Happy first birthday, Neon Literary!
Some lessons I learned about entrepreneurship and sanity preservation this year
My birthday toast (scroll down if you just want the advice and not the self-congratulating sax solo)
A year ago today, Kent and I announced Neon Literary. We had officially launched the company the day before, but we believed telling everyone about it on Britney Spears’ birthday augured good fortune. That or maybe December 1 was a Sunday. I forget!
When we hit “send” on the press release, we were sitting together in his Manhattan living room with my client Danica Roem, who was up from Virginia with me for meetings. Danica was sitting in an armchair crooning to Hot Dog, Kent’s elderly cat. Kent himself was crooning in sorrow to his own innards, having just come down with some kind of spontaneous barf virus. I meanwhile was pushing through vertigo in between tranches 1 and 2 of a monthlong vaccine-defiant type-A flu, the worst illness of my life to date.
All three of us were zonked and happy and so, so stressed out. New businesses are a lot! But we were excited for the future. It was all about to get way easier, right? A few weeks of learning curve and intermittent barfing and then smooth sailing, baby!
AAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
I mean, look. We’re so lucky.
We’re still alive. We’re still working. Every single American has some cavalcade of 2020 horrors to relate, and most could show you a list far worse than ours. I know that.
Yes, and: what a fucking year to launch a business. In no particular order: we had our amazing office for all of 12 weeks and several thousand dollars’ stationery before COVID hit. Our landlady eventually decided to pull out of Manhattan altogether, so now we do not have an office at all. My DC coworking space shut down indefinitely.
Kent and I had planned to meet up and work together in person every other week and rent a house in London together for LBF; instead, we have not seen each other in person at all since mid-February.
Hot Dog died. We each weathered profound trauma outside of work. Then my three kids stopped going to school. Their beloved childcare provider endured a debilitating, months-long bout with COVID that hit everyone in her family and ultimately killed the parent who took care of her own kid. And on, and on, and on.
As is my wont in 2020, I’m crying as I write this. For a change, though, it’s from gratitude vs. grief. That’s because—drop by drop, through the awful grace of God—I know now what Kent and I are capable of weathering together. I know just how much beauty our clients are capable of wringing from bullshit.
I am in awe at the sheer strength we have all displayed together, the way we have come together as a team. Do I wish we could have figured this out through a series of themed karaoke nights vs. global catastrophe? YES. Yes, and still.
Success was by no means a guarantee, even if 2020 had been a normal year. Before last fall, Kent and I had hung out maybe two and a half times ever—a couple of drinks meetups plus that one time in 2018 when we ran into each other in the Madison Square Garden food hall. (Kent was going to a Janelle Monáe concert. I was going to the hoagie place to chow down, hugely pregnant, before getting on my train home.)
Pretty much overnight, we went from that to founding a business together. Zero to 200mph. Like Britney’s Vegas marriage to the confusingly named Jason Alexander, doing so might have been a little loony.
But holy shit, unlike either of Britney’s marriages, this partnership is working. It is working so, so well. The company is thriving.
As always, my first instinct is to self-deprecate: ho ho, it’s easy enough to slam dunk over projections on Y1 net income when you have no office and no time and can’t travel or entertain! Hahahaha sob.
But no, seriously:
FIRST YEAR HIGHLIGHT REEL
Sam Irby’s WOW, NO THANK YOU was an instant New York Times #1 bestseller and stayed on or near the top of the list for many, many weeks. Many clients’ books hit other national bestseller lists.
R. Eric Thomas’s HERE FOR IT was a Read with Jenna pick for the Today Show; Megan Rosenbloom’s DARK ARCHIVES was a pick for Jenny Lawson’s Fantastic Strangelings Book Club.
Almost all of the big national year-end“best of” lists contain Neon titles. There are six on NPR’s list alone.
The actress Elisabeth Moss and her friends at Blumhouse bought rights to produce and star in two different Neon books this summer. (Ten options and you get a free sub, Moss!!) Meanwhile, comedian Nick Kroll launched his entire production company with one of our books.
The NYT published a spotlight on Neon and our client Katie Hill.
We sold close to twenty new books in NYC as well as lots more in foreign rights, serial rights, audio, and book-to-film deals.
We hired a third team member: our assistant Lindsay Pierce.
As part of our mission to demystify book publishing for our clients and the general public, we launched this newsletter (for everybody!) as well as an exclusive client resources section on our website. (Let me know if you’re a client and didn’t get the email with the password.)
Starting Neon was a terrifying first for me. It was the first time in my life I did the thing where you step off the treadmill of Known and Easy and into the wild, certain of little more than your desire for wilderness. Asking Kent to do this with me was the second. And as it turns out, these two decisions were the best ones I ever made in my career. Oh my God. The best. Far and away. The wilderness: Highly Recommended.
This is my inelegant way of transitioning from “here’s a toast in honor of our first birthday” to “here are some things I’ve learned and find deeply meaningful and therefore want to share with you!”
Year One Lessons
Trust the part of yourself that is ready to self-parent.
That’s the first thing the past year has taught me. I still don’t know exactly where Self-Parenting Anna emerged from inside my addled and self-doubting brain, but emerge she did.
She ordered me to march into my own future, and thank God: I listened. For once, I didn’t try to talk myself out of a desire, a gut instinct. Instead, I honored my impulses and trusted that they were seedlings—subconscious shoots that would sprout in time into the surface of my understanding. AND HERE WE ARE. THEY DID.
At least once in your life, give yourself the gift of hearing your people say, “I’m with you.”
I told my clients about Neon one at a time. Never had I ever asked so many people to take such a big professional step with me. And I had no idea how moved I would be when they said, “I’m in.”
I still can’t think about their responses without tearing up. Kale Williams sent an immediate “woohoo” and a picture of the pint he’d just downed to celebrate. Jennifer Wright sent a bouquet of neon-colored roses. Caitlin Doughty smiled conspiratorially through the phone: “if any of your other clients hesitate, send ‘em to me.” Caroline Catlin and Leigh Cowart and Jayson Greene shared the announcement on their socials with tons of exclamation points. Megan Rosenbloom sent me a dozen neon pink custom pencils and then knitted me a whole-ass pair of fingerless gloves with the Neon logo on them!! Just to name a few.
It’s important not to be reliant on external validation for self esteem. One should not go to the well for it often. Yes, and: if you’re someone who, like me, hesitates to go deep into that well ever, meeting your validation needs through shallow “tra la la please like this thirst trap selfie” posts because you’re terrified to ask for anything more serious, ever: you have no idea how much it will mean to you. How much it will sustain you.
Give yourself that gift. Once.
Humorous visualization exercises can help stave off a spiral of crippling inadequacy!
AND WHO ISN’T SPIRALING UNDER FEELINGS OF CRIPPLING INADEQUACY THIS YEAR.
I have spiraled. I have spiraled many, many times. And I’ve learned via desperate “help with inadequacy spiral??” google searches that visualizations really help keep these in check.
I came up with the following elaborate visualization for myself after reading a shorter version of it on a mental health message board. (Thanks to whoever posted this, I can’t remember where I saw it!!):
Imagine whatever Bad Feeling you are feeling is a volleyball. If you are being flooded by a Bad Feeling—shame, stress, panic, despair, whatever—close your eyes and smooooooosh that amorphous sloshing blob right on down until it is the size and shape of a regulation Wilson.
Now, in your mind, take a marker and write what it is that’s terrifying you on that volleyball. For instance, you could write: I AM CERTAIN I AM HURTING OTHER PEOPLE ALL THE TIME WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING. Or I AM NEVER GOING TO PLEASE ANYBODY EVER AGAIN. Or EVERYONE IS SITTING THERE WAITING FOR ME. WHY CAN’T I GO FASTER? That kind of thing.
Now put on your Umbros and carry that ball on over to the volleyball court. Buddha is there! He is waiting to scrimmage with you. He is laughing! He is laughing and ready to play, even though his stomach is showing because his shirt is too tight.
Throw the ball in the air, and—slap!—serve it to Buddha. Buddha laughs, ready to go. He reaches up, up, up toward your oncoming volleyball, and then…..KABLAMO! He spikes it, only when he does that, the ball explodes into a million glittering stars. Hooray! The stars shimmer on down to the floor, accompanied by disco music for some reason, and then they dissolve. Buddha laughs. No more volleyball.
Seriously, try it!! It makes you feel so much better.
A good partner makes all the difference.
If you have the opportunity to get into a true, healthy, legally official, equity-sharing partnership in business or life, please don’t deny yourself that gift. Whatever seismic change has happened in my own life this year, it wouldn’t have happened at all without Kent at work and my husband, Matt, at home.
I’m not trying to be an obnoxious heteronormative Sheryl Sandberg here. Rather, I’m offering Future Anna reassurance to the person I was about 15 months ago, in the earliest days of my dreaming about Neon. All of my early “so u want to start a business” googles and Silicon Valley-type library books on entrepreneurship cheerled going alone and Maintaining Control at All Costs. Don’t be a partner, be a #GirlBoss! Don’t give away slices of your pie!! That kind of thing.
That was the wrong advice for me. In my gut, I knew it. Kent isn’t just a genius agent and colleague; he is the literal Atlas of our agency, in the sense that he’s held up our day-to-day admin operations, most of which involve a database program called Atlas. Matt believed I was capable of running a company far, far before I did, but he didn’t push it. He just kept the faith on warm for when I was ready to eat.
Sure, a predatory partner takes your power and doesn’t give it back. But a good parter DRAMATICALLY MAGNIFIES YOUR POWER, and vice versa. Partners carry each other when they’re exhausted. They clear the runway of domestic obligation and admin hurdles so you can do the big-picture things you need to do to change your day-to-day. When you’re spinning out in distorted panic, they can offer you a gentle but firm reality check. If you make a mistake, they can help you fix it and turn said fixing into a humorous caper.
Creating things in an environment of safety, respect, honor, fun, open communication, and equality is mind-blowing. MIND BLOWING. And it’s just not something you can do by yourself. It’s also not something you can do with a bad actor or if you yourself are not emotionally healthy. Please give yourself the gift of growing in health so you can partner in it and have your MIND BLOWN by what becomes possible thereafter.
Happy birthday, Neon. Happy birthday, Britney. Happy birthday, incidentally also my father, Dave Sproul of Bethesda, MD. It’s Sagittarius season, baby. Let’s start firing our arrows into the future.