Unquiet
Things

I had a conversation recently with a marketing and brand strategist whose work I genuinely admire. I reached out because I’ve been watching authors and creators in my orbit work with her, and the results are absolutely freaking gorgeous. Thoughtful, strategic, and clearly effective. I came to the conversation thinking I knew what I needed help with, but I left feeling deeply unsettled.

My main takeaway, at least initially, was that the problem was me. That I was getting in my own way. That my resistance to certain language and frameworks—”content creator,” “personal brand,” “monetizing my platform”—was holding me back from turning what I do into a sustainable income. That if I wanted people to take me seriously, to move beyond “hobby” into “career,” I needed to start thinking differently about all of it.

It freaked me out. A lot!!!

But after a day of sitting with the discomfort, I realized the problem wasn’t me, and it wasn’t her either. The problem was that I muddied the conversation by bringing up everything I do….my books, my perfume writing, my Patreon, my blog, my day job that won’t last forever…and accidentally framed it all as a question about comprehensive monetization when what I actually needed was much more specific.

Here’s what I should have said from the beginning: I need my books to sell better.

Not “I need to monetize everything I create.” Not “I need to build multiple revenue streams.” Not “I need to charge brands for perfume reviews.” I need the books—three published in my Art in the Margins series, with a fourth on the way—to reach more people. I need the audience I’ve spent over twenty years cultivating to understand that these books are where my work lives most fully. And when my day job eventually ends, I need book sales to be a meaningful part of my income. That’s it. That’s the actual problem.

But I guess that’s where things get complicated. When you go looking for help with visibility and sales, you often get handed a complete toolkit: personal branding, content strategy, monetization frameworks, influence-building tactics. And embedded in that toolkit is a false choice:
Either you stay small, keep it as a “hobby,” remain invisible and unsuccessful—or you embrace the full apparatus of modern creator culture. Monetize everything. Think of yourself as a brand. Turn every piece of writing, every bit of expertise, every fragment of your creative practice into a potential revenue stream.

Those feel like the only two options. But they’re not, right?! That can’t be it!

I write about perfume for my Patreon, Midnight Stinks. My patrons get the deeply personal reviews, the first glimpses, the sneak peeks before I share things with the rest of the world. They also get scented notecards from me every month. It’s intimate, reciprocal, and appropriately monetized for what it is—a creative practice I want to sustain without compromising its nature.

What I don’t want to do is charge brands $5,000 for a sponsored post where I say something smells “like, so bomb” and call it a day. I see influencers do this, and that’s a completely legitimate business model for people building that kind of platform. But it has nothing to do with the kind of writing I do or want to do. Turning my perfume writing into billable brand partnerships would fundamentally change what it is—and I don’t want that. When the consultant suggested exploring that revenue stream, she wasn’t wrong. For someone building an influencer business around fragrance, that’s exactly the right advice. But I’m not building that business. I’m a writer who happens to write about perfume as part of a broader creative ecosystem.

So here’s what I’m actually trying to solve: How do I make sure the audience I’ve cultivated over 20+ years—people who follow Unquiet Things for the art, the horror, the perfume, the darkly beautiful cultural ephemera—understands that my books are the primary work? How do I reach new people who would love these books but don’t know they exist? This isn’t about becoming a brand or monetizing everything. It’s about making the books more visible within the world I’ve already built, in ways that feel authentic to that world.

The consultant asked good questions. She gave thoughtful, professional advice based on what she heard from me. The disconnect happened because I came in talking about sustainability and multiple income streams, which naturally sounds like “I need to diversify and monetize my creative output.” But what I actually meant was: “My day job is temporary, and when it ends, I need my books to be selling well enough to matter. Everything else can stay exactly as it is.” Those are very different problems requiring very different solutions.

The conversation was valuable, though, because it forced me to articulate what I actually need…and just as importantly, what I don’t need. I don’t need to hustle in ways that feel gross. I don’t need to perform a version of myself that isn’t true. I don’t need to turn every creative practice into a revenue stream.

I need to talk about my books more. I need to make it clearer that they’re The Thing. I need to build better pathways between all the things I share and the books that come from the same place.

I’m going to work through the materials the consultant sent me. I’m going to talk to other authors who’ve worked with her. And I’m going to stay open to the possibility that there’s a way to work together that serves what I actually need: not the comprehensive brand-building package, but the specific question of book visibility.

But I’m also realizing something else: maybe one of my mistakes was framing this as a branding problem in the first place. Maybe what I actually need isn’t a marketing/brand consultant (or at least, not only a marketing consultant.) Maybe I need to be talking more with other writers and creators who are doing similar work. People who got similar speeches about selling more and turning everything into income, and who struggled with whether to listen. People who create beautiful work around their books and somehow manage to keep them central without losing the expansiveness that makes their work interesting. People who are navigating this same tension between wanting their work to reach people and refusing to perform a version of success that feels hollow.

Maybe we should be having regular conversations (working calls, even! GASP!) where we bolster each other, share what’s actually working (not what the marketing industrial complex says should work), and remind each other that we’re allowed to do this our own way.

Because here’s what I know: I am an author! I have written three books with another on the way! And dangit, you’re going to be hearing a lot more about them! Not because I’ve embraced “being a brand” or overcome my stubbornness or learned to monetize everything. But because these books deserve to be read, and I deserve to claim the work I’ve already done.

I just need to figure out how to do that in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m performing someone else’s version of success. And maybe (probably?) I need to do that in conversation with other people who are asking the same questions.

If that’s you, let’s talk.