What authors really do on publication day

Featuring Sue Perkins, vulnerability hangovers and a terrifying car wash

My first novel, The Anatomy of Us, was released yesterday, and it’s hard to believe that this was actually my fourth publication day. Just like each baby is different, along with each birth, so each book is different, and each publication day. (The book biz just EATS UP midwifery metaphors.)

Photo by Shamblen Studios on Unsplash

The Father’s Home Birth Handbook was self-published, and I had two young children at the time, so its entry to the world was pretty low key (a home birth, indeed). Hard Pushed and Womb both had big commercial backing, so their launches were a bit glitzier, and The Anatomy of Us is my first Audible Original, which has its own quirks. However, I’ve found that there are definitely some common themes in every ‘pub date’, so here’s generally how it tends to go.

1. Wake up and panic. No, like, really panic on an existential level. The book that existed mainly in your head, and then only met the eyes of a few select editors and production staff, is now available for *any* paying member of the public to read. Imagine standing naked on a pedestal in front of billions of strangers, trying to persuade them that you’re really smart and cool (non-fiction) or really smart and cool and imaginative (fiction). This is why you wake up, push the duvet away, and then immediately pull it back over your head. Suddenly you have a fervent wish to retract the one project that was your most dearly held dream for the past however many years.

2. Participate in a virtual love triangle. Oh yes, one of the joys of pub date is that a flurry of sycophantic emails will fly through the ether between you, your agent and your editor. You’re amazing! No, YOU’RE amazing! This book will take the industry by storm! It will FLY! Usually, I’m wary of people blowing smoke up my ass (and there’s a lot of that in the media). On pub date, though, I positively revel in it. Blow harder! Blow more! I switch off my Glaswegian bullshit detector for 24 hours and (almost) believe the praise that’s showered upon me.

3. If you’re lucky, do some press. I’ve been very fortunate to have been picked up by large commercial publishers who have thrown considerable weight behind the publicity campaigns for my books. This happened in the ‘biggest’ way for Hard Pushed, when I travelled to London for my pub date and experienced a truly surreal, whirlwind day of promo that began with Chris Evans’ breakfast show on Virgin Radio and ended with Lorraine Kelly. My tireless PR minder chaperoned me to the Virgin studios, where I was shown to a waiting area also occupied by comedy ‘legend’ Sue Perkins, who confided gravely that she could never be a midwife because she’s too emotionally ‘porous’. Bless her. This has since become a treasured family anecdote, and whenever someone’s feeling a bit precious, they are accused of said porosity and mocked ruthlessly until their ego shatters into a million tiny pieces. Anyway, then I did a very pleasant interview with Evans and his other guest that day, the head of Co-op funeral homes. Hatches and dispatches: great serendipity.

4. Do normal stuff. Yesterday, I was at home on my pub date, so in addition to some lovely online support and enthusiasm from early listeners, I also had to do normal, home-y stuff. I walked the dog. Hung out my washing. Took my car - which has been extravagantly covered in bird shit this week - to the car wash, which is one of those terrifying experiences where you have to sit in your vehicle while incredibly loud mops, brushes and blow-dryers move up, over and around you. Nothing brings a hubristic author down to earth like the fear of being annihilated by a faulty drive-through car wash.

5. Panic again. Because…now that your pub date is over…what’s next? When you have a baby, friends and relatives start asking you ‘when’s the next one coming’ before your placenta’s even emerged from your bruised and battered vagina. It’s like that. (I told you the book biz loves a birth metaphor.) And so, just as the sun sets on your pub date, and you’ve refreshed your Amazon ratings for the millionth time, and the last well-wishing DM flutters into your inbox, you must look to the horizon and figure out how to keep those fleeting good vibes going. In my case, it’s not so much the difficult second album as the difficult fifth, sixth and seventh albums. I know I’m incredibly lucky to have been published, and I want to keep doing it again, and again, and again. So today, on pub date+1, I’m fuelling that panic with a dirty iced matcha latte (maximum caffeine intake is required by author/midwives) and dusting off an outline for this other thing I’ve been thinking about…

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Fancy hearing me wang on about The Anatomy of Us at the UK’s loveliest literary festival? I’ll be at the Hay Festival on 24 May - buy tickets here, and check out the day’s programme, which also features feminist powerhouses Emma Barnett and Stacey Dooley, both of whom I’ll be shamelessly nobbling in the authors’ tent.