By Hollay Ghadery

7:15 a.m. Wake up. My partner left for work hours ago. From the kitchen, my phone’s notifications sound. Close my eyes. Try to calm mind for the day ahead. Hear creaking of floorboards outside door; murmurs of kids shuffling from their rooms.

8:21 a.m. Goats, chickens, and dogs are fed, school bags packed, teeth and hair brushed, and hopefully, in clean underwear, my children are waiting at the end of our driveway for the bus. Have already scanned emails and notifications. Replied to time-sensitive messages. Prioritised the rest. 

Wave goodbye to kids and start tidying house. Vacuum. Reply to email from a bookstagrammer requesting a digital ARC of a forthcoming book. Wipe toothpaste spit off bathroom mirror. Reply to email from client asking if I can resend the link to a recent magazine interview they did that was just published. Load and start dishwasher.

Email reminder to self to contact kid’s orthodontist office when open to reschedule appointment that conflicts with swimming lessons. 

9:30 a.m. Workout in the makeshift gym I’ve created in the half dug-out basement of our 150 year old house. Between sets, reply to DMs from our social media review community. Track new ARC requests in client spreadsheets.

11 a.m. Showered and dressed, sit at desk, ready to officially begin day. Check social media again. Reshare posts we’ve been tagged in. Make sure scheduled post for the day has gone live. Check metrics for previous day’s post. Design graphics for posts for next couple of days. Create copy. Schedule.

11:50 a.m. A dreaded task: email querying client whose book didn’t resonate with me. Explain I don’t feel I’m the person to represent this book, but send my best. Try not to over explain myself. Thank them for thinking of me. Mean it. Feel awful. 

12 p.m. New pitches. Comb through my clients’ pitch spreadsheets and send out or schedule new pitches to reviewers or media. 

1:30 p.m. Do final pass on press release I wrote yesterday for client’s forthcoming title. 

2 p.m. Meeting with publisher. Discuss campaign for new titles. Who is approaching what platforms? Assets still needed. Projected delivery. Campaign cadence. Chat about latest article predicting the fall of publishing. Agree it’s tough out here, but there’s the books! These beautiful books! Always, always, come back to the books. Feel better. Hopeful. Excited, even. Sign off smiling.

2:45 p.m. Receive reply from festival organiser with invitation for one of my clients to appear on a panel. Email client with news. 

2:50 p.m. Client replies, ecstatic. Let the organiser know the client has accepted. Ride second-hand high. 

2:53 p.m. Email bookstore about hosting a launch for a couple clients who would be great together. Provide several available dates. 

3 p.m. Meeting with potential new client. Client wants to know if I can get their debut short story/poetry collection on Reese’s Book Club and secure them a spot on Breakfast Television. And have their book displayed prominently at their local Chapters. And can get them on The Next Chapter? And can I get their book made into a movie?

Talk with client about setting manageable and realistic expectations. Also, strive to explain the differences and intersections between sales, marketing, agenting, and what I do in publicity. 

Try to convince client, who is resolutely anti-social media, to give at least one platform a chance. Client says social media isn’t their thing. It’s so fake. Their work should stand for itself. They shouldn’t need social media. Tell client you don’t operate in a world of shoulds. Drive home how media space for the arts is shrinking and authors—especially emerging authors but really, all authors—need to take control of their own platform. 

Client says promoting oneself feels pompous.

Say it’s more pompous for authors to expect other people to stand behind their work when they won’t even do it. 

Client concedes to think about it. 

Explain how certain genres are more pitchable than others and the more topical the themes in a book, the better, but no, I am not saying authors should write for the newscycle, but that I need to identify what I perceive as a book’s innately salient hooks to pitch it. 

Share responses I’ve had from media that help illustrate the points I have been making, like how I’ve had review space editors tell me they are passing on wonderful books because the author isn’t a recognizable name. 

How some media outlets have said they will speak to nonfiction writers, but haven’t had good experiences with novelists.

How a podcast host declined interviewing a perfectly suited novelist because the book sounded “too provincial.” How I am still not sure what that means.

How, when I stopped calling a work of speculative fiction and started introducing it as literary fiction, it finally started getting interest from reviewers.

How most of the time, I don’t get responses to pitches at all. Most of the time, pitches go out into the ether with nary a signal home. How I am not the only publicist who experiences this. Silence is the norm. 

Our books, I say to the potential client, are a bit like how many people view their children: they are the most spectacular creations in the world to the parents, but relatively speaking, not too many other people really give a shit.

I say, I’m working to help change that. I am trying, in my own small way, to show people why the literary arts matter so much and how they already matter, every single day, all around us, but we take them—we take the literary artists and their highly trained but undervalued work—for granted. 

Say, but you see, this is why building and supporting our literary communities as authors, on and offline, is so important.

I am trying to simultaneously access and create spaces where this recognition and celebration can happen.

The scheduled 20 minute meeting with this potential new client turns into an hour long conversation. I end the session feeling like I’ve killed someone’s dream. Or at the very least, come off as a cynical bitch. 

4:05 p.m. Drink some herbal tea. Eat something. Check social media accounts while noshing. Reshare an amazing review of one of the books we represent to Instagram stories.  

4:15 p.m. Receive email from someone telling me I need to publish their book because the publishing industry is full of corrupt cowards who don’t understand their “cutting edge” art. Reply briefly explaining I’m a publicist, not a publisher. 

4:20 p.m. Review unanswered pitches from the previous week. Develop game plan for follow ups.

4:23 p.m. Kids arrive home from school. House is a flurry of stories and aired grievances and hugs. Nod and try to listen to them while continuing to work. 

5:00 p.m. New email from client. Had pre-recording for a radio show I co-host scheduled for tomorrow but client needs to reschedule for the following week. Check calendar. Accommodate. Return to follow up plan.

5:23 pm. Email from book blogger agreeing to consider reviewing a book I’d pitched. Yes! Send it off.

5:30 p.m. Upload new author interview to blog on website. Check website metrics. 

Tell myself I am going to stop working in 45 minutes.

Accept plate of dinner from partner. Eat in office. 

5:57 p.m. “Cutting-edge” writer replies. Calls me a cunt. 

6:00 p.m. West coast producer of awesome radio show wants to have one of my west coast clients on! But needs to know ASAP. Gives me details and cell number. Says to text when I have response. 

Send email with details to client, texts client. Shut down laptop because I promised daughter a game of cards but keep eye on phone for reply.

6:45 p.m. Receive email from debut author client who has seen the most-anticipated books list in big newspaper. Client’s book is not on it. Client knows I pitched the book. Client distraught. Inhale. 

Reply:

I know this sucks. There is so much that goes into deciding who is on these lists and literary merit is only part of it. Take heart: building lasting and meaningful readerships and selling books is not achieved solely by getting books on lists. Or reviewed in literary magazines. Or being invited to festivals or reading series or on big name podcasts. Those can all be part of a book’s success but also important are the things that are more in our control: readings at local indie bookstores and libraries and bookclubs. The content we create and nurture organically for blogs and social platforms. The literary citizenship and enthusiasm you are showing by talking about the books and authors and artists you enjoy on your own platforms and in your community. The phenomenal niche podcasts we’ve approached who’ve already invited you to be on their shows. The campus radio host who just interviewed you. The TikToker who gave you a five star review yesterday. All these things matter too. The big newspaper list would have been nice, sure, but it doesn’t mean anything that you didn’t get it. I believe in your book and so do the other people who are already supporting you. 

Hit send. Exhale. Put phone down. 

Continue to get crushed by daughter in cards. 

7:09 p.m. West coast client confirms, is delighted. Provides all necessary information. Pass info on to producer.

8:37 p.m. West coast producer again. Can we change the original time? Bump it forward an hour? 

Know this will be a conflict with client’s work schedule. Send message to client.

8:49 p.m. Client says they will figure it out on their end, and can do the earlier interview time. 

Send confirmation to producer. 

Daughter wins game. Endure her rambunctious gloating. 

9 p.m. Youngest child has been bathed and is in bed calling for lullabies. Sing to him. Do an encore when asked. Tell him if he keeps changing the lyrics of Rubber Ducky to “Rubber Anus”, I will stop singing. Make mental note to talk to his older siblings about the language they use around him. Snuggle in and drift for a few minutes. Try to stop worrying that I forgot to do something for someone today; about my own unfinished manuscript. Eldest teenage son glides into bedroom and gives me and younger sibling a kiss, grabs his Nintendo Switch from sibling’s dresser, leaves. 

Pry myself from the bed and slip out of the room. Find my partner sweeping crumbs off the kitchen floor. Lean into him for a hug. Tell him that tomorrow, I’m going to do a better job of managing my time. Tomorrow, I am going to accomplish more for everyone.

Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 HITS FM Bookclub, as well as HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist with River Street Writing and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. Learn more about River Street Writing at http://www.riverstreetwriting.com.