Life After Launch: Managing Expectations Post-Publication

For the past several years, there has always been something I was supposed to be doing.

Researching. Writing. Revising. Looking for one more newspaper article. Fixing a sentence I had already fixed six times. Uploading files. Ordering proofs. Checking proofs. Correcting proofs. Checking the corrections to the proofs.

And then there was publishing.

ISBNs. Metadata. Categories. Keywords. Covers. Descriptions. Advance readers. Emails. Social media posts. Press releases. BookFunnel. Amazon. IngramSpark.

There was always a next thing.

Until suddenly, there wasn’t.

Countess of Cons was published on September 9.

It is done.

That sentence should feel wonderful.

It does feel wonderful.

It also feels surprisingly uncomfortable.

I remember feeling something like this after Nothing Really Bad Will Happen came out. There was the same strange emptiness after months of work and preparation. So this time, I thought I was ready for it.

Apparently not.

This feels different.

I think part of the reason is that September 9 was really only the soft launch. The bigger launch is supposed to happen on November 5.

Apparently, bigger things are coming.

What those bigger things are supposed to look like, I’m not entirely sure.

I keep thinking I should be working on November 5. Surely there must be something I need to write, organize, schedule, fix, prepare, or put on a spreadsheet.

But mostly, there isn’t.

The work is done.

The launch plan exists. The pieces are in place. November 5 is just sitting there on the calendar waiting to happen.

Which may be even stranger than being completely finished.

For so long, whenever I felt vaguely uneasy about the book, there was something I could do about it. I could open the manuscript. I could research something. I could change something.

Now the things I’m waiting for are mostly things I can’t control.

Will people buy the book?

Will the advance readers leave reviews?

Will any of the newspapers that received the press release actually run something?

Will Amazon ever decide what categories my book belongs in?

Will someone I don’t know stumble across Catherine’s story and think, How did this woman get away with all of this?

That may be the strangest part of this stage of publishing. After years of being responsible for nearly every step, I’ve reached the point where some of the work belongs to other people.

Readers have to read.

Reviewers have to review.

Booksellers and algorithms have to do whatever mysterious things booksellers and algorithms do.

And all of it happens on their schedule, not mine.

Apparently, I’m supposed to wait.

This is not one of my better skills.

My instinct is to assume that if nothing is happening at this particular moment, I must have forgotten something. Surely there’s an email I should send. A page I should update. A post I should write. A person I should contact.

Maybe there is.

But there is also the possibility that there is nothing to do.

Maybe this is simply what it feels like when a project that has occupied an enormous amount of space in your life no longer needs you every minute of the day.

The book exists without me now.

People can buy it while I’m sleeping. Someone can start reading it without my knowing. A reader can meet Catherine for the first time while I’m sitting on the couch wondering whether I should check Amazon again.

That is a very odd thing to think about.

We talk a lot about beginnings and endings, but not much about the stretch immediately after an ending, when you haven’t quite figured out what your days look like without the thing that structured them.

Or, in this case, the stretch between one launch and another.

I’m not quite finished with the book, but I’m also not actively doing anything with it.

I’m waiting.

There will be more to do as November 5 gets closer. There will be posts and emails and events and whatever else we have already planned that I am currently resisting the urge to re-plan.

But I don’t need to live in November yet.

I need to enjoy today for what it is.

So I decided to try an experiment.

I watched an entire episode of The Four Seasons on Netflix.

I did nothing else.

I didn’t check Amazon. I didn’t answer emails. I didn’t update a spreadsheet.

I ate pistachios.

And I enjoyed it.

Then the episode ended.

I turned off the television and immediately decided to write this.

Apparently, I’m going to have to take this one episode at a time.