This week we're talking about all the ways authors are pulled in opposing directions: branding, marketability, genre expectations, comp titles, platform anxiety, and the increasingly cursed reality that writing a book also requires becoming a product.

We unpack the push-pull between art and commerce, why publishing wants your book to be both completely original and exactly like three recent bestsellers, and the emotional consequences of trying to stay authentic while also remaining marketable.

And in Hot Goss: a querying writer decides to get a little too creative, and we remind everyone that a query letter is, in fact, a professional document.

Welcome to Bad Lit Friends. We're glad you're here, even if none of us know what we're doing.

Bad Lit Friends was created and is hosted by Meagan Thompson-Mann and Kirk Rafferty.

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Website: ⁠⁠⁠badlitfriends.com⁠⁠