The Countdown Is On
Five weeks to go...
After months of saying that my next novel will be out next year, now it’s this year. Next month. In five weeks! In December it felt like so far away and now… It’s not that I’m not ready. More that I never feel ready for publication day. Even when it’s so long after the book has been fimished (over twelve months in this case). The House of Fallen Sisters will be out in the UK on 12th February.
So what happens in the run-up to publication? It varies by book. This time six years ago I was preparing for the launch of This Lovely City (currently 99p on Kindle by the way!) my debut novel. Debut novels tend to get shouted about a lot more than the average and I was also privileged to be chosen as one of that year’s best debut novelists by The Observer, an accolade that helped in securing both local and national radio interviews amongst other things. It was super busy right up until it wasn’t, when Covid and lockdown wrecked the publicity campaign.
For this book things are a bit quieter but I’ve already done a couple of interviews that will be in print and recorded a podcast. I’ll hopefully be doing a live national radio interview in publication week and I’ve booked a literary festival for the summer. What I’ve learned over the past years is that opportunities can come out of the blue, sometimes at short notice, so there’s no point in worrying if you don’t have lots of things planned ahead of time. You just have to make the most of what you have.
Social media is a tool that I do not use that well, partly since I came off Twitter which used to be a lot of fun. I do still use Instagram but I don’t take a lot of photos when I’m not on holiday, hate making videos and I bore myself if all I have to post about are my books (though I love Stories for that). What I do enjoy is this - writing on Substack. It feels nostalgic because I used to blog, and it feels more engaging because people do actually read my posts (or at least a part of them!) rather than just scrolling past. The good thing about social media though is that anyone can use it, it doesn’t cost a penny, and when you do get engagement you can see a visible result.
One thing I do need to do in the next week is update my website. Is a website necessary? I don’t know but it’s handy to have. It has picture of all my books, there are also past articles and blog posts that I've written over the years, and it’s a place to list my events. On a practical note, it has contact details for my agent and publicist which helps weed out the fake book club and paid ‘promotional opportunities’ that are the bane of so many authors’ lives.
Over the next few weeks I’ll be talking about my new book a lot so I apologise in advance! And for anyone who has any questions about how to deal with book publication day and the run-up, do leave them in the comments and I can talk more in future posts.
My firstborn is just 99p this month on Kindle! Click here to grab an amazing bargain.