autofanfic

how I'm thinking about content this year

Professional writers love to complain about how much they suffer, promoting their own books on the internet. It isn’t fair! they tell me. This should be my publisher’s JOB! I’ve seen the comments they leave for publishing professionals on Substack, seeking permission to quit: do I have to keep doing this? Self-promotion goes against their core identity as an artist, but they want to sell books in a marketplace, so what can they do but hold their noses and do their best impression of the same social media content that their esteemed colleagues, who by the way also believe themselves to be above all this, post online.

What if I told you… that you didn’t have to do this?

What if you could think of the internet more like going to the playground with your friends, and less like going on QVC and questioning every choice that led you here?

Today I’m going to tell you about the hard reset I just did on my own Instagram and how I’m thinking about my brand and content strategy in 2024.

At the end of December, I archived every single post on my Instagram grid. Then I made an announcement:

I’ve worked in publishing since 2008 but I’ve been feeling really depleted and burned out this season and ready for a new challenge. change is SCARY, but I’ve decided to detoxify my career and accept a new role as Community Engagement Manager at RICHUAL, a pioneer in the wellness space that uses social technology to connect, cure, and catalyze women to be global changemakers through the simple act of self-care

Richual is the name of the wellness startup in my novel Self Care.

Some of my followers got the joke right away (

Laura McKowen

commented, “Omg you are so BRAVE. Thank you for modeling the manifestation of nurturance through high vibrations and throat chakra cleansing by truth-telling without limits. I bow 1111”); others thought I was serious, and earnestly wished me well on my big career change.

Reading all the comments from people who didn’t realize this was satire (“women are people”?) only reaffirmed my motivation for pulling this prank in the first place.

On Instagram, I had begun to worry that my reputation as a book coach and teacher had eclipsed my reputation as a satirist and novelist. Your personal brand is what other people know you for and on Instagram, I was building a reputation as a book publishing expert. The more opinions and advice I posted as Reels and on Threads, the more my audience of writers grew.

Maybe other multi-hyphenates can relate to this quandary. You want to be known as ______ but people still think of you as ______ .

Based on the DMs and emails I get every day, I had built a reputation as “helpful” and “knowledgeable” and “a giver” when what I want to be is “funny” and “cutting.” I don’t want to be a saint. I want to be Dorothy Parker.

I decided I would keep all my book publishing content here on Substack and start over on Instagram as Leigh Stein, the satirist, novelist, and cultural critic. I wanted to reach readers, not writers.

To give people more of a clue as to the game I was playing, I bought the domain wearerichual.com (I added “THE TRUE STORY OF RICHUAL” up top lol) and started adding the URL to my posts.

Then I made my next post even weirder: if they didn’t realize it was satire before, I thought, they will now.

it’s a privilege to work for a startup like RICHUAL that prioritizes women’s health for its employees by mandating gravity method colon hydrotherapy and letting us pay for it ourselves so we have AGENCY in our wellness journey

Instead of “promoting” a novel, I built a game, and invited people to play with me. I chose the month of January because it’s the month when we’re tired and googling “do powdered greens actually work?” I solicited submissions in my Stories for expensive nonsense. I used Canva templates to make posts that look just like the real thing. An unexpected consequence has been people DM’ing me to say my Canva posts are too realistic—Instagram is showing them vitamin ads around my posts. 🙃

I’ve decided to call this autofanfic.

It’s fanfic of the fictional world I built in Self Care. There’s no way my publisher could have come up with this—it had to come from my own imagination, my own ironic way of looking at the world.

I present autofanfic to you today as an alternative to autoQVC.

This weird experiment let me totally be “myself” while at the same time, I got to keep my real life entirely private. I don’t have to share my life with strangers to keep them interested in what I have to say.

If you’re feeling a little tingly about trying something new in public, I recommend

Lexi Merritt

’s thoughts on this, too.

Credit to Jenovia to posting this on Substack Notes, where I found it!

I’m calling the experiment a success: it’s the most fun I’ve had on the internet in a long time, and I know that I’ve shifted my personal brand, because my Instagram DMs are now filled with Marina Abramovic’s skincare venture.

Although I initially conceived of this as a 30-day experiment, followed by a “reveal” that this was all a joke, I think my audience on Instagram doesn’t need the reveal. Once I posted the Maria Abramovic/Bryan Johnson post, I realized that fear of aging is the bridge between the wellness world I built in Self Care and the intergenerational conflict in my next book.

Okay, signing off to go drink my electrolytes and feel superior to others. ✌🏻

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Upcoming events

• On February 15, I’ll be in conversation with Jessica Saunders about what we did to launch her debut novel Love, Me, which you have been seeing all over Instagram this month. Advance registration required

• On March 2, I’m teaching my popular introduction to Memoir Plus in Westport, CT. This class WILL sell out because there are only 20 spots available. Register soon

• I will be the keynote speaker at the Westport Writers Pitch & Publish conference on March 16. Your registration includes the opportunity to pitch literary agents. The organizers Liz and Julie do an extremely professional job (take it from me, a former conference organizer!) and it’s a pleasure for me to participate.

• There is a DATE CHANGE for my rare and luxurious writing retreat with Karen Karbo in the South of France. Now June 23 — 28. Karen told me there are three spots remaining.

Special announcements

• My friend Andrea Guevara runs a group coaching program for authors who need help with their brands. There is a free information session on January 31 if you want to learn more

• Last year, my interview with Michelle Glogovac, the Podcast Matchmaker, on how writers can pitch themselves to podcasts, was one of my most widely shared newsletters. You can now buy her book!