Bethany Saltman on the Strange Situation
The Peak interviews Bethany Saltman, award-winning author and best-selling book coach, about strange situations, derailed party trains + the power of podcasts.
Photo by David Stewart
Once a student of Alan Ginsburg, and a decades-long student at Zen Mountain Monastery, Bethany took matters into her own hands to promote her book, The Strange Situation, when its release coincided with the Covid-19 quarantine. Facing her fears of social media, she embraced it. After teaching herself what she needed to know, she started rocking the podcast circuit. Her year online has produced some great reviews, a whole new world of friends, a writing group for therapists, and an exciting outlook on the web’s role in her business.
Tell me about your book and your motivation for writing it.
When my daughter Azalea was born 15 years ago, I was struck with the sort of stunning realization that some kind of maternal sensitivity or sensibility wasn’t happening just by virtue of my being a mother. I loved her so dearly. But I became very concerned and worried, and terrified, frankly, that I was going to screw her up because maybe I didn't have what it took to love her. So, I began doing what I do, which is noodling around, doing research and looking into things. I stumbled onto Mary Ainsworth's “Strange Situation,” a laboratory procedure that reveals the nature of a child's attachment to its caregiver.
I was just riveted, and I thought, Wow, this is something that I need to know more about. So, I stopped noodling and got super serious. I dove into the research on attachment, which is a 60+ year old science that is incredibly rich. It’s one of the most studied aspects in all of psychology ever. Mary Ainsworth is one of the pioneers of female scientists. She is both very celebrated and under celebrated, and I just got totally hooked. It was very much a personal journey, if you will, of me trying to understand myself and my relationship with my daughter, and by way of that very personal fear I became intellectually just obsessed.
Your book was published at the beginning of our COVID-19 quarantine—in April 2020—and your plans for its release were totally thrown into upheaval. What happened? How did you adapt to the strange situation (sorry…) you found yourself in?
On a personal level, I’d been working on different books since Azalea was born, basically. I’d had several book proposals that came close and never made it. This one did, and I spent 10 years working on it. So, it was an enormous personal accomplishment, the biggest of my life. We had planned a huge party with everybody flying in—family, friends, colleagues. We had hotel reservations, and different stops along the party train in NYC. When the COVID word got out, I started thinking: This isn't gonna happen. We'll take care of it. And then I remember seeing it coming, like a tsunami, right at me. This thing that I wanted so badly wasn’t going to happen. And I quickly realized that not only was I missing out on the party of a lifetime, but the book…nobody cared.
My publisher, Random House, had had huge plans slated for the book, but everything was canceled. No one was returning anybody's calls. All anybody cared about, rightly so, was Covid. I tried some pitches about attachment and Covid, but I was too dysregulated and upset to do something smart. And I hate the feeling of scrambling. So, I got some great reviews, which was really nice, but a lot of the stuff that sells books, like interviews and book tours, never happened. I was ready, honestly, to say, Forget it. Like, I wrote the book, I'm proud of it. The people who need it will find it.
But my agent is the one who said: Not so fast. You actually need to market this book, or you may never get another book deal. That's when I decided to give myself a year. I had been a lifelong refusenik of social media, thinking it pretty much the devil—you know, keeping my kid off of it and being super opinionated about it, for good reason. But I got on Instagram and decided to take matters into my own hands and sell this book person to person. I started scrolling through all of the different accounts of people I thought might be the right audience for my book and I DM’d them. I said, Hey, I wrote this book. I'd love to send you the first 25 pages.
Has your online audience continued to grow during this time?
I have over 2,000 followers now.
That’s great.
For me, it’s zero to 60. Yeah.
You attribute the growth to your reaching out?
Podcasts, podcasts, podcasts. Every time I go on a podcast, I get a bump and I get sales.
How do you get on the podcasts?
At the beginning, I reached out to people and said, I think you'd like this book. I would like to be on your podcast. And it just grew. It's all about person-to-person human marketing now, finding your people and speaking to them. I did work with a social media pro and she taught me how to do it, and I have some help creating posts. So, I'm not doing it all alone.
How do creativity and business work together for you? How do they inform each other? Or do you keep the two separated in your brain?
That is a great question. One that I tussle with every day. Before my book came out, I had been working as a book partner and consultant, helping people write books and develop their brands. I had a few clients, but it wasn't that robust because I was also working on my own book. When my book came out, people started reaching out to me and I quickly realized that I wanted to narrow my niche. Instead of doing branding, and all kinds of things, I got really specific and got into book coaching. Then, I started getting a lot of inbound requests for coaching from therapists which I never, ever could have seen coming. I started a writing group for therapists. We’re in the midst of it right now.
The mix between creativity and business is so intertwined for me because my own business is really creative. It's a creative business. I help creatives. And it's tremendously fun because of that. I love the business of creating product. I love thinking about the market. I love marketing. I love thinking about how to connect with people and what they really want. And I love words, heart-to-heart connection and really believing in things. It's all totally connected. I could go on all day about this.
In terms of my life as a writer, that's where it gets trickier because I can't really be doing all of this. I can, but it's really difficult. A, because I don't have enough time. B, because the business is creative, so it infiltrates everything I'm thinking about. It's not like when I was a waitress and collected my tips and went home and wrote poetry. My business is my life and my thoughts and my feelings. I'm constantly being inspired and thinking about how to create more value—all of that stuff. So, then how to make a boundary and just do the creative work that I am so dying to do? In fact, that's why I have the business—to support myself so I can do what I want to do. I decided that I want to take July and August off of all the business stuff so that I can just write. It seems to be still in play, but we'll see.
Do you have any frustrations or worries or paranoia about conducting your business or your life online?
Oh, my God. Yeah. All of the time. Totally. Sometimes I wonder if it is even worth it, but I don't feel like I have a choice. This is how I get my business. This is how I get my readers. This is how I do it. So yes paranoia arises, like, Ugh, that was terrible, and people are rolling their eyes. Or, why can't I be more like that person? Or, oh, why didn't I think of that? You know, all the things.
I tend to be a pretty private person, so it's been a very big leap. But, in that way, it's been very good for me. And it has really felt like an offering. If I just stay authentic and say what is absolutely true for myself and don't ever stray from that, then I stand by it. And, if I'm feeling insecure, then you know, that's my work.
Through it all—the release and marketing, conducted mostly online—have you experienced any moments that may not have happened otherwise IRL?
Oh God, that's such a great question. Yeah. You know, I was just thinking, I'm glad you asked that because, as much as I have a hard time with Instagram, because of my introverted nature or insecurities, I actually also really love it and appreciate all of the people that I've met who have put themselves out there. I've met amazing people who I now know, and that's a surprise. And I work with my own clients who are writing books and I am helping them get authentic and offer something true. I invite people to think of their work and their posts as a gift and then see what people are putting out there as a gift. You know, it's a pretty cool thing. Setting aside the deeper questions of what we're doing with our eyes and our minds and our screens 24/7, there is something really delightful about being able to meet all these people and see all these things.
Read more on Bethany Saltman at BethanySaltman.com. The Strange Situation has recently been released in paperback.