Buckle up

The current contents of my brain. NSF aspiring non-fiction writers.

I’ve put off writing this again and again and again. And I’m still not sure I should. Because it’s about failure. I haven’t failed much at the big things in life. I mean, I haven’t married and I have no children, and many people would consider those two facts to be failures at life. But I don’t. They just happened to happen like that. I didn’t fail at my undergraduate university, though I wasn’t particularly good at my master’s degree (which I suppose comes from switching from modern languages at a university that struggles with the word “modern” to doing international relations in the United States, which turns out to be more foreign than foreign languages, and mostly bullshit jargon).

My books, apart from the first, have done extremely well, though they are never bestsellers. I believe I am what is called “critically acclaimed” but also “mid-list.” I’ve been fine with that, because with books 2 and 3 I could measure the reach of my books by all the talks and interviews I was asked to give. I know they changed people’s minds, and that is more than enough as rewards go. Nine Pints did less well, I have given fewer talks about it. I think it fell between being too medical for the general public and not medical enough for medical professionals who maybe scorn laypeople writing about medical things (although the ones who did read it told me they learned things and were surprised).

And so we come to Every Last Fish. I’ve written about the title in an earlier newsletter and how I am increasingly convinced it was a mistake. As far as I can tell, the fishing industry has ignored it. And the US media — print and radio — has ignored it too. This is unprecedented. All my books have been reviewed by the New York Times. In fact Dwight Garner wrote that he would read anything I write. I never expect a review but I always hope for one. Not this time. He may have read ELF, but he hasn’t reviewed it, and nor has anyone else beyond Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews.

My agent, Erin, has tried to reassure me. It’s not just you, she says. The US is a mess. The non-fiction market is in trouble.

According to a July 7, 2025 post from Publishers Weekly about 2025 print sales:

“Adult nonfiction sales fell 3.1% in the first half of the year despite a stellar performance by The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, which sold more than 1.7 million copies. The biography/autobiography/memoir subcategory had the biggest decline in adult nonfiction, with units falling 10.7%. General nonfiction sales also took a big hit with units down 9.9%.”

Nearly ten percent. That is a lot. And it is not really a comfort.

Most bestselling non-fiction books are memoirs or celebrity- “authored”.

OK, but zero interviews? I am probably old-fashioned. I am told that the measure of a book’s reach has changed. It’s not mainstream media reviews or doing a Fresh Air interview on NPR. It is podcasts and Substacks and all that kind of thing. I don’t really know about all that kind of thing, but I suppose I’d better learn. But my publishers do know about that kind of thing, and despite their best efforts, I still don’t have a sense that ELF has been a success.

My state of mind has been so low that I have of course avoided looking at reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Of which it turns out there are hardly any, except for this glorious one that I found today when I dared to look.

That warms my cockles of course. And see, I’m right about the title. Hats off to the fishmonger for opening the book anyway. Thank you.

And here I am, wondering what the point of writing Big Books is any more. No-one has the mental space to read about big themes, e.g. about how the oceans are being screwed, when they are bombarded by All The News All The Time. I get that, and I could point out that — as the nice fishmonger above said — it’s not a book about doom or gloom. I tried to write something that was more than that.

So I have a written a book that seems to have sunk without many bubbles, despite being Book of the Week, despite the extracts in the Guardian and Telegraph. This has never happened before.

It’s fine. Of course it’s fine. I don’t have a terminal disease (just persistent plantar fasciitis); I have shelter and food and a wonderful family and a delightful cat and great friends. I’m even almost entirely over my heartbreak. I can see the positives, really I can.

But this is my career and I haven’t had to question it so deeply for years. Maybe I’ll try to write some crime fiction as that’s all I read anyway. Maybe I’ll finally train to be a carpenter. Maybe I’ll sell all my belongings and live in my van.

I write this in the spirit of honesty, not self-pity. Sorry if it comes across as woe is me. I’ll pick myself up. I’ll write again. Or build a cupboard. Something will occur to me.

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