Profiling bestselling Theo of Golden author Allen Levi the Independent's Annabel Nugent gives us to understand that Mr. Levi simply "decided to take a stab at writing for the first time" because he "just wanted to see if" he "had the muscle to write a piece of long fiction,'" and in the process produced a self-published novel which "with no marketing campaign, and for two years, no mainstream publisher" now tops the New York Times fiction bestseller list.
Thus Ms. Nugent gives the impression that this was some out-of-the-blue success by a first-time writer who crapped out a book on a whim, and then without marketing resources or the backing of a mainstream imprint (the qualification "for the first two years" regarding Theo of Golden's lack of a mainstream publisher is the kind of thing few people register) became a gen-u-ine bestseller--Levi realizing exactly the kind of fantasy that fires the imaginations of those who become "aspiring authors." However, as Nugent herself makes clear when we get past the attention-grabbing crapola that constitutes her opening paragraphs, it didn't exactly go down that way. Thus was it the case that Levi left his longtime law practice in Columbus, Georgia, to "study Scottish fiction at the University of Edinburgh" (!)--as one does when not having any aspirations to be an author, of course. After all, "his love of language" expressed itself not in prose, but rather in his becoming a "full-time singer-songwriter, performing at various events and for Christian organisations around the US over the next couple of decades," which was not at all relevant when his project manager niece "compile[d] a list of people Levi had encountered over his diverse career" and turned to them "for their help in spreading the word among their local church groups, libraries, bookstores and book clubs" in what Nugent calls "good ol' grassroots, person-to-person marketing." (Just "marketing," not "marketing campaign." Totally different.) This moved enough copies to move Simon & Schuster to pick up the rights, paving the way for a David Morse-read audio book edition, the Washington Post interview from which Nugent plucked her quote about Levi's just wanting to see if he could write a long piece of fiction, the seal of approval of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, etc.--which enabled the book's sales to go from the 125,000 copies it managed as a self-published work to the twenty times that number it has sold at present.
In other words, Mr. Levi wasn't someone who had never thought of writing before, but had in fact gone to a great deal of trouble to study literature formally in a manner few do without aspirations here (his ditching his law practice--a classic English major profession, by the way--and crossing the Atlantic to attend the ancient university makes his interest seem less than casual, somehow), and acquired lengthy professional writing experience (songs aren't novels, but all the same, it is writing experience, and he had a lot of it by this point, all as we can be forgiven for suspecting that even if this was just a matter of seeing whether he could "write a long piece of fiction," it wasn't really his first try). Moreover, for all the insistence that there was "no marketing campaign" he did indeed have one that was facilitated by the kind of support system of family and friends, and the kind of platform, that virtually all those aspiring to self-publication the way Levi did has can only dream of--with it seeming to me relevant that Nugent lets slip that Levi actually turned down an offer of publication from a publisher before going the self-publishing route. (Not only is it the case that few who have any offer of traditional publication will refuse it in favor of the desperate last resort that is self-publishing, but the fact that he did have such an offer implies there is something we haven't been told here. After all, how did Mr. Levi get the offer before he refused it? And why was the publisher in question willing to take a chance on a first-timer in a way that publishers so rarely are? That he had connections, that he had a platform, that he was plugged into the Christian media machine, may not be irrelevant.) Moreover, even after having what is by the low, low standard of self-publishing a blockbuster Levi's really big success was inseparable from Park Avenue calling and amplifying it in a way that turned a comparative trickle of sales into a flood of millions, with more to come--for, contrary to the title of the piece ("Meet the 70-Year Old Debut Novelist Who Turned a Self-Published Book into a Global Bestseller") Levi, who again, had lots of help from the start, didn't turn a "self"-published book into a "global bestseller," rather a Big Five publishing media machine did that, a fact that Ms. Nugent gives very short shrift indeed as she plays her part in its promotion.
Thus Nugent misleads the reader MASSIVELY by, even as she gives a good many facts contradicting it, early on insisting on the clichéd "It all happened overnight!" "I wasn't even trying for success!" "I never dreamed it would get this big!" narrative. Undeniably in line with the obvious function of a puff piece to promote a Simon & Schuster book in that way that ought to remind anyone who has read Balzac's Lost Illusions of the "ugly" "preparations" "behind the scenes . . . the painted supers, the claqueurs hired to applaud" to generate the "unexpected . . . success" that the "theatre of literature" presents the public, it is also consistent with the principle uttered by Dauriat in that book that, contrary to the hopes of those who hope to make a Name for themselves as authors, one has little chance of becoming an author unless they have made a Name for themselves already. (I wonder if Ms. Nugent, or any of her colleagues, ever read Balzac. Going by his unfashionability in such circles, probably not--any more than she is likely to have read the equally unfashionable and yet likewise indispensable Upton Sinclair, or Jack London.)
What makes all this so much more grating to those who have "been there" is how it cruelly fosters the "You can do it too!" illusion of the accessibility of the literary path to celebrity to our aspirationalism-addled "temporarily embarrassed millionaires." And perhaps the more striking in a case like Mr. Levi's because of how, reflecting the always hard and now significantly worsening reality of publishing generally and self-publishing specifically that "writers" like Ms. Nugent do not touch with a ten-foot pole, new stories of breakout "self-publishing" success have been lacking for quite some time, all as the generally minor early successes have long since faded from view. After all, it certainly isn't an accident that you probably haven't heard anything about Amanda Hocking in a long time. But don't expect Ms. Nugent to tell you about that.
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