Going Viral

Guest blog by Gretchen Cherington 

I don’t know an author who hasn’t secretly dreamed of their book going viral. We sell a few books at our neighborhood bookstore and wake up to find hundreds were sold overnight by Amazon, then thousands. We’re fielding interview requests from Teri Gross, Dani Shapiro, Reese Witherspoon, or Oprah. Fill in the blank with your own penultimate influencer who picks up your book and really changes your life.

The truth is that few memoirs get this kind of notice. In 2017, Dani Shapiro’s did when her fabulous Inheritance-A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love launched Shapiro into a new stratosphere earning her a well-subscribed podcast and connecting her to thousands whose paternity is determined by donors. Unlike Shapiro, Reyna Grande was largely unknown when her The Distance Between Us: A Memoir, showed us what it’s like to immigrate to the U.S. from Mexico, becoming an instant bestseller and introducing us to a new author with prodigious skills. None of us are surprised that Michelle Obama’s Becoming and Barack Obama’s The Promised Land were instant hits. But to re-weight the scale, Tara Westover’s Educated seemed to come from nowhere to viral status, bringing us a beautifully told and harrowing story about growing up with survivalist parents.

Most of us toil through months or years stringing thoughts on paper and then by more hard work and luck get picked up by a publisher. Going viral is a a pipe dream, as lovely as the aroma from that pipe full of fruity tobacco may be.

Recently, I was given the chance to re-frame my own definition of going viral and found that like much in life, it’s relative. Last August, after my book Poetic License—A Memoir came out, I had a lucky baker’s-dozen of friends who purchased multiple copies—from three to twenty-four to give away. Last week one, I’ll call him Bob, emailed me with what happened to two of the dozen books I’d signed for his poetry group, while he kept one back for himself.

The book describes my reckoning with a long silence about sexual objectification and molestation experienced at age seventeen at the hands of my father, a famous and revered poet. As told in the book, years of silence preceded a pivotal reckoning when I found myself speaking to my father’s doctor who had known my story. Marking a key point in my recovery, I told the doctor, “I don’t need anyone else to change their story of my father. I’m just no longer willing to change mine.”

Back to two of the books Bob gave his friends. One of them, I’ll call A, loved it, and immediately passed it along to her best friend, B, a member of their knitting group. Knitter B passed it along to her son C, then her daughter D, who live in Chicago and Atlanta, the daughter reading and passing it along to her neighbor E. Other knitters in the group, F, G, H, I, J and K got wind of the book and circulated it too. Meanwhile Bob’s wife, whom I’ll call Kathy, loved the read and mailed it to her sister, L, who winters in Florida. L circulated it through her book club, reaching—M, N, O, P, Q, R and S.

Would I have loved to log each of those almost-an-alphabet of readers as new sales? You bet! Would I have loved for every one of them to write a review on Good Reads or Amazon? Definitely! But as Mick Jagger once crooned, we don’t always get what we want. Bravo to Dani, Reyna, Barack, Michelle, and Tara who have. Most of us, like small businesses, will reach hundreds or thousands of readers over time as I have, more than we’ll ever know by our sterile sales reports, knowing friends are passing a copy along to their friends who dog ear and underline the book before passing it along again. A sea of authors and readers who, collectively, make up the vast sales of books. Whole armies of readers carrying our books into the world, multiplying, as Bob did, his original gifts. That’s the kind of math I like—one that multiplies the impact of one person starting a chain of influence to others. That’s pretty viral in my book!  #NoLongerWilling

Gretchen Cherington has jotted down lines on pages since being a kid and listening to her father, the poet Richard Eberhart, and all the great literary friends who visited, recite their lines. Published in multiple journals and nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize for her essay “Maine Roustabout,” Gretchen’s first book, Poetic License—A Memoir, was published in August, 2020 by She Writes Press. She’s proud of her first foray into book publishing while she works on her second memoir to be published in Fall, 2022. Gretchen and her husband split their time between the coast of Maine and the hills of New Hampshire. A leader in her community she has served on many boards, chaired four, and is retired from a successful thirty-five year consulting career. She greatly enjoys the antics of her wildly entertaining granddaughters—virtually, for now.