On Saturday, April 27, 2024, I’m reading from and discussing my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, at Book Passage in Corte Madera at 11 am. You can read more about what people are saying about Data Baby here. More event information is here. Hope to see you there!
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From Burbank to Berkeley, a few recent photographs. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photography.
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Yesterday, I flew up to the Bay Area, where I was doing a brown bag book talk at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. I got there early, and that gave me a chance to have breakfast, visit Pegasus Books where I was happy to see my book on a shelf, and go to my childhood home and knock on the front door (more on that in an upcoming post). After that, I went to Cal for the talk. I was interviewed by journalist and producer Cecilia Lei, who did a wonderful job asking insightful questions, turning what could have been bearing witness to a Q&A into a three-way dialogue with the audience, and prompting me to think about some of the deeper themes in and larger issues surrounding my book in new ways. Thank you to everyone who came. I’ve been doing a lot of promoting of my memoir this month, these last couple weeks in particular. After I’m done with the last event, which is this weekend, I’ll be writing a longer post about everything I learned about marketing one’s book. The photo is of the courtyard at the J-school. It was a bit overcast, but so are most days in the Bay Area in spring.
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What happens when one former child lab rat interviews another former child lab rat? Things get unhinged. Seth Fischer, who was himself studied as a child by his psychologist parents, and I talked about growing up under a microscope, the consequences of being a human guinea pig, and what happens when the subject sets out to tell his or her own story. Read the rest of our scintillating, strange conversation in the newest issue of Air/Light: “‘I Hate the Subject and the Subject Hates Me’: An Interview with Susannah Breslin.”
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I took this photo ahead of the panel I was on at this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books before the room became full. The festival is on the University of Southern California campus, a massive undertaking, and run like a well-oiled machine. My friend and I hung out in the authors’ green room, we got marched over to the hall where the panel was along with the other panelists, and then I answered questions from the moderator and the audience. It was a really cool time and something I’ll be writing about a bit more in a future post. My book is Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. And what people are saying about it is here.
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On principle, I hate AI because it is a thief of creatives’ work, but when Meta added its AI whatever you call it to Instagram, I got lured into engaging with it. Initially, I asked it if it was a whore (it responded in the negative and requested I engage with it in a respectful manner). But then my narcissism got the better of me, and I asked it if it knew who Susannah Breslin was (it did). Falling into my AI reflection in a digital pool, I asked it if I write about sex (I did, it responded). Finally, I instructed it to write a paragraph in the style of Susannah Breslin, and that’s when I learned AI knows me and does me better than I do.
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This weekend, I’ll be a panelist at The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The panel, “Women and Bodies: Science Meets Sociology,” is on Sunday, April 21, at 3:30 pm., it’s moderated by Amy Alkon, and my fellow panelists are Dr. Jen Gunter, Cat Bohannon, and M.G. Lord. I’ll be talking about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. And, you can read more about the story behind my book here.
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Ahead of The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books this weekend, where I’ll be a panelist—see: “Women and Bodies: Science Meets Sociology”—The L.A. Times shared “The 50 Best Hollywood Books of All Time” and asked readers for their suggestions on the best Hollywood books not on that list. My suggestion made it to “19 Great Hollywood Books We Missed, According to Our Readers.” Find out my suggestion here.
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A few recent photographs from around Los Angeles. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photography.
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I’ve really been enjoying photographer Noah Kalina’s YouTube videos, where he talks about his work, his life, and the world. In particular, I like his hotline show, where people call in and ask questions. I’ve called in twice, including for the most recent hotline episode, “The Hotline Show XII.” One reason I like Noah’s rhetoric around art is that he doesn’t try to tie everything up into a neat bow. Art is messy and chaotic and unpredictable. In any case, I usually learn something about my own practice from his thoughts, so check out his work.
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I was interviewed about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment (read more about my book here) for a recent episode of ABC Radio National’s podcast about the human mind, “All in the Mind,” out of Australia. The episode is “Being a Human Lab Rat for 30 Years: What Happens Next.”
From the episode’s description:
“Researchers knew Susannah better than her own parents.
They may have even known her better than herself.
Today, how spending thirty years in a psychological study warped journalist Susannah Breslin's life.”
Listen to my conversation with host Sana Qadar here.
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The above image is a panel from “My, My American Bukkake Too,” a comic that I made in 2003 or 2004. I made the comic using photos I shot on a bukkake movie set, running the images through Microsoft Paint, and editing the results. This comic was a sequel to “My, My American Bukkake,” a comic that I made using the same process in 2002. There was some controversy around MMABT, which you can read about here. I believe MMAB was first published in Headpress 23. Later that same year, MMAB was published again, in Dirty Stories Volume 3, which was edited by Eric Reynolds and published by Fantagraphics, alongside comics by Joe Sacco, Bob Fingerman, and Carol Swain, among others. MMAB was republished again or MMABT was published (I can’t remember which one) in Best Erotic Comics 2008, which was edited by Greta Christina and published by Last Gasp, alongside comics by Daniel Clowes, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Toshio Saeki, among others. In a review of Dirty Stories Volume 3, “A Fresh Look at Porn Comix,” TIME called MMAB a “non-fiction standout.” In 2004, MMABT was published on Artbomb (a comics website created by Warren Ellis that no longer exists), where it was described as “a deeply moving account of personal loss set amidst the tapestry of sexual taboo.”
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A movie poster on the wall at the very cool Pam’s Coffy. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photographs.
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I’m super happy that The Morbidly Curious Book Club has chosen my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment—you can read more about my book here—as the April pick! The Morbidly Curious Book Club is very cool, and I’m honored that Data Baby is in the company of their previous 2024 selections, which include Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom, Lay Them to Rest: On the Road with the Cold Case Investigators Who Identify the Nameless by Laurah Norton, and Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues by Jonathan Kennedy. You can join TMCBC here, check out the rest of their 2024 selections and follow TMCBC on Instagram here, follow TMCBC on TikTok here, and find various other relevant links for TMCBC here, including a link to the podcast, for which I’ll be doing an interview later this month. Thank you, TMCBC!
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On Tuesday, April 23, 2024, at 1 pm, I’ll be doing a brown bag book talk in conversation with Cecilia Lei at U.C. Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism about my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment. (You can read more about my book here.) I’m really looking forward to this event for several reasons. I grew up in Berkeley, my father was a professor at Cal, I graduated from Cal, my memoir is about my 30-year participation in a research study conducted at U.C. Berkeley, and as part of my research for my book I was at Cal for a year as an academic fellow at the Graduate School of Journalism’s Investigative Reporting Program. Event info here.
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My memoir at Powell’s Books, Portland, OR | Photo credit: Kevin Sampsell
This is part 9 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing. Read the rest of the series: Part 1: How To Become a Writer in 12 Easy Steps, Part 2: The Pros and Cons of Traditional vs. Indie Publishing, Part 3: Scenes From My Life Writing a Porn Novel, Part 4: Why I Hate Memoirs (but Wrote One Anyway), Part 5: 19 Ways to Make Money as a Writer, Part 6: Letters From Johns Revisited, Part 7: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Journalism Edition), Part 8: Some of My Favorite Things I’ve Ever Written (Fiction Edition), Part 9: How to Promote Your Book Without Going Crazy.
You wrote a book! Congratulations! That was the easy part! Ha-ha, just kidding. Oh, wait, no, I’m not. If you live under a rock, you may not have heard that these days publishing houses are very, very busy and can only do so much when it comes to promoting the book you wrote. That’s where you come in! If you want anyone to read your book, you better figure out how to promote it. Not good at promoting stuff? Too bad. Don’t like to promote your work? Tough shit. Would rather hire an independent publicist to promote your book for you? Good luck finding a good one for less than five figures to push your book properly and well to all the appropriate media outlets with no return on investment guaranteed. Luck for me, I was a book publicist a long time ago, so that helped when my memoir, Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, came out last fall. (Read more about my book here.) Here are a few ways that your book can get visibility in a crowded marketplace and some strategies and non-strategies that worked for me. Will these avenues and strategies and non-strategies work for you and your book? Who the fuck knows!
The Publisher Did It My memoir was published by one of the big publishers. This has its upsides and downsides, some of which I’ve written about in previous editions of Fuck You, Pay Me. I was paired with a publicist at my imprint. One of the single most important things your publisher should do for you is get galleys of your book to Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews. These trade reviews come out before other reviews and probably before your book comes out. They’re important because everyone in the book business reads them and also because they’re the first thing you can use in your own book promotions. My book got a starred Publishers Weekly review and a Kirkus Reviews review, and I used quotes from those reviews to promote my book on my website and across my social media platforms. If you find sharing positive reviews of your book challenging, pretend You the Author is a consulting client you’re working with and you’re promoting their book for them.
Publishers Weekly: “Unpicking thorny questions about determinism and the ethics of human experimentation, Breslin attacks her subject with verve and wit, resisting woe-is-me solipsism without defanging her critiques of the study that rocked her life. It’s gripping stuff.”
Kirkus Reviews: “An intelligently provocative memoir and investigation.”
Networking Did It Because I have been a writer a long time, I know a lot of writers. That came in handy when my book came out, and my publisher sent out review copies of my book to people I know who are journalists. In one instance, that led to a two-page spread in The New York Post. This feature came out about a month after my book did and generated a sales spike. It also involved a photo shoot, which was fun to do. If you don’t have any writer friends, you should think about making some. They will be of use when your book is published. If you don’t have any writer friends or the writers you attempt to befriend spurn your efforts, you can send fan letters to writers about their work and see if they’re interested in checking out your book because it aligns with their professional interests. Please bear in mind that writers are busy, so if they don’t write about your book, it’s nothing personal.
The New York Post: “Breslin had long been aware she was a ‘human lab rat,’ in her words, but it wasn’t until adulthood that she started to wonder what it was all about.”
The Agent Did It That same month, my memoir was selected to be the December pick for actress Emma Roberts’ Belletrist book club. This opportunity came through my agent at CAA, who is amazing. Belletrist is a celebrity book club, they promote your book throughout the month, and they have you do various things on their platform, like create a video of your personal library and write about your favorite literary things for their newsletter and also do an Instagram Live interview. It was such a cool experience. I got the chance to connect with readers who had spent a lot of their developing years online and since my book is about, among other things, not having a private life, it was very relatable for them. By this point in the promoting one’s own book process, I was getting a bit more in the flow of things, and I had reached a certain point of resetting the bar, which is to say not everything you do to promote your book may be up to your perfectionist standards, but at least you are out there doing it, dammit.
Belletrist: Here’s the interview with me and Emma and Belletrist co-founder Karah.
A Book in Motion Did It According to Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion: “A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.” One thing you may discover while promoting your book is that while promoting it may or may not get easier over time, the book may develop a motion of its own. The Belletrist stuff happened in December, and in early January my memoir got a great review in The Globe and Mail, which is basically The New York Times of Canada. A couple weeks later, I got an interview request from CBC Radio’s “The Current,” which is, like, let’s say, the NPR of Canada. The interview I did with “The Current”’s host Matt Galloway was fantastic, and they had me record it at the NPR West studio so the audio quality was excellent. When this interview aired, it led to a sales bump, which was nice. I definitely felt like this was Newton’s first law at work, with the book club leading to the review leading to the interview. If I told you that you can feel when something is generating its own momentum, would you believe me? I ain’t lyin’.
The Globe and Mail: “If, as Socrates contended, ‘the unexamined life is not worth living,’ then Breslin is living hers to the fullest. Lucky for us, she’s written a thought-provoking, ridiculously propulsive book about it.”
The Current with Matt Galloway: Here’s the interview with me and Matt.
Serendipity Did It The amount of stuff I’m leaving out of this process is sort of ridiculous because I spent a huge amount of time pitching my book to many media outlets which led to various other things, but I’m just trying to highlight a few of them here. One thing I did myself was pitch my book to The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which is in the city where I live and the biggest book festival in the country. By happenstance, someone at the festival shared my book with a woman who was to be moderating a festival panel that would be a fit for my book. That woman and I were on a TV show together years ago, so thanks to serendipity I’ll be on that panel at the Festival of Books later this month. I’m really excited about that. All of which is to say, pitch, pitch, pitch away, because you just never know.
The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: “These writers share thought-provoking research and personal experience on everything from the role of female bodies in human evolution, to the gaps in medical knowledge about female reproductive systems and a 30+ year lab experiment about human personalities, and finally how all of this plays into the dolls we make to represent women. Though their stories differ, these writers are all experts in one extremely difficult field: being a woman.”
The other thing I would like to add is that—well, a few other things. I wrote my own press release for my book, and I could probably write a whole other post about that. Also, there was a lot of struggle over not having full control over this promotions process that involved the publisher that was very challenging that maybe I’ll talk more about at a later date. Additionally, I would highly recommend that you create a page on your website—if you don’t have a website for yourself, I don’t know what to tell you other than get one—that’s about your book or books and all the reviews and promotions and speaking engagements and such. I created mine here. If you let things sit here and there on the web, no one is going to see that. If you put it on one page and update it regularly, more will come from that. For example, my memoir was published five months ago, and I have more speaking engagements and interviews this month than any other previous month. Keep flogging it or nurturing it or pushing it, and it will start to spin forward of its own volition.
In closing, I guess I didn’t really directly tackle the how to do all this without going crazy part, but I should talk about that in a future post. All I know is that for me it’s all about control, and if you don’t believe you have control, you are controlling one thing: your own wrongheaded delusions about control.
If you liked this post, buy my book. If you liked my book, write a review of it on Amazon or Goodreads or the social media platform of your choice. If you’re interested in interviewing me or having me speak at your next event or querying me about promoting your book or other creative project, contact me.
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Clouds over a black mirrored building in Encino. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photographs.
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For the month of April, I’m undertaking a new project: 30 Days of Smut. Every day this month I’ll be writing and posting an approximately 200-word flash fiction that is in some way related to sex. If you know my work, you know this isn’t porn, or, let’s face it, smut, and it certainly isn’t (*gags*) erotica, but, well, IYKYK. In any case, I partly got inspired to do this because I had been reviewing some of the work I’ve written over the years on my blog as part of my Fuck You, Pay Me series on writing, editing, and publishing. As I wrote Fuck You, Pay Me #7: Some of My Favorite Things I've Ever Written (Journalism Edition), and then Fuck You, Pay Me #8: Some of My Favorite Things I've Ever Written (Fiction Edition), I noticed a few things. Some of my best work was written outside of any institution and self-published. That meant that my creativity was best served when I had control over the process, I could do what I wanted, and no one else was involved. So this morning, as I sat in the underground parking lot of the Burbank Whole Foods, I had this idea of a guy who was a porn addict, who was sitting there, trying to figure out how he had gotten there and what he was going to do next. So I thought it would be good to write this as a flash fiction, to share it, and to do that every day for a month. And there you have it. I guess it was also informed by the fact that I spent a lot of time Sunday night looking at tentacle porn for an upcoming newsletter, but you’ll have to wait to hear more about that. Anyway, go read The Porn Addict and then tell me what you think happens to him next. Does redemption await him?
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Photo credit: Clayton Cubitt
In addition to writing books and producing journalism, I’m a creative consultant. As The Fixer, I do a little bit of everything that has to do with words. From ghostwriting books to editing manuscripts to crafting website content, I help my clients with their word-based projects. Are you a busy CEO who needs a ghostwriter? I can do that. Are you a writer who needs someone to assist you in getting your writing where it should be? I can do that. Are you a marketing company in search of someone who can create compelling copy? I can do that. Book a one-hour introductory consultation here or email me to schedule your session here, and let’s get started.
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