I'll give you something to cry about
*building buzz* with off-the-book essays (featuring Cara Meredith, author of Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation)
Today, we’re getting a behind-the-scenes look into one author’s “personal essay tour of duty”
That’s what
calls the blitz of off-the-book essays an author publishes at or around time of publication.This — placing essays adjacent to the book’s topic — is a publicity strategy authors use to *build buzz* about their work.
And today, I am so honored to have my brilliant and kind friend, , author of the just-released, Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation, offer us insight into the strategy behind one of her essay placement attempts.
As far as marketing goes, I am the ideal reader for Church Camp
I grew up Evangelical and attended more than a handful of church camps. I cried on cry night, and I repented of my desires (for anything, ever, at all. I was so sorry for wanting things!). I burned (well, snapped in half) my secular CDs, and I prayed the sinner’s prayer dozens of times, because I was forever questioning my personal sincerity.
And though I have some bad memories and some negative underlying belief systems that I’ve had to deconstruct, I still attend church. I’m hopeful that the institution itself isn’t inherently toxic or doomed.
I’m a lot like
, in other words.But Church Camp isn’t just for people like Cara and me. It’s for anyone with memories of camp — positive or negative. It’s for people who are concerned about how emotionalism might manipulate children — whether that’s in religious or non-religious settings. It’s for people interested in how capitalism invades summer activities. (And more: Cara does a beautiful job articulating her ideal readership here).
In other words, Church Camp has something to offer pretty much anyone.
To find a diverse readership, an author has to think strategically about where they can connect with that audience.
It might seem obvious to publish off-the-book essays on Church Camp in Christian outlets. But Cara’s also trying to find a general readership, too.
And that strategy is what she’s going to share with us today.
I hope you’ll enjoy this peak into
’s book promotion process. And I hope you’ll add Church Camp to your summer reading list.
As a freelance writer, I often say that if I can just get the English teacher (which is to say, the editor), to give me an assignment, then I can write my way into anything.
Because for me, starting from scratch is sometimes the hardest part of all.
Now you’d think, because I just published my second book,[1] I’d be a pro at crafting a pitch that lands exactly where I want it to land the first time around.
After all, as any author knows, publishing a book is mere icing on the cake – by then, you’ve researched and written, and rewritten, over and over (and more often than not) over again. You know the information forwards and backwards, but knowing all that information does not necessarily translate into knowing how to come up with a pitch that meets the particular needs of a publication.
There also existed the additional challenge of seeking publication in general writing markets for a spiritual memoir. How do you translate the concepts of God-filled prose to an audience that may not want to touch any inklings of spirituality or religion? How do you distill and filter out bigger ideas from your writing, especially when you’re so thick-in-the-weeds of a story only you can tell?
With these challenges in mind, I was grateful to sit down with one such writing friend[2] who helped give me a 10,000-foot-view to a book that could have otherwise had a very microscopic, miniscule focus.
Through that conversation, the following pitch to The Washington Post was born:
I stood at my standing desk, the walking pad slowly moving beneath me at a mere 0.6 miles per hour. Miniblinds open, I looked up from the screen and stared at the scene before me: our urban oasis of a backyard space beckoned me head outside and stop the daily grind of work already.
It wasn’t all that long ago that my days were spent entirely outside at the many summer camps I called home for nearly twenty-five years of my life. Maybe that’s when it hit me: I desperately wanted that summer camp feeling, even in the midst of my boring, everyday 9-5.
In about 800 words, I will offer readers an array of uplifting insights gleamed from my summer camp days. For instance, just as summer camps are often highly structured environments, building structure into your day that makes room for walking the dog down by the waterfront or tinkering around in the garden for 15 minutes can make a world of difference. You may not be able to fit in an afternoon at the high ropes course or a rowdy lunch with eight of your cabinmates, but you can take a break from screens and build in elements of refreshment.
After all, it’s not impossible to achieve that summer camp feeling, even when you work a boring 9-5!
I will include quotes from camp enthusiast Jacob Sorenson, author of Sacred Playgrounds, as well The Nap Ministry founder, Tricia Hersey, author of Rest is Resistance. Insights and statistics from the American Camping Association will further prove my point.
I’m pitching “Inspired Life” because you feature inspiring stories to help all of us disconnect, hit refresh, and start the week off right. With summer camp season right around the corner, I imagine a fair number of grown-ups find themselves in a similar spot – desperate for feelings of nostalgia, as their fingers plunk, plunk, plunk down on the computer keyboard.
I am also the author of Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation (Broadleaf, 2025), and have quite a fiery passion for the summer camps of my youth.
I hope to hear back from you soon!
Although Anna generally provides a response from the editor as to the pitch, seeing as I’ve not yet received a response to a pitch that was sent out approximately three minutes ago at the time of writing, I cannot provide insight, critique, or instruction along the way.
But I can say that finding a 10,000-foot-writing friend to help you view the problem anew is sometimes exactly what you need to write the pitch, put on a Big Girl Face, and press send in the first place.
With that, I wish you – and me – luck in all of our pitching endeavors.
[1] The book? Church Camp: Bad Skits, Cry Night, and How White Evangelicalism Betrayed a Generation. Pick it up wherever books are sold!
[2] And that friend was Anna Rollins!
As Cara shared, she pitched the Inspired Life column at The Washington Post.
This column features feel-good essays (or pieces that give a reader hope for the rest of humanity — isn’t that nice?).
For more about the logistics of pitching this column, check out this brilliant resource from
.Thanks for reading! What questions do you have for me or Cara about writing off-the-book essays?
And do you have a favorite off-the-book essay published at the time of a book launch?
(I’ll go ahead and share mine: I will forever find Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s “The Kidnapping I Can’t Escape” published in The New York Times Magazine in conjunction with her novel Long Island Compromise absolutely riveting/devastating/glorious/all the things. All hail Taffy Brodesser-Akner — that’s all I have to say).
This is part of a monthly series called Path to Publication.
In it, I will unpack the story behind my stories. These reflections are part process, part strategy.
At the beginning of 2022, I had, essentially, zero bylines. Since then (in the span of two years), I’ve published nearly 50 short essays. It’s not like I became particularly prolific. I’ve always been a writer. I just became serious about learning the tips and tricks for placing a piece in a popular outlet. And that’s what I’m looking forward to sharing with you.
Wonderful advice, Anna and thank you so much for the shout-out. I love sharing tips, tricks, strategies and craft advice on my substack Writing That Gets Noticed.
Thank you so much, Anna! Also, your TITLE is just the best.