how to sell a book before it is published

My book isn't out until January, but generous friends hosted a party for it this weekend after I mentioned to them a few months ago (trying to sound casual) how important pre-orders are for authors, especially unfamous novelists publishing a debut. It was a great party, with lots of good friends/neighbors/ supporters in attendance. We called it a Preview Party, not a Pre-Order party, but people got the idea. Today, I checked my Amazon numbers --yes, I'm months away from publication, but already checking my rankings--and my “best sellers rank" improved by about half a million--whatever that means, surely NOT that I sold half a million books.

A book party is like a wedding in that, while on the whole it's fantastic, one of the best events in your life, there's a few things you'd hope to remember, should you ever do it again. Like--

1. If more than two dozen people will be there, GET A MIKE. Most writers aren't great talkers (that's why they're writers) and unless you've got the big, booming voice of a trial lawyer or James Earl Jones, give a break to the people who've gone to the trouble to come out and support you--make it easy for them to hear you. Especially if your audience includes boomers who spent their formative years lying on shag carpeting listening to Procol Harum at max volume on lo-fidelity earmuffs. Also--think of the mike thing before the day of your reading or you might not be as lucky as I was when I frantically contacted my host's caterer, who was able to provide a last minute hookup. (Don't be insulted when the sound guy shows up and seems disappointed that his fancy setup will be used only for reading, and asks hopefully if he ought to tweak a few settings because maybe someone in the audience will want to play something?)

2. If your book isn't out yet, MAKE CHAPBOOKS AS PARTY FAVORS. These look like the galleys, but contain only about the first fifty pages or so... just enough to give people a taste of your book and hopefully give them an appetite for the whole enchilada and seeing it lying on their kitchen counter will remind them to put in a pre-order. I am exceedingly grateful to my editor for making these for me, but if yours can't, you can do it yourself at a Kinko's.

3. APPOINT A PHOTOGRAPHER. It doesn't have to be the professional photographer friend you've already imposed upon for your author photo. It can be any friend with an iPhone and a good eye who isn't too shy to ask people to pose holding your chapbook. (See above.) I really, really wish I had done this, because images are valuable content for social streams.

4. ASK PEOPLE TO POST One of my guests had the social savvy to hashtag the event and post a photo on Instagram, but I wish I had thought to ask others to do so. Social buzz can help start up interest in books.

5. WEAR SOMETHING COMFORTABLE. I'm grateful to my husband for this. There I was at the mirror, trying to decide between shoes--Toms or heels--and he said I should go with whichever pair would be better to stand in for hours, trying to remember people's names. There aren't nametags for book readings. I guess because the only name that you want on people's minds is yours.

6. READ FROM A SCREEN, NOT FROM A PAGE. Especially if you're an older (ahem) writer who needs reading glasses. You can adjust type size on screen, so you won't have to perch readers at the end of your nose. (I've gotten progressives which eliminates this problem, but it's weeks before you can wear them without feeling like you're falling downstairs, so don't make the mistake of making the switch the same month as a reading.) Also, the light emitted from Ipad or Kindle or whatever you're using will save you from having to worry about finding a reading light.

7. BRING BUSINESS CARDS If your publisher has been good enough to provide you with chapbooks, your contact information probably isn't in them. I've used MOO to make cards with my book cover on one side, which reminds people later who the heck you are. The best part about book events is the connections that you make with new readers, other authors, booksellers and even (in my lucky case) someone who asks for an ARC because they want to review it. Business cards stuck in a wallet can remind people of idle offers they made once at a party.

writing blind

When I was little, a game I liked to play with myself was "Blind." I'd wander into our back yard, close my eyes and start walking. I was astounded at how much more alert my other senses would become. I could feel the maple tree shadowing my skin as I came within range of approaching it. I could hear the empty swing swaying on rusty chains. My heart would pound in my throat as I forced myself to move forward, walking with my eyes closed, resisting the urge to put my hands out in front of me because I thought the gesture would summon my mother who might glance out the kitchen window and wonder what was the matter with me.

Writing a novel is something like that, at least for me. You move slowly forward, unseeing, not able to make out what lies ahead, trusting you'll get someplace without killing yourself.

in case you missed the gordon lish reading last night

No matter what you think of his work, his persona, his gusto in making or breaking literary comers when he was in a position to make or break them, no matter what you think of the writer, you have to admire the man Gordon Lish. He just turned eighty, but there he was last night at McNally Jackson Bookstore, holding forth at a reading for his new book Goings with more enthusiasm and earnest intent to entertain those of us who had come out to see him, than I've witnessed at readings by those younger and haler, which is to say readings by anyone else.

photo cred: gordonlisheditedthis.wordpress.com

There were many more of us than there were chairs, despite the discouraging coldsnap and so many AWP-ing out of town, and speaking of chairs, he refused to use one. He stood for the duration: "I'd like to be able to stand and caper for your entertainment, let's see for how long I am able to do so." He held forth for an hour, not reading, except once briefly, from the foreword of a book that wasn't the book he was ostensibly there to promote, but one published several years ago, which involved the reluctant accomplice of a bookstore employee to find the book and remove its shrinkwrapping.

 What Lish did for the hour, what so impressed me, is that he just stood there and talked. Without notes, without text, without screens of any sort. He talked not about his own work, but about the work of other writers there. He talked about Will Eno's "The Bully Composition". And Rick Whitaker's "An Honest Ghost." He talked about his childhood and about what it felt like to be the oldest person in the room. He talked about Barry Hannah, said he once brought a luger into a classroom, as visual aid for a discussion on violence. And I thought how his conversance with conversation—albeit one-sided—is an art being lost to those of us for whom communication takes place in places such as this, which isn't any place, really, where talk is done through one's fingers and can be edited or deleted instead of being left to ring, unsanitized, unretractable, in the listener's ears, for better or worse, for years to come and that soon it won't make sense to call languages "tongues."

What Lish is famous for, in his teaching, is for harping on the importance of sentences. "The sentence isn't about the world, it is the world entire," I recorded once in a notebook. I was struck last night by the originality of his spoken sentences. (I almost typed "his own sentences" but refrained because "own" was one of the things Li
sh went on about last night, complaining of its overuse as unnecessary modifier in today's common speech.) In prior audiences with Lish, I failed to write much down and was later sorry because his speech is impossible to reproduce without notes. His speech isn't common speech, it's unique to him, resulting from profound and unparalleled (in my experience) care for and about the English language. Here are a few of last night's sentences, which are very different sentences than ones I might have used:

What Lish Said: Jane Krupp is a lovely person and has an apartment that bespeaks that vivacity. She designs apartments for people who are rarely among us, but we know their names. Many of these people are involved with song.

What I'd Have Said: My friend Jane has a great apartment. Makes sense, she's an architect. She works for celebs in the music industry.

What Lish Said: I take pride in knowing not much about nature.

What I'd Have Said: I'm a city kid. Nature freaks me out.

What Lish Said: I stopped drinking in 1984 in reply to an entreaty from my youngest child who requested, as a gift for his eleventh birthday, "I want you to stop drinking and smoking."

What I'd Have Said: I've got my kid to thank for sobering me up and making me quit smoking.

What Lish Said: Assassins are everywhere. Being one, I should know.

I'd never have said anything like that. Assassination, I think, is a male, not female, approach to subversion. But that's another post.

secret source for building fictional characters

Upon hearing of Secret, a new app that lets you post anonymously, removing the last bits of restraint preventing people from sharing whatever is left they're reluctant to share…seemed to me of dubious value. But then, I signed up. And discovered Secret's true (yet unmarketed) worth: as fodder for writers building fictional characters. "Brought a can of cat food to a dinner party instead of pate and no one noticed." And presto! A fully realized character leaps to your screen, one who'll move freely, creating scenes, engaging in dialogue. Cut. Paste.

on writing and not

When I worked staff at ad agencies, tap tap tapping late into the night, coming up with copy for face creams or shampoos or cameras or drugs with alarming side effects, I longed to be writing my own stuff, imagining the day--like James Dickey (Coke) or Don Delillo (Sears)-- I'd be able to devote time to crafting work of my own invention.

Fast forward to 2012, the year I get a (wonderful) agent (Kate Johnson) and soon after that, bid-a-boom, a two-book deal from Simon and Schuster. The first book's an ebook. This, I'm told, is the new strategy for launching debut authors: first an ebook, then a hardcover that's promoted as a "first book." (Who am I to question?)

My ebook came out last March (check it out here) and the hardcover is due out next year. It's not a series. The ebook is about advertising at the turn of the century (1999) and the hardcover is about a woman who does something heinous and gets away with it for 22 years.

Writing novels is something I've wanted to do since I was eight and devoted a school composition book to telling the undramatic tale of a family of robins who took up residence in the maple tree in our back yard.

It's the opportunity I've always wanted--someone wants my work enough to transform it into a bona fide book. The deadline is yesterday--deadlines are always helpful to creatives in getting work out. So why am I having such a hard time coming up with words tonight? Why aren't words tripping off my keyboard onto the screen? Why is my brain just as resistant to writing the next page of the novel as it was to writing a spot for antacid?

Why is writing so hard, even when it's the one thing you most want to do?

Why were these 300 words such a cinch to come up with, when the scene I'm supposed to be writing stays stuck in my head?

book launch!

I was thrilled to launch the novel this week at a party with themed napkins and real mead from the fictional company formed by the protagonist and her husband.  Transmedia fans: check out other web content "created by" the book's characters in an out-of-the-box epiblog for Making It. [Spoilers alert]

photo by Kate Johnson

tracking my book sales before there's a book

My (soon to be published) novel doesn't have a cover or even final contents yet, but I'm thrilled to see that it already has a listing on Amazon. You can't buy it yet, but you can pre-order. At least a few kind readers (and my mother) must have one-clicked already because my sales rank went from #172,987 yesterday to #151,748 today. (The smaller the number, the better the sales.) I know the ranking is meaningless, but I find the uptick (or downtick) irrationally gratifying. All those years scoffing at data geeks in meetings--now I'm the sucker for numbers.

in which writing a novel becomes publishing one

Just pressed the send button on final manuscript for novel accepted by Simon and Schuster. Off it goes to the publishing gnomes who will read, rearrange, come up with covers, blurbs (hopefully) and (if I'm lucky) a marketing campaign. It's a story set in Adland (where else), Mad Men thirty years later, when a copywriter in her 40s tries to stay relevant as walls literally fall down around her. A coming-of-middle-age tale of a woman and a business. How surprised (thrilled, actually) I am to see that, though it's barely left my computer, it's already got a pub date (March 19) and a listing on Amazon! Title is "Making It: A Millennial Tale of Madison Avenue." Unless you can think of something better.