How To Pitch A Trojan War
What bookstore rejections and plummeting testicles taught me about selling a book.
I have recently discovered that writing a book may not be the hardest part of writing a book.
Selling the damned thing might be.
For five years, I knew what my job was. Sit at the computer. Wrestle with Homer. Chase down obscure ancient sources. Decide which version of Aphrodite's origin story involves the most interesting testicles. Write. Rewrite. Delete. Rewrite again.
Then shell out gobs of money to copy editors, classicist beta readers, proofreaders, formatters, and artists. Sometime after that, on May 26, 2026, The Full Disclosure Iliad became an actual book.
"Ta da!" I congratulated myself, checking off my "write and publish a book" bucket-list entry. For 48 hours or so, I was sweetly, naively happy — until I realized the obvious: "And now I need to sell it."
To date—June, July, and August—this has involved launch parties, book signings, social media posts, interviews, newsletters, posters, photographs, emails, invoices, consignment contracts, and a staggering number of conversations in which I gamely explain why any sane person should spend $64.99 to read a 446-page story about a war that may or may not have happened, some three thousand years in the past.
I'll spare you the full three months of misery, and confine myself to three short anecdotes, not about Jeff Wright: 21st-Century Homeric Bard, but about Jeff Wright: 21st-Century Book Salesman.
Anecdote One: Book Signings
I have done three book signings—two at Ottawa-region Chapters/Indigo superstores, and one at a charming indie joint named Books on Beechwood. So far, here's what I've learned.
Nobody stepping into a bookstore particularly wants to hear my extended thoughts on Greek epic. On reflection, it seems obvious. But in real time, it came as something of a blow.
For the past twenty years people have paid actual money to hear my extended thoughts on Achilles, Helen, Hector, and history's most famous horse. Mostly, those people have remained in their seats. True, in every show there’s at least one patron who pointedly yawns while departing mid-performance, but that’s just the gods teaching me humility. The real miracle is that most folks stay, and sometimes even applaud at the end. That’s the gods teaching me faith—or thanking me for keeping their stories alive.
But a bookstore signing is a different beast completely.
Turns out—who'd have thunk it—people go to bookstores to buy books. And then they see me, right inside the front door, a stack of books at my side, a smile pasted to my face—like some predatory animal, sizing up a kill.
Meanwhile, my mind is churning as I appraise my target—age, gender, socio-economic status, education, kids or no kids, cultural origin—he looks vaguely Greek—as I tailor my pitch.
"Hi there." "Have you seen the new Christopher Nolan movie?" "Were you forced to read the Iliad or Odyssey in school?" "Did your kids read the Percy Jackson series?"
Grasping at straws, I quest for a conversational foothold. Just engage, I silently plead.
Anything will do. Just give me a foot in the door, and I will sell you a book.
At the most successful of my three book signings, about seventy potential customers walked into the store during my three-hour stakeout. Fifty of them rejected me outright, mostly by refusing to engage, forcing their eyes to Science Fiction, Adventure and Travel, even Spirituality and Healing—anywhere, in fact, save for me and my books. Five other folks proved temporarily promising, rushing to engage, but only for directions to the washroom. So that leaves fifteen others, where I at least landed a conversation. Of those fifteen, nine purchased my book.
Let’s do the math. That day's book signing required a thirty-minute drive to the store. Then three hours inside the front entrance, before the thirty-minute drive home. So:
Four hours' work.
Fifty-five outright rejections.
Fifteen friendly conversations.
Nine books sold.
And that was my best day of book signing. At the other Indigo store, I spent three hours and sold three books. Books on Beechwood was the same: three hours' work, three books sold. At the time, it all felt rather soul-destroying. As for my meagre author's cut of each of those $64.99 sales? “I'd have done nearly as well panhandling in the parking lot,” I concluded.
Following the third book signing, I contacted my agent, Marie. "Why am I doing this?" I complained. "This is cost-benefit insanity, on top of being depressingly hard work. Surely there's some better use of my time?"
Marie disagreed. "Tell me about those fifteen conversations that you did have, Jeff," she encouraged. I had to concede, those fifteen conversations had been wonderful.
"And all of them basically the same?" Marie queried.
"No," I replied, enthusiastic now. "In fact, they were all over the map, and entirely unpredictable. It is remarkable, the myriad ways folks think about Homer, the Trojan war, the things they find interesting about my book. It truly was life's rich pageant."
"Which is why you will keep doing book signings," Marie insisted. "They are your training ground, Jeff. You are already good at telling a story. Now you need to practice your pitching skills. Trust me on this. The time you spend behind those book-signing tables—fielding those life’s rich pageant questions and comments—someday, that experience will pay dividends."
I had my doubts, I can admit to that now—but in the weeks that followed, it turned out Marie knew what she was talking about.
Anecdote Two: The Long-Form Podcast
Before Marie ever put a name to it, I had already stumbled into another version of her training ground. Joel McKinnon, host of The Seldon Crisis podcast, invited me onto his show for a wonderfully indulgent 90-plus-minute conversation about Homer, Christopher Nolan, Odysseus, and whatever other rabbit holes presented themselves along the way. Joel knows this material. Better still, he is genuinely curious about it. And we had time—gobs of it. Joel was no prospective bookstore customer. Joel wasn’t averting his eyes and trying to escape. Joel was leaning in.
For close to two hours we talked about Greek epic, Joel throwing a question at me, me taking a wild swing, Joel pushing back, and me trying again. It was wonderfully indulgent, and great fun. But behind it all, something else was happening. I was honing my pitch.
This was Marie's bookstore training ground theory, only with a comfortable chair and an interviewer not trying to escape me for the greeting cards section of the store, or for the washrooms. Joel's questions gave me a safe place to experiment with my answers. What is the interesting part of this? Which parts of my answer are inviting Joel to lean in? And—most importantly for a man who has spent twenty years being paid to entertain for at least ninety minutes—when have I said enough?
One of Joel’s questions stayed with me. “Who is Odysseus, really?” he asked.
My first answer was more than a little verbose.
Odysseus, I struggled to explain, is both brilliant and foolish, charming and despicable. Devoted to Penelope, he still makes time on his homeward journey to bed several goddesses. Then, after outwitting a Cyclops through one of the cleverest acts of linguistic brilliance in all of western literature, his insufferable ego screws the whole thing up.
Eventually I found the word I wanted: Emily Wilson's wonderfully provocative translation of Homer's polytropos.
Complicated.
From there came the modern comparisons: Tony Soprano, Walter White, Dexter Morgan—wonderful characters to spend time with, but not real people I’d want living next door.
By the end of my conversation with Joel, I had done something more useful than promoting my book. I had figured out what I wanted to say about it. Joel’s long-form interview gave me room to meander, first discovering my answer, then making it tighter, for delivery on demand. A few weeks later, that skill proved particularly useful.
Anecdote Three: Radio
A few weeks later came my 17-minute interview with Alan Neal on CBC Ottawa’s All in a Day. This would be my third interview with Alan over my professional storytelling career. Each time, he has been an absolutely generous host. I knew this. It did not help. My stomach was still tied up in knots.
This is freakin' Alan Neal, the fanboy in me whispered. And all of Ottawa is going to be listening. Whatever you do, Jeff, do not screw this up.
I had prepared, of course. Talking points. Possible questions. Short answers. Longer answers. Clever little anecdotes I hoped might seem spontaneous. My fully rehearsed pitch package.
Then, go-time … the studio light came on, and all my planning came crashing down.
Alan opened by talking about deific testicles, crashing down from the sky.
Shit, I despaired. Plummeting testicles weren’t part of my pitch package.
And then the training kicked in. Not just my twenty years telling these tales on stage, but my bookstore signings and ambling interview with Joel—Marie’s damned training ground.
Don't force the conversation back toward the answer you prepared, the lesson came back to me. Focus, instead, on the question you were actually asked. Go where the other person takes you. From wherever that strange place happens to be, find your way back to the book.
So, Alan Neal and I talked about testicles. Which led quite naturally—as these things apparently do—to Aphrodite, to sanitized Greek mythology, to my "Full Disclosure" approach to competing primary sources, and to the ancient messiness that my book joyously includes.
Alan moved on: Thetis, Helen, the geopolitics behind the Trojan War. Instead of doggedly reciting my pitch package answers, I found myself simply having a conversation. This was starting to feel familiar.
Then Alan asked which of Homer’s characters I had changed my mind about most since we last spoke.
“Odysseus,” my answer came unbidden. This time I didn't need twenty minutes to formulate my thoughts—Joel had generously given me that time.
Odysseus is brilliant. Clever. Witty. Fun. Until, just when you’re liking him, he does something despicable. Emily Wilson’s word came to me:
Complicated.
Almost automatically, out came Tony Soprano and Walter White, and me telling Alan that Odysseus is the most 21st-century of Homer's heroes: one of those characters we love hanging out with in a story, but wouldn’t want living next door.
That was it. My sprawling long-form podcast answer, boiled down for short-form radio.
Suddenly Marie's unwelcome book signings advice made even more sense. Pitching is not proclaiming everything interesting about your book—Gods help me, I could do that for days! Pitching is about meeting your audience where you find them, then giving them just enough of your story to make them want more. Sometimes that meeting place is Odysseus, sometimes it is Helen of Troy, and sometimes, apparently, it is some deity’s severed junk, crash-landing in the Mediterranean Sea.
Alan eventually wrapped up the interview by telling his listeners that The Full Disclosure Iliad was, "in short, a lot of fun to read." Then, as the clock ran out: "I wish we had more time." So did I. But perhaps not having more time was the point.
Three weeks earlier I might have tried to cram five years of research into every answer. Now I was beginning to trust something I had practiced while sitting inside the front doors of a bookstore: listen, keep it tight, go wherever they take you. Even if the conversation opens with airborne genitalia, Jeff, you know your book well enough to find your way home.
So, What Have I Learned?
Three months into my new career as a travelling salesman for The Full Disclosure Iliad, I am beginning to understand that performing and pitching are quite different skills.
Somehow, after five years writing the book, I never anticipated needing lessons in how to talk about it.
Which seems profoundly unfair.
I thought I had finished the book.
Apparently, I had only finished writing it.
P.S. And Speaking of Pitches...
Of course, this letter is a pitch. You figured that out pages ago. So I'll dispense with the verbal gymnastics and get to the point.
If you haven't yet purchased The Full Disclosure Iliad—either the luxurious, gloriously overbuilt hardcover or the considerably more sensible $10 e-book—please don't avert your metaphorical eye contact now. Just click on this link and buy the damn book. Please! Then you can ask me directions to the washrooms.
And if you have already purchased a copy—may all of Olympus shower blessings upon you—then I have one more small favor to ask. Go to Amazon. Search for The Full Disclosure Iliad. And write an honest review. Short is wonderful. Long is wonderful. A few sentences saying what you liked—or didn't—are wonderful.
Reviews mean the world to me, not simply because they make an author feel warm and fuzzy, but because they help complete strangers decide whether this very large book by an unknown author might actually be worth their money and time. Think of your Amazon review as the online equivalent of some delighted customer at one of my bookstore signings, turning to everybody walking past and joyously shouting:
"Hey! This guy's book—it's truly amazing. Come check it out!"
And yes—that actually happened to me, once, for thirty glorious seconds in an Indigo store.
I didn't have to pitch the book at all. Someone else did it for me.
Now that is marketing I could get used to.