Hello fellow creatures. I usually write a ‘the story behind the book’ post around publication day, but I feel like I’ve chatted a lot about The Salt Oracle over the last year either here or on my mothballed Substack, both in free and in paid posts. So what else around book publication time might be interesting to you, my splendid readers?

How about the odd emotional complexity of book release?

Last Thursday, We Are All Ghosts In The Forest was released in paperback, and The Salt Oracle was released in hardback/ebook/audio. Which is Lovely and An Achievement! Publication day is generally seen as an unconditionally joyous moment. In my experience though, having your books unleashed into the world is not as emotionally straightforward as a lot of people assume. Yes, it’s wonderful, no doubting that but there’s more to it than unbridled enthusiasm.

To be fair I am six books in now, which flavours this, but while there are some things that have stayed the same, others feel very different to when I was debuting. I am, for example, far better now at not looking at reviews! And far more resigned/unworried by the inevitable tagging into ‘meh’ reviews or hearing that some readers don’t like a thing you did deliberately. I am much more relaxed at and about events, and more aware of what to expect from the next few weeks both practically and personally.

However many books you’ve published though, and however big or small your publisher/deal/reach, there is excitement and tension around pub day – the sudden visibility, vulnerability and achievement of it all never goes away (or at least is hasn’t yet). But in my experience there’s also a touch of non-event-ness to publication day – not deflation per se but maybe a kind of suspension.

The excitement is understandable – this book you have loved, hated, fought with, loved again, fought for, built hopes around and yet still fear for, is finally fully out of your hands. It is going to be read by people you will never meet, and people you will meet because of it, it’s going to be adored and ignored, recommended and wildly misinterpreted, it’s going to fulfill some of your hopes and fail others but it will almost certainly fulfill all of the dreams you had when you first stepped into publishing. (Which is worth remembering, no?)

The suspension is a little more opaque. Why wouldn’t you be high on adrenaline and love on this day more than any other? Well, you are. And maybe it’s just me showing my inner zen master/energetically flatlined beastie, but the thing about publication day is that… well, let me see:

The day itself can feel a little focusless…

• Your books have been arriving in shops/on people’s doorsteps for the last week or so, unless there was a sales embargo (in which case you’re huge and definitely not reading this post!). So the ‘released’ thing is a formality on the actual day. OR there’s the inverse – delivery issues which have left many authors wandering shops on pub day forlornly searching for books that haven’t arrived yet!
• Your book has been read, reviewed and blurbed for the last several months, so while you will continue to cross your fingers for good reader interest, good reviews and the elusive trade review uptake, those events or statistics are spread over some time, not arriving suddenly on pub day.

So even though you’re excited, you can also feel at a bit of a loose end on the day itself. Fortunately this is where launch day events and social media come in. I always spend much of publication day keeping up with all the lovely comments I get on social media, thanking everyone and generally basking in the glow of belonging to a lovely community of supportive friends. It’s really nice.

And on that note – launch events are a great way to mark the day. Emotional complexity comes in here too though – not just because it can be hard to get a launch event organised. Booksellers might not have space or interest, publishers might not have the budget to help you organise your own, etc. But if you are lucky enough to have something organised… events on the day are generally best framed as an opportunity to celebrate with friends. You may get attendees who were curious about your book, or who just wandered in, but almost no one at the event has read your book. I’m at the truly amazing point now where people come to new book launches having loved my previous books, which never fails to make me a bit fuzzy and emotional. But they haven’t read this book.

Later events, in the months after launch are where you’ll start meeting readers who’ve read the thing and loved it enough to show up and meet you. Which means that Q&As can take on a much richer life, and reader interactions shift into a new form. That is such a joyous moment which comes some time after your launch day event.

Whether you have an event on the day or not (I did for the last book, for this one I just went and signed a tonne of stock in my local Waterstones which was still quietly lovely), it’s often a strange day full of joy and community, but also perhaps a sense of unreality or, as I said earlier, suspension.

The thing is…

(I always have to bring it back to ugh publishing don’t I?) ……There’s a lot of quiet pressure on a book around publication. We get told repeatedly that pre-orders and early sales predict the overall success of a book. I don’t know if that’s true, or just indicative of the marketing around publication. But when those early numbers will dictate recontracting decisions, it’s an odd period of time – you are doing a lot of public facing work, aware of how much is riding on it, but oblivious to whether any of it is working. I love celebrating my new books, I truly do, but the background tension around whether they are Doing Okay definitely feels more intense around launch than the rest of the book’s life (for this book more than any previous one perhaps). Some authors are told that their book is being targeted at a bestseller list – a rare privilege, but definitely a heavy expectation to add to publication week!

Do I sound like I don’t love publication day? I hope not, because I do. It’s the culmination of so much work and love, and with every book, I have reached publication day proud of what I and my publishers have achieved. It’s a waypoint that unreservedly deserves all the celebration.

But I’m six books in, and without diminishing the joy around this publication day, I am more aware now than ever that one book alone does not a publishing career make. Or one week does not… Or one event or one win.

Talking of which, I won an award at WFC! My novella The Last To Drown – a dark Icelandic ghost story about family secrets, chronic pain, the sea and recovering from trauma – won the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella. That’s extremely bloody awesome, and I couldn’t be prouder of this book and of Luna Press who are such a special small press doing amazing work within SFFH.

[An aside – Over the last 15 years of chronic migraine, I have learned to temper my emotions because any emotional extreme – good or bad – is a trigger for hours or days of extreme pain, nausea, muscle weakness etc etc. This is a bit of a superpower in publishing, in that while I will have a solid moan to friends sometimes, I can generally roll with the punches with some equanimity. The downside is that I am not very good at just celebrating, because that emotional even keel is so ingrained in me now. Hoo boy am I throwing metaphors around today, I apologise]

In the last week (at time of writing), I have won this fabulous award, met a lot of lovely readers, launched both Ghosts paperback and The Salt Oracle with a fun event at World Fantasy Con and a friendly signing at my local bookshop, and had a splendid time at WFC besides.

It’s a wonderful, gratitude-inducing position to be in. But whether it’s post-con fatigue, that emotional even keel, or the point in my career, I am finding my overall mental state to be ‘Okay, this is great, but let’s just wait to see whether it means anything‘. Will the early sales mean my editor can (or wants to) open recontracting talks? Will the award provoke interest from submission-list editors? Will early apparent enthusiasm, and mine & my publisher’s hard work mean these books get the momentum to exceed my prior reach?

I really truly hope these books – one for its first flight, and one in this 2nd format – do well, for their own sakes. Because I believe in them, and feel like I did something interesting with both of them. I also hope they do well to reward my editor and marketing team’s championing of them. We’re allowed to say that, aren’t we? Those are acceptable reasons to publicly want your books to succeed.

A little less acceptable, but no less true, is the hope that they do well because I need them to if I’m going to continue to publish. But there is little point dwelling on that hope when it’s 95% out of my hands. So as always, my question to myself when staring publishing in the face is ‘what can I actually do?’

• I can keep working to organise events & publicity, and be as open as possible to my publicist’s suggestions and opportunities.
• I can manage my spoons and my outlook so I am well enough to treasure all the positive things coming my way, and keep the negatives in perspective.
• I can eat some emergency chocolate.
• And, of course, I can work on something new. Aside from winning an award or selling lots, I can’t influence the success of books currently out on submission to editors, so the only thing I can do right now to maximise my chances of selling more books is to write another one. Write a better one, or a more pitchable one, or just a luckier one.

Technically, the point in the publication process where your book is fully out of your hands (editorially) is the page proofs checking stage. After that, you can’t change anything and it’s entirely up to readers to either connect with it or not. You get no further say on how your words land. But between proofs and publication you have a window of relative calm where a small number of reviewers and authors are reading the book but the wider public are yet to join the conversation. So publication day, for all that other things diffuse the singularity of the day itself, is still a huge shift in the life of a book.

That’s scary, but also freeing. I believe a book is unique to every reader who finds it, because a book is a conversation with that reader – their experiences and imagination and heart. That’s why the same book lands so differently with different people, because it is different. So finding out what your book became in different readers’ minds is a marvel, and stands apart from what your book is to you.

In my opinion, and as with so many things in publishing, it’s important to separate out your relationship with your craft, from your relationship with the publishing industry. A book release is worthy of celebrating because you should be proud of your own craft, and excited for that story to find the readers who will love it. It’s worth holding a little bit in perspective because you need to maintain your publicity momentum beyond this week, or even this month; and you need to maintain your writing momentum entirely beyond this book.

I am guilty of pinning all my hopes on this book sometimes, of focusing on how much is riding on this one doing better than the previous ones according to one measure or another. And there’s enough truth in that to overwhelm the joy of publication day, or award wins, if I’m not careful. So perspective, even keels and focusing on what I can do is good, but taking a wee moment to feel proud of myself independent of publishing’s shenanigans is just as important.

So please wish these books luck on their maiden flights, and meanwhile I will be diving into the edits and pretending that my next article will not be a Christmas reading recommendations post (scream).

Thank you as always for your support. Because accessibility in publishing is important to me, I keep all my craft and publishing posts free, so any shares or tips are greatly appreciated. Wishing you a fabulous weekend.