Hemingway would have posted every day

I’m not going to tell you how to grow your audience. There are a lot of people who do that much better than me.

I want to explore the idea of self-promotion, advocating for your work, being your own most loyal fan, being your own marketing director when no one knows about you yet.

I have noticed some stigma towards people who promote themselves — that they are kind of pathetic, that their work should speak for itself, and that true artists don’t promote themselves. And I am here to say that this is absolute rubbish. And this rubbish is so strong and so widely spread that I fell for it too, thinking that I shouldn’t promote my work, that I should be nonchalant, like I don’t care. God forbid someone might think that I actually CARE about my work.

You know what? I do fucking CARE about my work, about my writing, about myself — and I am absolutely ok with that, and you should be too.

When you start from scratch, there is no one out there who can support you, apart from you. (And your close friends and family if you are lucky.) But mostly, when you start — you are alone, and you should be your own fan, because if not you, then who?

More of this in your inbox. Honest thoughts on creating and promoting your work while building something of your own.

And after all that work you have done, you hit publish and nothing happens. That feels pretty miserable, doesn’t it? But guess what? Doors open when you knock.

And yes, you might feel at first like that door-to-door salesperson who knocks, gets ignored, or has the door shut in their face. It feels awkward. You hate it. You are here not for that, right? You are here to write, not to promote yourself. The greats didn’t do it.

Did they?

Oh, you would be surprised — they actually did promote themselves. All those writers and artists you admire from 100 years ago promoted themselves relentlessly. They went to every event they could to spread the word about their work. They worked very hard because they literally had to knock on doors and physically sell their work to people. I’m talking social events, readings, art galleries, parties — and not everyone could get in, so they had to meet people, they had to impress people just to get to those events.

Let me give you an idea of how writers and artists promoted their work 100 years ago:

Literary salons and gatherings. Writers and artists hosted or attended regular salons — private gatherings in someone’s home where work was read aloud, debated, and circulated. Paris in the 1920s was the epicentre of this. (In A Moveable Feast, Hemingway talks about that time — if you haven’t read it, it’s a very short but very interesting book, readable in one sitting.) Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris was essentially a networking hub where you had to impress as a person first, and then you’d have an opportunity to impress with your work. (Hell for introverts, I know.)

Patrons. Most artists needed a patron — a wealthy individual who funded and sponsored their work. Getting in front of the right patron was the entire game. It was less about audience and more about one powerful person believing in you. But I truly believe this is the core idea behind “make your art for one person” — because at the end of the day, if you can impress one person, you can build an audience. This is also kind of the forefather of online patrons — if you find yours, you can quit your job to do your art.

Little magazines and small press. Independent literary magazines were the blogs of their era. Publications like The Little Review, Poetry Magazine, and The Dial published unknown writers alongside established ones. Getting a poem or story in the right magazine could make a career overnight. (Virality was invented much earlier than you think.) Writers actively submitted, networked with editors, and sometimes paid for their own issues.

Public readings and lectures. Writers toured. Did you know that Mark Twain was essentially a stand-up comedian who sold books off the back of live performances? The reading circuit was a real economic and promotional engine. Imagine writing books and selling them as your merch, not your main income stream. Crazy but genius.

Letters and correspondence networks. Prolific letter writing was how reputations spread among the intellectual class. Writers wrote to critics, editors, and other writers constantly — building relationships, sharing work, asking for introductions. Your network was your letterbox. (Essentially what we are doing here — hello.)

Bookshops as cultural hubs. Shakespeare and Company in Paris, for example. (I’ve been there. I love that place. I’ve never wanted to write as much as I did when I visited Paris.) It wasn’t just a shop — it was a gathering place, a lending library. Hemingway borrowed books there when he didn’t have money to buy them.

Photo by Jeevan Jose on Unsplash

It is very romantic to think that artists were just sitting at home, doing their art, and then suddenly became popular and their work became classics. But that image is a bit false. They did sit there and work on their art — but they also went to every possible occasion to promote it. And yes, they might have felt awkward, but they were also their own most loyal fans and most important supporters.

So essentially they were artists and their own marketing directors. Of course some had publishers do the dirty work, but believe me — according to history, that was much, much rarer. All of this was also very expensive and required education, through which you could also build a network. So their whole life was 50% art and 50% marketing.

And now, in the digital age, you have the same ability to promote your work — but actually sitting at home and being active online. Engaging with people, building real connections.

And you want to neglect that?

Do you think writers from 100 years ago wouldn’t do the same?

I bet Hemingway would post notes every single day. I bet his mate Fitzgerald would be commenting all the time.

You think you’re too cool for that? Even if your work is great, I have some bad news: no one will read it if you’re not advocating for it. Because if you don’t care, why should anyone else?

Mark Twain would have had a YouTube channel with his stand-up specials and links to his books.

Gertrude Stein would have had a Substack with a weekly recommendations newsletter, and we’d all desperately want our names in it.

Believe it or not, promoting your work is not awkward — everyone has to go through this stage. You worked hard and with passion. Be proud of your work, be your biggest fan, and others will follow.

Hope this short history lesson helped and inspired you to spend some extra time promoting your work today — and of course, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter, where I’ll share my work and thoughts on being a writer, your own marketing director, and your own biggest fan. (See what I did there? Promoted myself. Shamelessly.)

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Also, feel free to leave a comment to let me know what you think about this article. I genuinely enjoyed researching it and going through my photos from the couple of days I spent in Paris.