Episode 517: Memoir Plus: The Difference Between Your Journal and a Book People Will Actually Buy

There's a sentence that has stopped more writers in their tracks than almost any other: "Memoir doesn't sell." If you've ever sat across from an agent or editor at a conference with a finished, polished manuscript in your lap, you may have heard it — and then watched the conversation end before it started.

In this episode of Writing at the Red House, Kathi Lipp sits down with her neighbor (and New York Times bestselling author) Susy Flory, who got so frustrated with that myth that she did something about it: she founded Shake Ridge Press, a memoir-only publishing house. Together they dig into why memoir keeps getting rejected, what publishers are actually trying to say when they say no, and how a writer can take a personal story and turn it into a book a stranger will stay up all night reading.

What Listeners Will Take Away

• Why "memoir doesn't sell" isn't the whole truth — and what's really happening behind that brick-wall response at writers conferences.
• The "memoir plus" framework — the single concept that separates a personal journal from a publishable book, and why every story can be developed into it.
• How to stop speaking a different language than publishers — how to lead with the bigger elements of your story so an editor leans in instead of shutting down.
• How to find your right reader — a simple, low-tech way to test what actually connects, using the faces of the people right in front of you.
• What a memoir-only publisher is actually looking for — and what a writer should have ready before she reaches out.

Your Story Is Not Just Your Story

One of the most freeing moments in this conversation comes when Susy explains the shift every memoirist has to make: seeing your life not just as what happened to me, but as a work of art you're creating — one where you have choices. Kathi shares how that shift played out in her own book, The Accidental Homesteader, a book that's about her… but isn't really about her.

Susy also pulls back the curtain on three wildly different memoirs releasing this fall — a Green Beret nicknamed "Doom" writing about PTSD and leading with love, a grieving mother and her adult son with autism searching for clues about his dad, and a preacher's daughter who became the biggest fan of her professional-wrestler son. None of them are celebrities. All of them are proof.

For the Writer Who's Been Told No

As Susy puts it, "We're not here to be dream crushers." If you've been sitting on a story you believe God gave you — and you've been quietly wondering whether anyone in publishing will ever want it — this episode is the encouragement (and the practical next step) you've been waiting for.

Listen in, and then go tell your only-you story of God's extravagant love in your life.