn’t heard of, or hadn’t had the time or capacity to dig into if I did hear of them. The novel I’m reading now (and thoroughly enjoying), MOSTLY DEAD THINGS by Kristen Arnett, was first published in 2019. One of my favorite reads of last year, a slim, hilarious, and subversive novel called HOW TO MAKE LOVE TO A NEGRO WITHOUT GETTING TIRED by Dany Laferrière was published in 1985 in French, translated into English a few years later, and first discovered by me because of a conversation with a friend at a bar. 

To me, one of the coolest things about a book is that you’ll never know when and where it’ll reach a reader. It’s all a toss-up, and probably not even worth fretting about because, mostly, it’s out of your control. 

Which leads me to the second applicable lesson that I learned as a runner: At the end of the day, you’re always running your own race. 

One of the best things about track and cross-country was that you could always win—even if you came in last place. Just beating your previous best time was a worthy cause for celebration. My goal in every race was simple: get better. Run faster times, run smarter races.

By the time I was a senior and won that championship race in the Bronx, this goal had transformed me into a far smarter runner. I went out mid-pack, waited, and made my moves, passing everyone on the most challenging hill we had to climb, shocking some of them (I still remember the look on one kid’s face as I glided past him on the uphill, and the feeling of knowing I already had him beat).  

I ran my race. And that’s what I’ve been reminding myself to do with this whole publishing business. 

Yeah, I could be anxious about all these great books coming out in March, and what that means for my own. But I’m not, to be honest. I’m just happy I’m in the race. I’m happy I’m getting the chance to run my own version of it. 

Wherever I end up is where I end up. Whatever readers I find are the ones I was meant to find. And whenever I find them (this year, next year, 20 years from now) is when I was meant to find them. 

Peace, 

Andrew 

Recommendations: 

1. Yet another Tyler Austin Harper piece in The Atlantic. Apologies for being a broken record, but dude is on a roll. This one fleshes out what he’s dubbed the “tokenism exposé” genre of art and how recent additions, like the film American Fiction and the novel YELLOWFACE both critique and yet capitulate to the market they’re writing against in interesting ways. "Every minority’s story becomes a Minority Story in the end." 

2. Lincoln Michel
   provided some interesting analysis of recent data about American reading habits. “The only thing this data reminds me is that people who blame the decline of reading on ‘MFA fiction’ or ‘literary snobs’ or whatever other grudges they have are a bit silly. Most Americans aren’t reading much of anything. They likely aren’t reading whatever small press literary fiction novel recently annoyed you and then swearing off books forever.”

3. Bernard Mokam wrote a great, yet infuriating piece in the New York Times about how high schoolers of color, ironically, find themselves leaning into their racial identities and any adversity they can conjure up when writing their college essays—as a result of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision last year. 

4. I love 50 Cent, and I loved this deep-dive into his rise, business acumen, and long-lasting appeal by the great Marin Cogan at Vox. 

5. Valerie Stivers, one of my favorite working book critics, wrote an interesting review in Compact Mag of a new collection of stories by Heresy Press, which aims to highlight voices “supposedly shut out by the mainstream publishing establishment for crossing various ideological red lines.” For all its aims, Stivers argues that “a countercultural editorial strategy based on an exaggerated account of the mainstream’s flaws also wears thin.”