MY DEBUT NOVEL WAS A FLOP - THE ANNALS OF HAROLD

THE ANNALS OF HAROLD

SubscribeSign in

MY DEBUT NOVEL WAS A FLOP<br>WHEN THE LOTTERY TICKET DON'T HIT

HAROLD<br>May 11, 2026

1,447

106<br>134

Share

Article voiceover<br>0:00

-14:54

Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.— 1 .

MY DEBUT NOVEL TROPICÁLIA (2023) SOLD 763 COPIES, —<br>. . . remarkable, juxtaposed with years of silent toil where literally NOBODY read any of my writing ; less remarkable, in the context of a for-profit publishing industry :<br>I received a $125,000 advance from Atria.<br>When I tell people my novel was a FLOP, they mewl sympathetically with unanimous succor : “don’t say that! No it wasn’t!” — bruh, I know my novel doesn’t SUCK, but there’s one goal in big publishing :<br>TO MAKE MONEY !<br>For Simon & Schuster, my book was an unequivocal FAILURE.<br>They were not interested in publishing me again.

— 2 .

MY GOALS FOR TROPICÁLIA WERE SIMPLE & REALISTIC, —<br>. . . in my journal, I outlined my 3 wishes (excerpt 1/18/23) :<br>“I know this novel is a generational monument; ideally, I would : 1) Win the pulitzer prize ; 2) get a glowing review by James Wood ; 3) make the NYT bestseller list. . . if only one or two of these happen, I’ll be OK, but I think it’s realistic I hit all three. . .”

I was 25 years old.<br>. . . the most bewildering thing about publishing a novel : U cultivate a long-term private DREAM, nurture the most ecstatic expectations, become convinced of its utmost importance: — who doesn’t think, If they would just gimme a chance my book would be a fucking HIT, — suddenly, it’s in the cold world of the market : to live or die by luck & merit ;<br>I will never forget my release day: July 18, 2023 ; I was teaching at the gym all morning, checking my phone every hour on the hour from 6AM to 12PM, expecting a rave NY Times review: eventually the doldrums hit: my only pub-day review was a 3.75/5 on theglossbookclub.com ;<br>Gaby picked me up on her lunch break; it was raining. She walked and I sulked over to the now defunct Barnes & Nobles on Warren Street. Tropicália was on the front shelves: ECSTASY.<br>. . . not even three years later : U can’t find my book in any store.

— 3 .

THERE’S A PAUCITY OF GOOD, DETAILED INFORMATION, —<br>. . . nobody cites their numbers, most people are mum on the whole process : here’s how I sold Tropicália : at Miami University, I was a philosophy major, but my senior year 2018-19, I did an independent study on contemporary fiction with the writer Margaret Luongo ;<br>I wrote a 100 page draft of what was then luso-ridiculously called Eu Agora Sou Feliz ; (— I didn’t know anything about MFA programs; I took a workshop Senior year with Daisy Hernandez, who had given me a C minus in a Freshman workshop the most knuckledragging football players were A-plusing;<br>she was impressed with a story I wrote (under the influence of George Saunders & Nana Adjei-Brenyah) called Fast Times at the Perpetual Daytona 500 and suggested I should apply: I was shocked) ;<br>I applied only to Columbia University. Ben Marcus called me on my birthday, March 14, 2019, to tell me I was accepted. I didn’t answer; I was cutting weight for a fight. . . After I won my fight, I listened to his voicemail for the first time: it was one of the giddiest moments of my life; I email-hammered them until I got full-funding, and I went to NYC.<br>. . . to say I enjoyed my experience as an MFA student at Columbia would be a LIE; but another LIE would be to tell U the experience wasn’t beneficial to me as a writer. I had three especially influential workshops: with Lauren Grodstein, Rivka Galchen, & Binnie Kirshenbaum,<br>there will always be absolute DOLTS in Ur workshop: if U listen to them, U R a FOOL and were never gonna be a writer anyway ; to imagine the workshop is a place where Ur brilliant prose gets whittled into marketable dreck is an absolute delusion: most people are already writing staid dreck.<br>What’s vital, especially, if U go in, like me, with only about 5 years of serious writing experience: is being READ ! — Never in my life had I gotten honest feedback about my stories. . .<br>During the MFA, I avoided camaraderie & socializing like the plague: I focused solely on Tropicália: I didn’t write a word of anything else.<br>I sent my third full draft to Rivka Galchen in January 2021; she was abundantly complimentary and told me to send the book to her agent: Bill Clegg. Now, this is where my dreams of grandeur truly began. I thought I was gonna be Zadie Smith. I was sure Clegg was gonna hit me back ASAP, and I would soon be signing a million dollar deal with Knopf.<br>Days, weeks, months: No response from Clegg. Embarrassingly, I sent him a follow-up query with “blurbs” : including what Binnie wrote on her last workshop letter, and an amended text from Sean Thor Conroe (“Bruh, Tropicália is FIRE AF”). . .<br>Eventually, I gave up and started sending wider queries. I didn’t realize my query fucking SUCKED. I had NO CLUE how to sell my book. Moronically expecting...