Pre-orders, Publicists, Companion Essays, and NaNoWriMo: Part Four of Publishing an Essay Collection

Pre-orders, Publicists, Companion Essays, and NaNoWriMo: Part Four of Publishing an Essay Collection by Sandra Gail Lambert

The University of Georgia Press uploaded my book onto their website today. I know it was today because I checked yesterday. And the day before. And the many before that. This means is that anyone can pre-order a copy. With each book there is that moment when I understand, as if this is a brand new concept, a brand new moment that has never happened before—people I don't know will read the book. That it will have an existence separate from me. It is uncomfortable. Then I realize that people I do know will read it as well. This is more uncomfortable. And the blurbs and catalog copy are so glowing that I worry readers will be disappointed. And I worry that friends will be overly polite because they are also let down. That I will also let down all disabled people everywhere. And all us old dykes. I mean, who am I to say anything about anything? And what was it that I wrote anyway? I've forgotten.

So I go and reread a few of the essays. They're not crap. Some are decent enough that I think, with a dangerously smug satisfaction, "And who wrote that? I did." And maybe the catalog copy did oversell a bit, but that's its job, right? When I worked in a bookstore and wrote up descriptions for our own catalogs, I knew it was a fine line between the enthusiasm needed to get our customers to spend their money on a book and, well, lying, which would end up betraying the trust we'd built. If I squint, I think the description and the blurbs for My Withered Legs stays within these bounds.

The day before yesterday, I had my first phone call with Jeremy at Vesto PR. He was my publicist for A Certain Loneliness when it came out five years ago and will be again for this book. We caught up (My report was that neither Pam and I had cancer at the moment and our old dog was still alive. His was that his Spanish had much improved and the baby born when we last worked together was entering the Barcelona equivalent of first grade.) Then we got to it. I knew how to prepare this time. This was going to be a mini-publicity campaign because the big bucks I had available to spend last time (from the NEA Fellowship) were gone. But I do have a stash that you fine and much appreciated paid Substack supporters contributed to.

So I told him my budget. Then I laid out my priorities based on what he'd done for me last time. And especially based on the work he did that decreased my anxiety the most. So I ask Jeremy if, like last time, he will take charge of working with the publisher about Advanced Readers Copies (ARCs)—how many, where to send them, making sure they are mailed in a timely way. And if he will pitch reviews, interviews, and try to place the three companion essays I've written. But this time I don't want him to solicit invitations to book festivals or set up a book tour.

What I have prepared for him is a list of contacts. The contacts are editors of journals that I have a history with, people who've reviewed my work in the past, writers with whom I have a relationship of mutual admiration, friends I've made at residencies, Substack newsletters that focus on disability, dear friends who are writers and we will do most anything for each other, and a famous writer that made the mistake of one time having a twenty second interaction with me where she was complimentary of my writing.

Also, I've written those three "companion" essays. Writers with a book coming out do this. Sometimes a place like LitHub or Buzzfeed or The New York Times will publish an excerpt from your book, but often what they want is an original piece. So I've written essays of various lengths that are thematically adjacent to my book (death, outdoor adventure, lesbian love), and if they are published, my byline gets to say "by Sandra Gail Lambert, author of My Withered Legs and Other Essays."

Then I check in and ask if the budget I've allowed will cover this. He assures me it will. We hang up, and I'm so happy to have this next phase set in motion. And I get to work. I pull together an email with a PDF of the page proofs, a list of blurbers, the jacket copy, the high resolution cover image, each of the companion essays, and the list of contacts. The next day he sends me the notice of a new prize for creative nonfiction coming out in 2024 where he wants to submit my book.

So next is sprucing up my website. I've met with the original designer who is an artist here in town and they are in the process. They were surprised the current one was still holding on. Which is has been, sort of. It's like our old house (originally built in the 1880s) where you don't want to mess with the innards if you don't have to. Who knows what will be uncovered? Shakey plumbing? Asbestos tiles? So I've done the barest of updates, enough that it doesn't look abandoned. But now, I need to add the new book.

Also, in the midst of this, I am working on a novel. It's what I hope will become a space opera of a novel about a planetary revolt of clones and what that means about disability and aging. I signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month where one attempts to write 50,000 words in November) not to "win" but to help me supercharge the initial wordcount. On Day One I already had thousands of words! Pretty impressive, right? Except I sort of (totally) cheated by having the first chapter consist of a short story that Signal Mountain Review published a while back. 

Here's the most important part of NaNoWriMo so far. I went to a local NaNoWriMo forum in person not online. Which means I got out of the house and met other, mostly much younger writers and wrote with them. We did Discord sprints. So I learned more about Discord. There's that. And in-between the sprints, I listened to the talk of favorite servers, the tarot classes one of us taught, and the seeking of advice about a particular video game a character in her novel would be playing. I went home and studied information on servers and now I almost understand what one is. But despite the disappointment of friends who say I should at least try (You, Sarah Einstein.), I'm simply not interested in learning about online games. Between the second and third sprints the cross-table chatter included naming which writing app the rest of them used to outline their novels. (My contribution—"What is this outlining you speak of?") But then one of us writers asked if anyone else had noticed a ChatGPT choice in the sidebar? She said it could create a synopsis of your novel. It has always seemed cruel that after many years of work, when I finally write that last line, revise that last time, am satisfied, even thrilled by the results, I immediately have to write the dreaded synopsis. The idea that I might not have to is doing more for my dedication to writing this novel than anything else so far.

So I've strayed off the topic of publishing an essay collection. But not really. This is a held breath time of silence in the publishing process. Next I know, the ARCs will become available and then we're on! I could use this waiting and waiting to fret about who to ask to be part of the "in conversation with" Zoom presentation or think about the writer who blurbed one of my books a decade ago who’s Oprah famous now and wonder if I should annoy her? And I want to be on a list. How do writers get on those end of year lists? Or best beach reads lists? Or even that list of the year's most underappreciated books. Or, instead, I can push forward on a new project and meet new writers and learn more about the world. I know the correct answer is this last choice, but . . .

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