A pub month post-mortem!
Highs, lows, reviews, sales, and an all-pink wardrobe.
Psst: This is a long one, so just a reminder that you can listen if you prefer!
In the months between making the final edits on my debut novel Such A Bad Influence and the advanced copies of said book going out into the world, there was nothing more terrifying to me than the concept of someone beyond my immediate team reading my book1. Imagining a colleague, friend, family member, or even my husband telling me what they thought of it made my heart race, my skin crawl, my brain sing with questions like: “But what if they read it and hate it and then you realize that it’s actually not really a book at all?” A thought like this may seem irrational, but this is quite literally something I wondered regularly during this point of the process. I trusted my editorial team, of course, but after so, so many months of writing and reading and re-writing and re-reading my own work, I had trouble seeing the forest for the trees. Was it all just a jumble of letters? Had I fooled an entire assortment of seasoned professionals? Possibly!
In January, when I received ARCs of the book, I took a deep breath and finally had my closest family and friends read the book. I imagined this would be a good way of getting used to the idea of strangers reading it, which, as you can imagine, also scared me. When I realized that readers were receiving advanced copies, I (for the first and very last time since) went on Goodreads and obsessively read the reviews. Luckily, this is a habit lasted less than a week (I think SABI had exactly 12 ratings on Goodreads the last time I looked, one of which was absolutely from my mother), and we’ll talk more about reviews later. But at the time, the idea that there would be more made me want to lock myself inside a room and never emerge. And then, slowly, something started to change. I began to relax.
Maybe it was thanks to my re-commitment to never reading reviews. Maybe it was my publishing journey mantra of gratitude over comparison. Maybe it was just simply getting used to seeing my work in the world. Maybe it was obsessively working on another project in the months leading up to SABI’s release. I’m not sure, but I do think that I have managed to stay relatively sane and calm throughout the entire process, and trust me, no one is more surprised by this than me. I am someone whose biggest anxiety spirals revolve largely around perception — if I am liked, how I appear, if my actions or reactions have been misinterpreted. So, you know, the idea of having my work perceived in such an intensely vulnerable way… daunting! But in the end, I can truly say that I have loved every bit of this process. Don’t get me wrong; there have been lows (we’ll get there), but all in all, there has been so much good. I said this in the audio portion of the last essay I shared, but I have enjoyed this work so much that it feels a bit like falling in love. The only thing more overwhelming than the love itself is the fear that it will go away, that it’s a fleeting moment instead of a life-long partnership.
But hey! This is publishing. So it probably will all go away at some point. I mean, I’ll keep writing forever, but the rest of it? The outfits-that-match-my-book-cover and tour stops and meeting readers and journal reviews? Yeah, all that is a pipe dream, always. All the more reason to reflect and celebrate on this time, I think. So as promised, I’m going to get into the nitty gritty, behind-the-scenes stuff (reading reviews! sales! pub week chaos!) of what it’s been like to send a book into the world. As always, the most massive thank you for helping me share my work with the world and for supporting me along the way.
Pre-Pub Week & Pub Week
