The book launch hangover

Three weeks on - I've hit a wall

My latest book made its way into the world in the middle of June. On one of those weeks where it was more fun to sit inside with a fan on your face than risk exposure to what weather people termed a ‘heat dome’.

Three weeks on, I’ve hit a wall. Not a dramatic one. I’m not currently shopping for a fainting couch. This is simply the ordinary, unglamorous kind of wall which finds me sitting at my desk, staring glassy-eyed at what ought to be my next manuscript and wishing I had enough money in the bank to tell the people who pay me for doing a day job to leave me alone.

For a month or two before any book comes out, everything in an author’s life starts pointing in one direction. Publication day becomes the date glowing at the end of the corridor. Publicists tell us to give it our all - as if we’re juggling the seating plan for a wedding day brunch where everyone hates everyone.

There are graphics to make. Captions to write. Articles that might or might not need to be written (or rewritten) for editors that may or may not want them. Emails to approve. Links to check. Metadata to stare at until the words romantic comedy lose all meaning.

Then you send another pitch. And another. And another.

Would anyone like a piece about queer joy in commercial fiction?

Would anyone like a piece about writing romantic comedy without pretending life is simple?

Would anyone like a piece about the pressure to be fine when you are, in fact, absolutely not fine?

Mostly, the answer was silence.

Administrative silence. Inbox silence. The silence of someone meaning to reply and then never doing so because an indie author’s novel is not high on the list of national emergencies.

The big day

And then the big day arrives. And your husband mutters something about how the flowers he ordered haven’t come and the dog throws up on a rug you’ve been ordered to itemise as valuable on your household contents insurance policy.

In short, it’s a day just like any other.

The truth is that big-name media and big-name personalities have very little natural interest in indie books unless there’s some other hook attached.

A book by a working novelist from the West Midlands, published through a small imprint, about a woman in Manchester who invents a fiancé after too much wine? Lovely, perhaps. Useful, rarely.

And that does something to you.

It doesn’t just disappoint you. It starts to make you feel faintly ridiculous for asking. As if writing a novel was already a bit much, and now here you are tapping strangers on the shoulder saying, excuse me, would you mind paying attention to this thing I spent months making?

There’s no graceful way to keep asking.

You can be professional. You can be warm. You can tailor the pitch, spell the name correctly, mention the journalist’s recent piece, send the cover, attach the press release, include the retailer links and remember not to sound desperate. But beneath all that, the emotional position is still fairly naked.

There is joy

And yes, there is joy in it. Real joy. I don’t want to flatten that.

A reader sends you a lovely message and a blogger says something incredibly generous. And you pack a bag for an event you’ve been nervous as hell about (that turns out to be the best thing ever). You dare yourself to check and paperback sales are up. Someone posts a photo of your book in the wild, sitting beside a coffee cup or a cat or a tasteful candle. For a moment, everything feels possible.

But joy is not the same as energy.

By the time publication day arrives, most authors have already spent weeks scatter-gun firing off pleas for attention. We’re upbeat in newsletters. Breezy on Instagram. Available for interviews. Gracious when things fall through. Funny when we’d rather sleep the day through.

You share the coverage. You thank people. You answer messages. You nudge the reviews. You post event photos. You look at ads. You wonder if the ads are doing anything or if you’re paying Jeff Bezos to show your book to three bots and a retired geography teacher in Basingstoke.

BUT, because the world has the nerve to continue, you keep going.

The wall

And that’s why I think today is my ‘hit the wall’ moment.

I can only stare at the numbers for so long before I start using them as evidence against myself. I can only keep asking what else I could have done before the answer becomes: nothing useful, go to bed. Try sleeping. It’s said to be good for you.

The strange thing is that the parts that made this launch worth it were not the biggest things.

They were not the emails to Important People. They were not the fantasy of a national newspaper deciding that my romantic novel was the cultural event Britain had been waiting for. It turns out the things that save you are much smaller and much more human.

Other authors. And book tour bloggers.

The ones who understand why you’re twitchy about Amazon rankings even while insisting you don’t care. The ones who repost without making a production of it. The ones who tell you which opportunity is worth your time, and which shiny thing is probably a money pit with lovely lip gloss.

And festivals like Queer the Shelves in Nottingham.

That mattered. Being in a room where books were not being treated as units of content, but as points of connection. Meeting readers and writers and people building something because they believe queer stories deserve space. Talking to people who weren’t asking whether the book had gone viral, but what it was about, why I wrote it, and who it might speak to.

That is the part that puts the blood back in the work.

Not because it magically sells three thousand copies. It might not. Usually it won’t. But it reminds you that a book launch is not just a transaction. It’s a series of small handovers. Writer to reader. Reader to reader. Author to author. Room to room.

The big machine - all things considered - doesn’t care.

But the people do.

The trick is remembering that before you burn yourself to ash trying to win attention from people with bigger fish to fry.

So this is where I’ve landed, three weeks after launch day, with my files mostly tidied and my launch notes full of arrows, post-its and question marks.

The break

And it’s time to take a break.

Close the spreadsheets.

Stop checking whether someone reviewed the book.

Stop turning every nice comment into “content”.

Stop trying to squeeze one more post out of my tired face.

Shut down the machine. The actual machine. Set my phone to silent and turn off notifications.

Tomorrow, me and my man and my dog will get into our car and head south. To a tiny village where nobody knows or cares that I’ve got a book out. Where cars rarely pass below windows and the only sound is of birds singing and breezes passing through trees.

My next book can wait a while longer. The third draft is half-written and that’s how it must stay for the next week. I’m not one of those writers who takes a laptop away in the hope inspiration strikes.

I plan to walk outside. Eat cake. Read something new. I’ll sit in a garden sipping a drink and won’t consider the most efficient prose to describe how I feel at that moment.

Because…

The current book will still be there.

Work on the next one will still be there.

There will be more to do, because there’s always more to do. That’s the horrible and wonderful truth of being someone who writes books. Publication day isn’t the finishing line. Far from it.

So, if you’re a writer and you have a book out soon - or had one out just recently, be kind to yourself. Not in a fluffy scented candle way. In a practical, grown-up, commercially sensible way. A burned-out author makes worse decisions. A tired author wastes money. A resentful author starts confusing silence with failure and visibility with worth.

You did the work.

You asked.

You showed up.

You made the thing, then stood beside it in public, which is braver than most people realise.

Shut the laptop.

Let the book breathe without you for a few days.

Let yourself breathe too.