We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Patrick Grant. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Patrick below.

Patrick, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

Corporate America has never known what to do with literature. Random House Publishing was so named because its founders started publishing books at random and have argued in court that still to this day the industry can’t predict a best seller. They’re supposed to be gatekeepers and tastemakers, like any cultural and curatorial institution, but most of the time they’re making safe bets chasing last year’s successes. The same book covers, plot devices, conventions, and tropes, until something breaks through and changes the paradigm. How and why that happens? No one exactly knows.

With the help of my friends and an affordable book-printing service, I self-published my first novel, sold hundreds of copies, and turned a tidy profit. I recreated a deconstructed publishing house with myself as the writer, publicist, and vendor (thank you Instagram and the United States Postal Service), while my friends served as editors, cover designers, marketers, and (most importantly) readers. What I learned from this is that there’s nothing special going on in Corporate America at those publishing houses that makes a book a book. They want surefire bets, and they know most books they publish won’t succeed, but the few that succeed will pay for all the rest. It’s a bad model for art. A still imperfect, yet better model is the democratized, social media-powered, self-made influencer-writer pushing out their work in the content-attention marketplace. It’s already making the corporate model obsolete, as it has in so many other industries.

Patrick, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a writer. I pay my rent writing a healthcare newsletter, TrustWorks On Call, and I fill my nights writing fiction. My debut novel, On the Fringe, is a Hamlet meets QAnon treatment of life as a rudderless twenty-something in the generation of downward mobility. I am proud of that work because people have read, including some I have never met, and it resonated with them. It’s entertaining and true, as all good fiction should be. What sets me apart from many other writers is my love of humanity and my time spent with people. I don’t want to be a writer’s writer, I want to be a non-reader’s writer.

I am working on another novel that concerns two strangers, a cynic and a believer, coming together to find a lost friend, who is a danger to herself and others. Its publishing fate is unclear. On the Fringe is available for order via my instagram, @16_and_pgrant.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Kurt Vonnegut’s writing on art, much of it contained in his memoir “A Man Without a Country,” have been highly influential to me.

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

This quote in particular is important to me because it adds a new twist to the adage, “If you love what you do, you won’t work a day in your life.” I am an entrepreneur, a small business owners, and a creative. However, if I view my creations as primarily a way to make money, I will be miserable and grow to hate my art. The art comes first, and the money comes second or not at all.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

I tattooed my book cover onto my right bicep, and I have found that to be a consistent conversation starter and sales lead.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @16_and_pgrant