As the launch day approaches...advice from two people who know what they're doing!!!

Thank goodness authors no longer have to sing their books

Since my first novel-- A Murder at Rosamund's Gate--will be released next week, I asked my awesome co-bloggers Nancy Bilyeau and Sam Thomas to share some of their experiences and insights into their book launch and that that first week was like, as a published novelist.  

Sam's novel,  The Midwife's Tale: A Mystery, was released in January, while Nancy's SECOND novel, The Chalice, just released a few weeks ago. So, I view both as all-knowing pros.
 
What was the experience like, for each of you, as your release date approached? Were you nervous? Excited?  Worried?  What (if anything!) do you remember about the release day? Did you do anything special? 

Sam: The days leading up to the release were far worse than the release itself. So much seemed to be riding on that one day, yet I felt so powerless to do anything about it. Sure I sent out hundreds of postcards to bookstores, libraries, friends, relatives, etc., flogging the book, but even if I had a 100% purchase rate from those - hard to imagine - it couldn't make a difference in the grand scheme of things. At the outset, at least, your book will sell if the publisher decides to put money into marketing. If not, your sales will be modest. Fact. Of. Life.   As for the release, it was pretty unspectacular. I went to work, home for dinner, and then to my launch. No champagne, dinner out, or anything like that. 

Nancy: I was very nervous for both books, in a daze really as it came upon me. I was blogging as much as I could. For the second book I posted four blogs or interviews on the actual publication day.

Describe your first event as a newly published author (book launch). Where did you hold it?  Who came?  Did it go as you expected?

Sam: My local library was nice enough to host the launch, and the woman in charge did a marvelous job on the publicity side of things. Thanks to her, I landed a ten-minute spot on the local NPR, which really goosed my numbers. In the end we had about eighty people show up, only a handful of whom I actually knew! In the end, it went as I'd hoped and expected. I read a little (maybe eight minutes in all) and talked a lot about the history behind the book, for a total of maybe half an hour. Then we had about an hour of Q & A, which was great.

Nancy:  For both The Crown and The Chalice, I had a book launch event within 2 days of the book’s official drop date. For The Crown it was a reading at a large Barnes & Noble, followed by a party. I invited absolutely everyone I knew in New York City, plus there were posters in the window of BN and the publisher did a few things to publicize. About 80 people came. For The Chalice, the reading was at an indie called The Mysterious Bookshop. Wine was served and I signed books. I would say 60- 70 people came. I think the second event was more successful because I feel so much more comfortable talking about my books.

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What have you learned about doing author talks/book signings? What works well? What works less well?  (I'm eagerly taking notes here! :-)) 

Sam: Be ready for anything. I've been to signings that turned into formal presentations, and book clubs that did the same thing. Other  times, it just becomes a raucous discussion of the book and characters. You can't go in knowing what you want to do. You're just along for the ride.

Nancy: For me, I try to talk about the research and the journey of writing a book, and I keep it positive and anecdote-rich. I actually don’t read more than a few minutes. I remember that I need to enlighten and entertain at a reading. I try not to make it too insiderish to other authors, but interesting to a wide spectrum of people.  I went to one book event where the author went on and on about how hard it was to be published and how her editors tell her she is no Lee Child, and it didn’t make me excited to read her book. I think that sort of thing is for your writers’ group, not potential readers.



What advice about the book release would you offer someone who—say—has her first book coming out next week? 

Nancy:  Blog, post and tweet like crazy the first two weeks. That is key! The first two weeks. And ask friends (like myself) to tweet and post on your book. Because personal recommendations are what counts.

 Sam: Chill. It'll be anticlimactic. Nothing about your life is going to change except you'll be busier.

Thanks, Nancy and Sam! 

What is a Book?

Last night on Marketplace I heard a short piece by Jennifer 8. Lee on the future of the book. (The middle initial is not a typo. I am reminded of the Peanuts cartoon when a boy named Five came to visit.) Lee’s was mostly tongue-in-cheek, but it’s gotten me thinking about the format of publishing, and how different it is today than it was in the early modern period, and how it could be in the future. As she notes in her commentary:

we are seeing an new explosion of companies that are publishing shorter-form things that are designed for lower prices... the change does have something to cheer about: We can alter the way we tell stories. There are new ways to follow our imaginary characters. In the same way television is different than movies, these new short stories could be different from traditional novels. It could be the return of the novella.

This observation put me in mind of the wild world of early modern publishing, which featured everything from thousand-page religious works, to Shakespeare’s folio, to cheap pamphlets detailing monstrous births, horrible murders, or some other remarkable happening. While there still exists a great deal of diversity in the literary marketplace, we short stories as stand-alone pieces have gone out of fashion. Now I’m not saying that there aren’t great short stories being written, but they exist either in collections or on the pages of a much longer magazine or literary journal.

The cause of this (to my mind, and I could be wrong) is two-fold: rising literacy rates and changes in the print industry. While figuring out the readership of cheap pamphlets is tricky at best, the consensus is that they found a very broad audience. More to the point, the working poor with only basic literacy would only have read short pamphlets. They were affordable and simple enough to be understood by all comers. In short, until the “rise of the novel” in the eighteenth century anything that can be called “popular literature” was, in all likelihood, short and inexpensive. Now that the vast majority of the book-buying public has the time and literacy necessary to make their way through 4000 pages of Harry Potter, the short story is no longer in demand the way it was in the early modern period. The changes in the industry (over the last four hundred years!) are a bit too much to go into here, but I think it is safe to say that a publishing house that tried to print, market, and sell individual short stories would not last long.

The question this raises, is how the E-book has changed this. Granted at this point I am a novelist and had long assumed I would remain a novelist. (Why? The same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks.) But then I noticed the short story (novella?) “Trechary” by Andrea Cremer, which is only available as an E-book. This made me think more about options besides the novel. Once I’ve established my series (Ojala!), why not dedicate a few weeks and a few pages to some of the supporting characters? There are a few whom I like quite a lot, and I would welcome the opportunity to get to know them better. And since my novels are in the first person, the short story would give readers the chance to see the world through another character’s eyes. What’s not to like?

Granted, I’m new to publishing, and the E-book really could be the end of everything for everyone. But for now, it seems like an intriguing opportunity for novelists to break away from long-form writing, and experiment with characters and plotting in ways that have been off-limits (or at least difficult to access) for quite some time.