Launching a book can take as much time and effort as writing it. This can easily frustrate or overwhelm a writer. I understand that reaction, but because of my long time in this business, I’ve come to view that work as a gift.
You see, when I got my first job in children’s book publishing in 1995, the internet was just a budding beast. Social media was still a twinkle in its eye, although not for long. (Seriously: We were all so tickled to get this cool new in-house email thing in our worktop computers. Woo-hoo, technology!) The best a writer could do to launch her books then was buy mailing lists to use for mass postcard mailings and try to set up signings, speaking events, and similar engagements. If you’d been in the biz a while, you had a network and setting up events was easier, but even so those efforts required a lot of traveling and time—and the expenses that went with that. Now, twenty years later, with social media and excellent bloggers doing amazing work for their readers, opportunities to launch a new book have exploded. So while ushering the book into the world is still a lot of work, a writer has many more choices at her fingertips. I am deeply grateful for that. I know a gift when I see one.
So, as I prepare to launch Writing New Adult Fiction this summer, I’ve been doing a lot of work … but it’s work I’m grateful to be able to do. I’ll be sharing it on this blog with you, along with details of the book, hoping you’ll enjoy the journey with me.
