I haven’t been here for a spell. I wanted to let the few of you who follow me know what’s up. (This might be a bad idea. I might make this post private later.)
I mentioned last year that I got a literary agent. Well, I got a book deal. The book is coming out 9/1 of this year. I’m not naming the title so that Google doesn’t scrape this site and bring it up as a result, but I’ll post the cover so you know what it is…
Going through the publishing process has been really interesting. I had no idea how much work was put into each step of the polishing process. My editor and I went through and fixed a lot of issues, shored up weak points and emphasized the strong ones, making the book stronger. After the book was accepted by my editor, I got paid $$, and then the rest of the process started chugging along. This included copyedits and proofreading (two different things, I learned!), reaching out to authors for blurbs (the short, one-to-two-line endorsement that is printed on the book cover or the first inner page of the book), cover image reveals, jacket copy finessing, and sending the as-yet-not-finally-edited copies out for early reviews.
My favorite part of the whole shebang was getting my galleys — that is, the bound early copies of the book — in the mail. My galleys were initially misdelivered, yet because they were marked as delivered by UPS my team was unaware that I hadn’t gotten them, so they sent me a new set two weeks later.
Now reviews are starting to roll in and though I’m not looking at them (seriously, authors, don’t look at your Goodreads reviews), I did get a trade (professional) review that called my book “sensational” so I’m still riding the high from that.
All of this sounds like it’d be amazing, and I’m trying to be in the moment and enjoy every cool thing that comes along. But a part of me is worried that the more praise this book gets, the harder it will be for me to match it when I write my next book. The book I’m currently procrastinating on by writing this blog post instead.
Or if it’s going to be professionally praised but commercially panned, which also worries me. If consumers hate it or are lackluster about it, and the book fades away without really anyone reading it. That’s a great fear, too.
The more I think about my writing “career,” the more anxious I get. It’s already such an anxiety-inducing path, what with the miniscule percentage of people who get agents and the few people who sell their books on top of that, and the fewer still whose books make any impact in the world. I am lucky, though, that I’ve gotten this far, and also that the people whose opinions matter the most to me — my family, my husband, my oldest friend — all read it and seem to have liked it.
I don’t know what I aimed to do with this blog post. Shine a little light on what happens behind the scenes, I suppose. Or let you know that as soon as a book deal happens, there’s even more work to be done and anxiety doesn’t magically melt away. So yeah.
Elissa Reads 