How the Wall Street Journal got Theo of Golden totally wrong

(and why that’s good news)

The Wall Street Journal looked at how Theo of Golden took off and said it “broke every rule in publishing.” I loved the article, it celebrates a great success story, a wonderful book, a lovely author, and hard work rewarded.

But I think the headline is wrong.

I don’t think Theo of Golden broke the rulebook. I think it is the rulebook of the new publishing world.

The Wall Street Journal’s logic is that this level of success usually follows a different route, manuscript to agent to publisher, and then some black magic happens and it becomes a hit. That was true, once upon a time. It still works, occasionally. But increasingly, you have to get in there and sell your own book.

Here’s the good news: no budget, however big, can fix a boring book, or make a stranger finish it and press it into a friend’s hands saying “you have to read this.” Word of mouth is still your best sales engine, and you can build it with patience and a shoestring budget.

This applies no matter which path you’re on. Maybe you’re signed by one of the Big Five, with a decent advance and strong launch-month sales that taper off fast. Maybe you’re with a boutique, author-friendly publisher doing real legwork on your behalf. Maybe you put your book on Amazon yourself. Distribution has changed and reach to readers has changed - both no longer gatekept by the traditional publishing infrastructure. The flipside is that you’re running a sales and marketing engine now, whether you signed up for it or not.

That’s publishing today, and it’s what the Wall Street Journal missed.

Theo of Golden sold 2.5 million-plus copies because the author’s niece did the tiresome, unglamorous, unpaid work: tracking platforms, contacting book clubs, treating every website visitor like a potential advocate. Those efforts compounded, to 3,000 copies, then enough people passed it along that it reached 125,000 copies in a single month, before any agent, before Oprah.

That’s not breaking the rules. This is what good - excellent, even - looks like, with the rulebook we’re all actually playing by now.

And it should be good news if you’ve felt the door close in traditional publishing, or felt let down by lackluster marketing from your publisher. Instead of watching with helpless frustration from the sidelines, technology and market shifts put the ball at your feet. The Theo of Golden playbook proves that a great book can find its readers.

So how do you stay motivated while you tinker and chip away, playing marketer when you’d rather be writing?

I keep coming back to something Kristin Hannah once said in a podcast interview (forgive me, I can’t remember which one, I’ve listened to so many). The Nightingale didn’t take off right away. It did fine, but it didn’t catch fire. Then one of her other books did well, and readers of that book discovered The Nightingale, and it became a phenomenon.

Your book doesn’t need a big marketing budget. It needs patience, conviction, and creativity. And if you wrote a book, you already have all three in spades.

Congrats to Allen Levi, and his niece, on the success, and on a beautiful book.