Boost Memoir Odds

If you’re an aspiring non-celeb memoirist, you already know the hard truth: landing a traditional publishing deal is extraordinarily difficult.

Want to boost your odds? The “Memoir Plus” (or hybrid memoir) model places your personal story inside a bigger cultural, social, or generational narrative, where publishers are already paying attention.

As memoir expert Allison K. Williams explained in a recent webinar hosted by Jane Friedman, this approach can be especially effective for aspiring memoirists without a big platform, potentially making a proposal more marketable.

Memoir Plus only works when it grows naturally out of the story. Sorry, but you can’t bolt it on. But if agents and publishers have met your memoir with rejection (or, more likely, silence), take a fresh look at whether your personal experience naturally opens a window onto a bigger issue.

I successfully deployed the Memoir Plus approach with a former military officer with a powerful trauma story but no built-in platform. We reworked his book concept to weave his personal narrative into a broader examination of a growing mental health condition. Long associated with military experience, we unearthed a body of research demonstrating that this condition affects many people who have lived through trauma.

Voila! With a revamped proposal, the author landed a top agent who sold the book for a significant sum to a Big Five publisher. 

The approach can be especially effective for established authors moving into memoir. In Cancer Crossings: A Brother, His Doctors, and the Quest for a Cure to Childhood Leukemia, Tim Wendel intertwines the personal story of his brother’s death from childhood leukemia with the work of three doctors at Roswell Park Cancer Center, where his brother was treated. Their efforts transformed the disease from fatal to treatable.

Cancer Crossing, published in 2018 by IRL Press at Cornell University, sold well and was praised for its compassionate blend of investigative journalism and personal narrative.