Once authors have landed a book deal, all they have to do is sit back and enjoy the book's publication, bestseller status and royalty checks, right? Wrong. According to Courtney Maum's straight-shooting Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book, the anxiety and roller-coaster ride are just beginning.
Maum, author of the novel Touch and other titles, addresses the questions she couldn't find answered anywhere when she was a debut author. What's the right tone for an e-mail blast asking friends and family to preorder the book? How does one grapple with envy toward other authors whose books are getting more attention and selling more copies? How to combat the letdown once attention fades post-publication? And even what's the best way to handle reading at a nudist book club?
Maum tackles these questions and many more in a clear, witty and self-effacing voice. While advising writers not to query with exaggerated claims such as their novel having "been commissioned by Jesus," she admits she declared to an agent in 2003 that her first book would change lives. Maum has learned many valuable lessons since then, such as how authors should consider making joint appearances with others who've written comparable titles. Instead of competing against one another, together the books might garner more attention than each on its own. Writing can be solitary, but Maum is like a debut author's best friend, and she brings along other friends in the business to share eye-opening anecdotes about how to survive birthing that first-book baby. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd