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Big Talk Un-Miked: Claire Arbogast

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Two of Claire Arbogast’s books have been published. One is a memoir and the other a novel. She’ll be talking about and selling both at the Writers Guild at Bloomington‘s Local Authors Book Fair, Saturday, November 2, 2024. Claire is one of 31 authors corralled by organizer Molly Gleeson for the event. As far as I can tell, Claire has taken the most labor-intensive route to getting her books into readers’ hands. That’s because she has a background in public relations, communications, and marketing and has a lot of experience dealing with the buying and selling of books. This is the fourth installment in my little series on authors who’ll participate in the Book Fair. Three of them — Claire, Molly, and Rebekah Spivey — have appeared on my WFHB radio interview program Big Talk. They and Keiko Kasza were key sources for my soon-to-be-published Limestone Post article on the Fair. All four happily provided me with more information than could fill a dozen articles and show episodes so I started this limited series. I just couldn’t let all the great tips, insights, revelations, epiphanies, setbacks, triumphs, and inside scoops I got from them fall, as it were, on the cutting room floor.

MG: Your memoir Leave the Dogs at Home got good reviews and sold well. Was it easy for you to get publishers interested in the novel If Not the Whole Truth?

CA: The publishing world has contracted so much over the years. I knew it would be hard. The top twelve most popular fiction genres are:

The nature and topic of If Not the Whole Truth is serious. It’s got politics in it. No vampires, no speculative worlds, not uber adventure, not gooey romance, not a cozy-murder, detective mystery, no monsters, no heroes battling organized crime forces, there IS a LGBTQ+ person in the book but it’s not a key part of the story, not a traditional historical fiction novel, not for YA, and certainly not a children’s book!

It’s the kind of book an established author like Barbara Kingsolver, Kristen Hannah, or Jodi Picoult might get published. Or a professor or scholar, a debut younger writer with a key-market attitude (color, immigrant-related, recent MFA, LGBTQ+) with the potential to write many more books over the decades might get published.

I’m an old privileged white woman without credentials, so I knew it would be tough.

MG: How did you prepare for the process?

CA: I took classes on how to query agents and publishers, hired professionals to help me with my query letters, and queried 130 agents and 81 small presses.

Querying is a long, slow process. Nothing happens fast, and often a pass is a no response. While I was pitching and waiting, I learned as much as I could about self-publishing and book marketing, and worked on expanding my network, especially with other authors, staying engaged with the readers of my blog and previous book, and marketing my previous book. All these things I’ve continued to do.

I did hear back from one publisher who loved the book, but had just published a similar book and passed on mine to keep their small catalog more diverse. And, I heard back from the Santa Fe Writers Project 2023 Literary Awards (winners get their books published). They too loved the story but passed because they wanted more of the 2022 era in the story.

MG: This isn’t overnight success stuff!

CA: I gave myself a deadline of January 2024 to quit trawling for an agent or a publisher. (She began writing the book in 2020).

MG: What things did you do to get the word out about If Not the Whole Truth?

CA: A hundred million thousand things, but I also had to do a ton of marketing myself for the Leave the Dogs at Home (published by Indiana University Press). Unless you are a big name author, you’re gonna be doing marketing.

(Claire provided me with what she calls “a short, incomplete list” of steps she took to market her novel; you wouldn’t be too wrong to conclude it’s as hard to publicize and market a book as it is to write it.)

(And you thought just writing a book would be hard work! Claire Arbogast already is contemplating her next book. When I first contacted her, she was driving around Indianapolis, visiting bookstores, spreading the word about her new novel. As she drove, she told me, she was formulating the idea for her next book in her head. Learn more about Claire:

Please read previous Big Talk Un-miked editions on this global communications colossus, The Electron Pencil:

And, whatever else you do, just read, period.)

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