Hello, debut author! Congratulations on the book deal! While you’re
busy getting Vistaprint to produce acceptable promotional bookmarks, finding ways of getting
better known on the Internet (don’t worry, no one
actually has
any idea how to), practicing answering ‘so what do you do?’ with ‘well,
I’m a writer’, and fervently noting down what every
single author, agent and editor blog says about what you should be
doing
or else, here’s my little contribution to your constant migraine: the
10 questions you will get asked by everyone, from complete randomers to
your grandmother, within your first year of publication.
Oh you will have fun. Here we go.
10. ‘But like, how many, I mean like not exactly, but more or less, how many books have you sold, like, approximately?’
This question can occur at any time, including the day after publication. And
you cannot be vague:
even if the questioner is otherwise incapable of adding three and four
without frantically reaching for a calculator, s/he wants
numbers.
Not sure why; but it is absolutely vital. Saying ‘Oh, it’s going well, I
think’ will only drag you into a labyrinth of subdefinitions of the
adverb ‘well’ associated to specific numerical values.
The assumption, you see, is that part of the induction ceremony into
the Great Publishing Sect consists of implanting a magical chip in your
brain which permanently connects you to every single online and
brick-and-mortar bookshop in the whole world.
Every time they sell one of your books, a little ringtone goes off in your skull. You can personalise this ringtone (I have the first few chords of
Supermassive Black Hole).
The latest version synchronises with your iPhone and compiles the data
into easily understandable statistics.
How to get out of this tricky situation without having to reveal (that you have no idea about) the
latest figures? The only solution is to say, with an expression of
disdainful detachment which you shall practice in front of your mirror,
‘Not enough to pay for your Frappucino, you cheapskate.’
9. ‘Why aren’t you on an intergalactic promotional book tour?’
O friend, I share your perplexity. I too wish I were wanted from
Johannesburg to Santa Monica by armies of fans with bellies and chests
tattoed with my (probably misspelt) name. Unfortunately, this isn’t
normally what happens to the debut author. Unless you are Pippa
Middleton (in which case, please leave a comment explaining why Pilates
doesn’t do to my body what it does to yours), you are relatively low on
the list of people whom your otherwise lovely publisher would like to
send on a first-class trip around the world. You might be invited to a
few book fairs, bookshops and schools, but it will
probably be Melbourne, East Anglia rather than its more glamorous
Australian equivalent (unless you are from the suburbs of the
latter).
The relentless questioner will not take this for an answer. Instead,
offer the following explanation: ‘Because I would have missed the chance
to be with you today.’ Then bat your eyelids.
8. ‘When will you be on the Oprah Winfrey show?’
(I don’t know if that thing still exists, by the way.) Your persecutor is here hunting for a Claim to Fame to disclose at
the watercooler on Monday when Amanda of the green miniskirt is passing
by. ‘I know a girl who knows *person on TV*’ is indeed guaranteed to
saturate the ambient air with pheromones.
They will not be happy to hear that you have given an interview to the work experience boy at the local newspaper.
It will not satisfy them to know that people have blogged about your
book. They want names. And yet, blogs are the best way
for books to get known and promoted, as they are more influential than magazines
and papers. But your questioner will not believe this.
Your best bet is to
mention offhandedly that ‘Richard and Judy’ liked the book a lot, and you’re hoping
she’ll do something with it. No one needs to know that Judy is your
aunt’s dog-walker, and Richard the dog.
7. ‘So I went to Waterstones the other day and your book wasn’t there. That means it’s out of print or what?’
Yep, it’s only been a year but people hated it so forcefully that the
publisher discontinued it, burnt all the stock and issued a public
apology.
Your questioner is here betraying their vision of bookshops as a land
of magic with unlimited storage space, very much like Mary Poppins’s
bag. It would be very cruel to
shatter their lovely dream with dull considerations of the fact that
the number of books currently in print divided by the available squared
metres in your average bookshop results in an imaginary number which
spontaneously creates dangerous amounts of antimatter if it is written
down or spoken.
What you want the person to do here is to order the book:
that way, the bookshop will know that it’s wanted (and order more) and
you will have sold another copy. But you don’t want them to
know that your book isn’t still the number one favourite darling of said
bookshop. So the only way is to say, ‘Oh dear, tell me about it. Every
time they restock the shelves, they’re empty again within the next half
hour. I would recommend ordering it; only way to make sure you can have
it.’ Win.
6. ‘When’s the next one coming out?’
That one’s easy if you’ve got a multiple book deal, because it’s
written in your contract. If not, it is a very stressful
question, because of the existential vertigo it
triggers in your insecure psyche.
You are not allowed to take
this as an opportunity to confess that you are terrified that your
editor might not like the next one and stop loving you and that
as a result your agent will slap you in the face and worst of all that
the people who once ‘Liked’ your Facebook page will ‘Unlike’ it. This is
not an acceptable response. You are not on a psychoanalyst’s sofa. This
is war.
The perfect answer is a lie: ‘November 7th, 2016′. Repeat this to
everyone who asks. Tell everyone who doesn’t ask. Write it on your blog.
That way, there’ll be so much pressure to do it that you’ll actually
write that second book. No choice.
5. ‘Do you Google your name everyday to see what people are saying about you?’
No need. I’ve installed a piece of software on my iPhone connected
to the aforementioned chip in my brain and whenever my name appears in
any corner of the world wide web another special ringtone reverberates
through my skull (Lensky’s aria in
Eugene Onegin).
People seem to assume that finding reviews of your books is always
the most wonderful experience. And of course it is when they’re good,
and of course there are (many) writers who get completely
obsessive-compulsive with looking up reviews.
But not me. If you
do start looking for them, there’s always that horribly stressful
feeling that you just don’t know what you’re going to end up finding.
It’s as if you could google your kid’s name and find reviews of the
dear child. Of course, a lot of the time it’s all going to be ‘Sharon’s
adorable little boy is a charming example of toddlerhood with perfectly
rosy cheeks under an avalanche of cherubic curls’. But once in a while
you’ll get the occasional ‘Scrawny-looking and relatively
indistinguishable from a tiny piglet, Billy suffers from a worrying lack
of vocabulary for an eighteen-month-old’. Maybe that would make you
think twice before asking the world what it thinks of your
progeny.
Your questioner will not agree with that, of course, so just
evasively mention that you don’t need to because your mum and dad do it
for you and select which ones they tell you about, haha! (and tragically
it’s probably true, too.)
4. ‘Why don’t you translate your own books into French/ Chinese/ Martian to sell them abroad?’
(This isn’t a question asked to the chronically monolingual: lucky,
lazy you!). This one primarily betrays a forgivable lack of knowledge of
how the publishing industry works on an international level (clue: not
like that).
But
the more worrying (and frankly annoying) assumption is
that any bilingual person can translate anything, including their own
prose. What is the point,
quel est le point, I ask
you, of studying translation? Absolutely none. Bilingual people are
naturally endowed with the gift of translation; fact. Any Jean-Pierre
Dawson born of an English dad and a French mum can write with equal
velocity and Booker/Goncourt-winning quality in both
languages.Therefore, they can translate their own work, of course, since
they wrote it to start with. The assumption is strengthened, of course,
when you do write in both languages.
The only appeasing answer you can bring to this question is, ‘If I’m
asked to, I might.’ But you might not. Because nothing, of course,
guarantees that you are the best translator of your own words.
3. ‘Did you choose the illustrator/ the title/ the layout/ the cover/ the chapter headings font/ the ISBN/ etc?’
Niet. Nein. No. Non. … [I've run out of other languages]
This will not satisfy your well-intentioned questioner. ‘What!?! but
it’s YOUR book!?! How come?!?’. They will think your editor is Really
Mean. Then they will think you’re a Loser who only had Bad Ideas. Then
they will laugh at you in secret. It will be the beginning of the end of
your social respectability.
The problem here is that once again the writer is envisaged
as a prodigy multitasker who must by definition know everything about
what a book is. ‘Of course I chose the exact paper texture I
wanted, 68.9g/mm and ivory-off-white with a tinge of cerulean’. The
editor is just the person who makes the money. S/he has no experience
and no right to interfere in the great creator’s vision of the work.
The truth is that making a book, for the editor, is about
n-ego-tiating the author’s ego with the actual reality of the fact that
the book has to sell and that their vision of a full-colour picture of a
Murakami sculpture with the elliptic title ‘Albeit Capricious’ will not
be the most efficient way of reaching out to the average Waterstones
customer. And they will very probably be right.
You don’t want your questioner to ruin your professional life and
career by spreading rumours about how powerless you are, of course, so
the only acceptable answer is, ‘Oh of course I had a say’. And to be
fair, you probably did.
2. ‘Which authors are you friends with now?’
This assumes that other authors are by necessity your best friends
forever, just like all accountants flock together and all academics only
have friends who are academics.
Ok, that last one may actually be true.
The fact is of course that there are many authors you are now
friends with because they’re actually nice and others that you can’t stand because they’re terrible people, just like any other group. You are not automatically on the same
wavelength as someone who writes in the same genre. It is also possible
that you are not the kind of person who can bear the disproportionately huge ego of other writers on top of your own equally
impressive self-confidence, especially as everyone is tragically plagued with crushing moments of doubt.
But the myth about birds of a feather must be maintained, so name all
the writers that you’ve met, from the loveliest to the most unpleasant,
and with a generous smile, tell your questioner that ‘They’re all
amazing, what can I say? We’re like a big family.’
NB: Some people will also labour under the opposite delusion: that you are by necessity extremely jealous of all the other authors. This is a probable sign that they are themselves dangerous, envious, frustrated psychopaths will little experience of peaceful relationships. Cut all friendship ties immediately.
1. ‘Yeah ok so you write children’s books, right, but when are you going to write, like, real literature?’
When the rest of the world starts to understand that children’s literature is real literature.
_____________________________________
Clementine Beauvais writes in French and
English. She blogs
here about children's literature and academia.
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