It's later than you think, by Catriona

Aside from promotion, what’s the first thing a new author should do after publishing their first book?

Angela, Gabriel and Eric have said a lot of it and very well already this week, but I'll chip in. It's about promotion, The thing is, by the time your book's out it's quite late (too late?) to start promoting it. I've learned this the hard way. Ideally, you should be on the case months before the publication date - sending out review copies, pitching articles and guest posts, building a list for a newsletter, getting a vibrant online presence up and running . . . putting the finishing touches to the bunker where you'll go and hide because that all sounds too dreadful to be borne.

Truly, it's quite an unusual combination to find inside just one human skin: a love of sitting alone in a room typing for 90% of the time; and a passion for jumping up and down saying "buy my book!" for the other 10.

What makes it less dreadful is to be among friends. Angela's point about building community is really key. If people are boosting your signal because you're a good 'un who lifts up other voices in between hoping they'll lift yours, it's a lot less soul-destroying, like peeing in the ocean, lonely.

I don't know what writers would do who don't LOVE reading books quite like the books they write - not my only or even main question for these individuals (because isn't that kind of weird?) - but it's quite easy for me to spend almost all my online time talking about the wonderful books I've read, am reading, want to read, can't believe I've only just heard about . . .

For example. here's what's happened since I got to Scotland on the 2nd of June:

The one bit of promotion that does need to wait until the book actually exists - so yay you're not too late for it! - is personal appearances. Whether it's public libraries, schools, Rotary clubs, bookclubs, writers' groups, conventions, festivals . . . there are a lot of committees with a lot of speaker slots to fill year after year. If you're willing to travel a bit, donate profits from books sales to a good cause and be felixible, easy to deal with and entertaining, you can be quite busy while you write that second book, submit satellite short stories all over the place, plan the next round of promo further in advance and . . . remember to take your book off the shelf and smell its wondrous pages every now and then,

Cx