The literary status of writers is strongly dependent on the critical attention given to their books in the daily and weekly press. Previous research has shown that this attention depends to a great extent on attributes that are external to the work in question, but are related to its institutional setting, notably the stature of the publisher and the critical reception of previous works by the same author. This article considers the options writers have at their disposal to stimulate or hold the interest of the critics. Following a theoretical outline of the types of activities authors can engage in, an analysis is performed on the relationship between 279 writers' involvement in a number of 'sideline' activities in the Dutch literary world and the degree of critical interest in the books of these writers. Both the versatility of the authors' performance in the literary world and the extent to which they were involved in prominent institutions proved to have a strong positive relationship to the amount of critical attention their books received. A subsequent analysis confirmed the hypothesis that 'Publisher status' and 'Previous critical attention' are not the only external attributes that affect the amount of attention reviewers give to new works of fiction. The versatility of the author's performance in the literary world as well as his or her involvement in prominent literary institutions are also relevant.