the mystery of the viral book flyer

an interview with Claire Jia

For several months, I’ve been trying to find out the answer to the question Sarah Labrie posed in a viral Note on June 25: did this work?

For all the writers out there seeking an alternative to social media, can old-fashioned photocopied flyers actually sell books?

Today, I bring you a very fun interview with debut novelist and former student council member Claire Jia and an analysis of why I think her campaign was so effective.

Most of the authors in my audience know they need to promote their own work but they feel unsure about how best to do this (and they’re also ambivalent about social media). How did you approach your own debut novel launch? Were there things you were willing to try and things you were absolutely not willing to do?

It took me eleven years to write my book and get it published, so I always knew I’d be pulling out all the stops! I’ve been so fortunate to have the full force of my incredible publisher, Tin House, behind me, but I also wanted to get creative and think about unexpected ways to get the word out. I figured, I only ever debut once, so I better throw every can of paint possible at the wall. I’m an unknown writer without any kind of social media following; there’s no reason for anyone to buy my book. I wanted to lean into that identity as an unknown, starting small and local.

How did you come up with the idea to print and hang posters?

Maybe it’s my college student council experience (lol), but when I think about promoting/campaigning for something, I think about postering. That’s just what you do when you want to get the word out, and in LA, it’s cheap to do it—the LA public library has $6.25 of free printing a day!! That’s 12 color flyers a day! I love free stuff. Do not sleep on the LAPL!

So a week before my launch, I bustled around the Silverlake Reservoir pasting up flyers. It was very town-crier-in-a-medieval-town-spreading-word-of-the-king’s-death. I watched as people stopped to examine or laugh at the posters and it felt like we were in on a little secret together.

How many did you create and where did you post them? How far in advance of launch did you put them up?

I printed probably about 100 and my friends and I pasted them all over the Silverlake Reservoir, Los Feliz, Highland Park, Culver City, Pasadena, West Hollywood, and the list keeps going because I keep putting up flyers!

My friends also super kindly printed and pasted flyers themselves in neighborhoods that were easier for them to get to, and while I was on my tour I put up flyers on my way, from a Panera Bread in Greenville, South Carolina to telephone poles in Georgetown. At first my approach was more about inviting people to my launch events, but then it became just about promoting the book itself.

Were you able to measure any results from this campaign, whether that’s QR codes scanned, or books sold, or social media posts that resulted from the posters?

I’m not sure how the flyers have affected sales yet, but they’ve definitely created some buzz—a lot of people have reached out on socials, either directly or by posting photos of my flyer (on Instagram or Substack mainly), to say they’ve seen my flyers around town and love my style!! A definite highlight is that in June, a fellow author who I’d never met saw my flyer at the Silverlake Reservoir and posted a photo of it to Substack. [I’m going to assume this is Sarah Labrie!] The photo went viral and caught the attention of a writer for the New York Times, who then wrote a whole piece on flyering and interviewed me!

Any advice for authors who are inspired by your campaign and want to replicate it?

Just try it! It’s a great activity to do with friends (shoutout to all my friends who so nicely took on the role of tape guy), and the perfect way to get in your steps :)

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One thing I love about this flyer campaign is how specifically Claire calls out her dream readers in the headline:

are you jealous of your wife?

do you hate your friends’ boyfriends???

Is real estate all you and your friends talk about?

You can steal this as a prompt: can you think of three questions (these are “hooks”) that your ideal audience/dream reader would recognize as a signal that your book is for them?

On Sunday, for my diamond medallion members, I wrote about how I see more opportunity in creating content than in publishing or traditional media. Even though Claire devised a creative offline marketing campaign for her novel, it got the attention of the New York Times because of a viral piece of content (Sarah’s). I’m creating the content you’re currently reading because of Sarah’s viral post.

Most writers (reasonably!) expect that their book release is going to be the monumental event that generates publicity—but more and more, I’m seeing that it’s the innovative strategy around the launch that generates attention.¹ Until publishers start publishing fewer books (?), or we magically get more media outlets reviewing books (?), this seems to me to be where the opportunity is.

Claire’s flyers stood out in the attention economy because they’re analog. If you notice yourself pausing your Instagram scroll on a photograph of handwriting, or a video of an artist painting a watercolor, it’s because those images are arresting, intimate, human, nostalgic.

Claire Jia’s confidence is intoxicating. Her deft prose and deliberate unfolding of plot, the way she lays her characters bare so that we understand their deepest wanting just as they begin to grasp it for themselves, all her literary choices make this a debut that feels like it was written by a master.

—Jade Chang, author of The Wangs Vs. The World

Ye Lian is thriving in Beijing. She has a well-paid job, a nice boyfriend, and plans to marry and move into a luxury high-rise apartment. She’s wanting for nothing–until her childhood best friend, Luo Wenyu, comes whirling back into her life after a decade in California with seemingly everything–a successful career as an influencer, a millionaire American fiancé, and a bespoke mansion in the Beijing suburbs–throwing Lian’s own reliable choices into high relief.

As the two women rekindle their friendship, Wenyu reveals a shocking secret about a past love that pushes Lian to question her own relationship.

In girlhood memories and karaoke afternoons in Xidan Square, in aspirational YouTube channels and billboard ads, in private hotel rendezvous and secret WeChat messages, Claire Jia’s debut novel is a love letter to friendship; a powder keg of impossible, interwoven desires; a siren song that explores why, even as it destroys us, we always want more.

You can order Wanting from Amazon, Bookshop.org, Powell’s, or Barnes and Noble.

1. See, for example, Ali Kriegsman getting on Reese’s Bookmarked podcast after marketing her self-published debut The Raise.