That New Book Smell! Part Eight of Publishing an Essay Collection

My copies of the book have arrived. Finally! It felt as if I was the last to get one. By which I mean, I wasn't the very first. Normally, I might have seen a version months ago, but there was that snafu that led to the absence of any advanced readers copies. So when a friend texted a photo of her just arrived copy, I interrogated her. Was the cover glossy or matte? How was the paper quality? The font size? How did it feel in the hand? Send me a photo of the back cover, immediately.

Eons later, by which I mean two days, my own copies arrived. There's this way my dog pushes her nose into my knee, holds it there, and huffs when I come home from having my wheelchair repaired while Tank, the office Labrador, rests his head in my lap. That's how I was with those freshly unpacked books. (But without the accusatory side eye.) I was lost in the smell and that this physical object existed and that my writing was inside.

And the cover is matte, but not too matte. The paper is thick and creamy. The font size works for even us older readers and the size and weight lets it snuggle into my palm. And the layout! There's this way every page of a chapter has its title vertically along the fore-edge margin! So elegant. Yes, I'm in love. And I did send a gushing email of appreciation to the publisher.

And now the promoting begins. When the memoir came out six years ago, Pam and I took my NEA grant money, got on the road, and drove to the Miami Bookfair, the Decatur Book Festival, and the Southern Festival of Book. I spoke at three different universities. It was an adventure at a time I needed one. In the months before, I'd had a couple of breast cancer surgeries, a GI bleed, and a heart attack. Sure, on the road, twice a day, I'd have to treat the infection of my surgical incision by using a very long Q-tip type swab to poke two feet of medicated cotton ribbon into an open abscess. But I was determined that nothing was going to ruin my plans for that book, which I thought might be my last. It made me happy to be at those fancy book events that I'd always imagined being part of.  

This time, I'm not pushing much. So far I have two events scheduled—the local launch event at the Matheson on 3/2 (register here) and a virtual conversation with Sarah Einstein put together by Charis Books on 3/7 (register here). Both of those will be so much fun. That's my plan this time around—have as much fun as possible and no driving more than two hours away unless it's a paid event. (Paid events are unlikely.) The publicist at UGA Press is inquiring at bookstores nearby. With my last book, every bookstore we approached in Florida never responded. Sigh. But it's worth another try.

And us authors are told to write "companion essays" to help in book promotion. They're not excerpts from the book but rather thematically adjacent. The ones for the last book, through the efforts of Jeremy at Vesto PR, were published by The New York Times and The Paris Review. And now versions of those essays are part of this new collection. Which mean the current companion pieces might end up in the next one. I like how efficient this is and how, potentially, no writing goes to waste. At least one of the current batch has been accepted (I'm wary of saying where until it actually happens or a contract is signed.) and another possibility is in the works. Thank you again, Jeremy.

This is a time of celebration. Friends send photos of themselves opening their pre-orders, others inquire how to get them signed, and sometimes I get taken out to dinner by a poet.

A wonderful part of having the book in the house is Pam. She, of course, has read every word before but that might have been years ago. Now she's reading it through and each day, more than once, she suddenly appears in front of me. Sometimes she's crying. Sometimes laughing. But always she tells me what a great writer I am and gives examples from whichever essay she's just read. Usually, when she praises my writing, I’m polite in return while I mentally roll my eyes and admire her wife-of-a-writer skills. But this week, I'm all mush and appreciation and keep saying, "Really, really you like it?" in my best Sally-Fields-accepting-an-Oscar voice.

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