Free Agent: From Small Publisher to New York Times Best-Seller

A conversation with Andra Watkins about working with an independent publisher

Writer Andra Watkins

For my next Free Agent interview, I spoke with the writer Andra Watkins to ask her about the unexpected success of her second book and first memoir, Not Without My Father: One Woman’s 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace. Andra and I met at an artist residency in Portugal in 2019. She had just published her fourth book, and the third in a series of supernatural historical thrillers about Merryweather Lewis. (Highly recommend!)

I was struck by her story of the practically overnight success of her small press-printed memoir which landed on the New York Times Best-Seller list a couple of weeks into its release. She has worked with the same small press for all her books, but is now approaching larger publishers for her second memoir about growing up in the evangelical South to try and reach a new audience.

Because of all this, I thought she would be a great person to have on this series to share her breadth of experience in both independent publishing and the heart-wrenching “crap shoot” (Andra’s words) of trying to get a big publisher.

Andra has most recently written an article for Newsweek about her choice to remain childless, and how her upbringing has had lasting impacts on her sense of worth as a woman and a creator. You can follow her on Instagram for hot takes on what liberals think Republicans mean vs. what Republicans really mean when they perform their talking points.

This is just a screenshot. You can check out the full video below :)

Check out the below video to hear about her journey, and the way that she navigated publishing as an unknown rookie writer. Art Date subscribers can watch/listen to our conversation beyond the paywall below.

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