YOUR FIRST BOOK LAUNCH: WHAT NOT TO DO – Guest Post by Tom Toner
Today I have a guest post from Tom Toner, author of The Promise of the Child. I met Tom at the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club and it turns out that we published very close to each other date wise. I asked him about his experience and this was his rather candid response below. I thought it would be nice to share the experience. It’s certainly good to hear that I’m not alone in feeling clueless at times. Over to Tom…
One of the strangest things about my debut week was that it wasn’t actually my debut week. I’d clean forgotten (along with almost everyone I know, I think) that my first novel, The Promise of the Child, had already been published and available to buy for almost two months by the time I’d signed my first sale copy. Promise came out in the US in September this year, released on a relatively small scale by my excellent but equally small publisher Nightshade, and I tended only to remember this when people asked me what I did for a living, or – for some peculiar reason – in the shower. What I do remember, however, is never imagining there would be a launch for it. Not once.
I think this is because I didn’t know anything about the industry: I assumed only well known authors did signings and launches and events, because only well known authors would have the required amount of fans to make those events worthwhile. Debuts, I thought, were quietly slotted onto the bookshelves of a few shops or thrown around experimentally in the hope that a few might stick. So when I sat down for the signing and noticed not one but two water bottles on the table next to my sharpie (sealed and everything), I was actually a little blown away.
And I really mean that. It’s little things like those couple of water bottles that continually surprise me. What was entirely unexpected when writing the novel was the notion that people would care, that they’d want me to hang around at public events, or speak about things other than the work itself. When I recently went up to Manchester for Gollanczfest (Gollancz’s wonderful yearly event), I was amazed to find they’d given me a hotel room containing two double beds and a phone in the loo (reading that back, I’d like to stress that only the phone was in the toilet). Obviously, because I’d never had an employer provide me with anything more than free toast and a manky red fleece (Tesco), I jumped up and down on both of the beds like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone for a good minute or so, wildly excited at what the grownups had accidentally left me with.
I had such a great time because I’ve always managed to keep my expectations very, very low. I probably enjoy in-flight meals so much for precisely the same reason. Like every writer that didn’t explode out of the womb with a book contract, you know what it’s like not to be published, not to receive any attention at all. Therefore the minute anything, and I mean anything happens (someone taking an interest in your book, an event that you’ve been specifically invited to, free tea or coffee or a SANDWICH, god forbid even a review*), you tend to hit the roof with excitement. As with everything in life, I suppose, put what’s happening into context and you realise it’s extraordinary.
So, too, with sales. It’s easy to forget how high you’ve climbed just by getting the damn book finished, but, when you remember, sales don’t seem to matter so much anymore. I’m in that strange limbo country where there are no figures available to trouble me yet, but my greatest worry – truthfully – is that I’ll let down the people that went out on a limb for me; my editor, my agent and my publishers. It’s very easy (as I’ve found) to shrink away all bashful and shrug off the publicity – and in many other avenues of life that’s a perfectly fine response – but there’s more than one person counting on the sale of my work now. So, not long after signing my contract, I realised I had to be a professional, dammit, and take every opportunity I could.
This resolve, however, brought me ever closer to one of my major fears – the understanding that the more I advertised it, the more likely it would be that people I knew would find out about – and possibly even read – my book. To be clear: I know a lot of folks who feel either indifference or downright loathing towards SF novels. If they didn’t think I was a bloody idiot before (and quite a few did), then they probably would now. As the big day drew closer I found myself growing more and more anxious, more convinced by the hour that I hadn’t polished it thoroughly, hadn’t made it accessible enough for the non-readers that wanted a copy. I was very happy being published in a country where I know comparatively few people, as if I was writing only for proper SF fans. With a sudden horror it occurred to me, too, that my children – should I have any – would probably pick the book up at some point to see what their embarrassing dad had written when he was younger. I really didn’t like that thought, and short of doing a George Lucas (tampering with the material and releasing new editions every ten or twenty years, which is a tempting idea) I understood I had absolutely no choice, if I really wanted to be an author, but to forget about it.
THE LAUNCHTo start with I got some advice. I asked an old, grizzled staple of book launches, the marvelous author Jon Wallace, who told me everything I needed to know and what to expect. Then I overdid it. I booked a particularly large venue and spent far too much on a drinks budget, which meant I had to invite a lot of the very nice people who just didn’t give a flying fuck about science fiction. I was terrified.
My one piece of advice for the new author would be to treat the launch like any of the book’s other production processes, most of which would have happened in absolute solitude. Getting the novel from a single idea to (in my case) a 160,000-word manuscript was a private struggle – until my agent came along there was basically nobody else involved. Sitting at the signing table, I took a moment to look at the book as it lay in my hands and remember what I’d been through to get it there, and after that I felt completely fine.
By the end of the night I couldn’t work out what had worried me so much. Sure, some of the non-SF fans made faces as they examined the blurb, but I didn’t mind. It’s an eccentric book, I’m told, even for the genre, and getting them to try it without prejudice would be damn near impossible. They’d paid for it, after all: it was theirs to like, or not like, as they pleased – but no longer mine to take back.
The next day I took a very hungover walk to the nearest Waterstones, thinking on all this. After a bit of searching I found a copy cuddling in right next to a huge row of Tolkien books. Another outcome I’d never imagined. I wondered then why more authors don’t change their names to something middle of the shelf, just at eye level. I had a little look at it for a while, examining the cover and slotting it back in to get a view of how it seemed on the shelf, and was pleased. Do that for any more than two minutes and there’s something certifiably wrong with you, though, so I left, sort of happy, and that was that.
*Unless, of course, the review’s a bad one, then it’s like having poo thrown at you by an angry chimpanzee.
You can check out Tom’s work over on at amazon here and follow him on twitter @Tom_Toner – maybe you’ll even catch a glimpse of a copy the next time you’re browsing Waterstones.
