The emotional bomb of your book coming out

First world problems are still problems lol

If you’ve never had a book out, you might think that an author having a book published is like an eager parent welcoming the birth of a perfect, beautiful baby. It is, of course, cause for celebration. It is typically something the writer has been working to achieve for years, decades even. If you’re an author who’s had a book out, you might feel uncomfortable, ashamed, or even ungrateful for admitting that the actual event of your book getting published can be cause for a lot of negative emotions. It seems counterintuitive—that the thing you’ve been wanting the most can actually make you depressed, which is why I’m writing this post. I think it’s a dirty little secret among published authors, I suppose because if we say something about us it would induce some “must be nice” comments from others. And maybe I will invoke that feeling in some readers, but I’m saying it here because no one said it to me and maybe it would have been nice to get a heads up. Sometime last year I said in a private group of debut authors, “So…. did any of you get depressed after your book came out??” Oh god, I thought I was the only one, came a lot of the responses. I’ve had long conversations with several author friends about this, the ups and downs, what they were prepared for and what they weren’t.

Jogging on the hedonic treadmill

The hedonic treadmill is the idea that if something happens—positive or negative—people have a tendency to have their average happiness recover to its original baseline after that initial shock. When I was 22, I desperately wanted to get into grad school. Implicitly, I thought that getting in would make me happy because it would indicate that I had made the cut and was smart enough. Was I happy when I got in? No. Instead, I immediately had imposter syndrome, as did everyone else. Despite the fact that we were “safe” once we were in the door, we all obsessed about who would get various coveted fellowships. I came close three times, but never got one, and it left me feeling like I was not as good as everyone who did. Then you’re focused on “will my prospectus be approved?” or “will I get a job after I graduate?” Because you’ll be happy then, right? No, then you’re worried about establishing yourself at that job, or making tenure, or getting that grant. It’s like the more you accomplish, the more someone ups the incline on the hedonic treadmill.

Would-be authors who’ve never finished a book might look at authors who have books out on display at Barnes & Noble and think of them as people who’ve made it, but when you’re that author it never feels that way. (TBH, it feels sort of disembodied when I see my book at a bookstore, like it is something I’m imagining and isn’t even real. Maybe it’s a product of my book deal having occurred in the peak of the pandemic, but the entire thing never felt real, even when the money hit my bank account. I kept thinking that HarperCollins would ask for it back.) The reality is, that once you finish a book, you stress about getting an agent (which honestly, really is a harrowing process.) Because once you’ve gotten an agent, you’ve “made it” right? No. I know agented people who have never sold anything on sub. Or who took multiple books on sub before getting signed. Even if you sign a book deal, you then move the goalpost from “I just want an agent because that means I’m a good writer” to “I just want a book deal because all my agented friends have one” to “dear god, I have a book deal and I don’t want to let everyone down.”

I made myself sick during my debut year, and as I approach my second book coming out, I’ve thought a lot about what I did wrong and how I set myself up for emotional turmoil that could have been avoided. It’s good to avoid the avoidable parts, because there is real, genuinely deserved stress about the debut year.

Don’t drive yourself crazy. There are things you need to do your debut year, like writing blog posts and articles, doing in person events, recording podcasts, etc. If you refused to do 100% of all of these things, this would be bad and you’d probably garner a reputation of not being a good author to work with. But that doesn’t mean you need to do 100% of these things, and reasonable publishers are reasonable about this, especially if you tell them why, or if the thing they are asking for is pretty low stakes. I did all the opportunities that came up, but I’m weirdly good at time management and would have been able to accurately identify what was biting off more than I could chew. (I wrote a little about this here.) The only thing I was mildly a no on was going full tilt on social media. I already did some Twitter; I refuse to engage in TikTok (to be fair, my publisher didn’t ask me to), but when they asked me to join Instagram even to just have a passive account, I did to that, but as you can see I don’t post a ton. I can’t tell if the authors I know who feel really pressured about social media were made to feel that way by their publishers, or if this was self-imposed because they felt like it was something they had to do to sell books, particularly if they aren’t lead titles. (Sidebar, I’ve written before about how I don’t really believe that author social media sells books, but also it takes creativity and time away from writing.)

Does social media drive sales? Pt. 1

But I did a lot of other… things… that did absolutely nothing but make me crazy. For a really long time I would check Goodreads once or twice a day to check my rating and read reviews. There is literally no point to this. You’re not going to change the content of the book based on reviews—it’s already been printed. And positive book reviews aren’t necessarily correlated with sales. (I mentioned my obsessive fixation on my Goodreads rating to my editor and she explained why I shouldn’t do this—the rating was not an indication of sales and polarized ratings can actually drive sales. I wish my GR rating was higher, but I’m also aware that writing a book about despicable people who do selfish things might have an impact on my rating.) I Googled the book title every day or close to it to see what people were saying about it. I checked the Netgalley early reviews, and Edelweiss too, because I desperately wanted to be picked for Indie Next. I was picked for it eventually, but this happened because booksellers liked the book, not because of my obsessive checking of the website. At this point, the hard work—the work of writing and editing the book—was already over. Putting out a book is less a blow-by-blow battle and more like gardening: did you get the best seeds? Plant them at the right time? Good soil? All you can do is wait and see the results. You did your work during sowing time, not harvest time. Clenching your muscles during harvest time is not going to make the harvest better.

I also know that I’m really competitive, and this became worse once it got closer to publication date. Some books get selected for major book clubs, and others don’t. This can vault people to fame that they didn’t have before.. but it can also (and I didn’t know this at the time) have a more modest impact on others. I did not get picked for any major book clubs, and all I could see was the “vaulted to fame” part, but not the “actually my book sold relatively similar to some of the books that were book club picks.” Various “most anticipated” lists came out—I was on some of these, as is virtually every other traditionally published book because there are so many lists, but if my book wasn’t on one I’d feel hurt. The worst was when they were specifically themed lists, like mysteries or thrillers, upcoming books by women, or women of color, or books about dark academia, which my first one absolutely was. There is a finding in psychology about how we weigh negative information more positively than positive information: we remember each “I love your book” far less than the one stinging, “I hated this book.”

Everyone who debuts is going to face the anxiety of “I hope I don’t disappoint them.” Because your debut not selling well can affect your career if future publishers see modest debut sales and use that as data to say no to you at acquisitions. And even if it might feel great to be the much-hyped book, the bigger your book is (higher advance, lead title) the longer the fall onto your face if things go badly. So the anxiety is justified. But doing random self-soothing things that don’t really soothe but only serve to make more anxiety is not good for you. A week before my pub date, I got some pretty explicit symptoms of a stress-induced illness I have that had been in remission for more than a decade. Oh, I realized, I should not do this to myself when my second book comes out. And I wasn’t the only one: several debuts I talked to experienced pretty significant mental or physical health problems when books came out. One reported constant stress and anxiety because she was comparing herself to other MFA friends she assumed were doing better. Scifi author AJ Super found that going through the publication process made it difficult to get back to writing, and that they couldn’t do it until they rediscovered the joy they used to get from it.

Accept the things you can’t change. Disastrous things happen to people their debut year. The pandemic. A death in the family. Even if you have a major goal you have been working towards for your entire life, that doesn’t mean that life outside the book world stops happening. Much like the saying that “there’s never a good time to have a baby” there’s never a good time to have a book.

Some of the things you can’t change will be publishing related, like an editor or publicist leaving. (Some people don’t know this, but publicists leave constantly—it’s not personal, they just have high turnover and job hop a lot). You could use your agent as a go-between to make sure that shuffling publicists doesn’t impact the publicity roll out. You can’t change the impact of the pandemic on book sales, but there are probably some things—limited things— you can try to do to still reach readers but ultimately the most important thing you as an author can do to impact sales is something you have done already. (ie, you wrote the book) But ultimately these are random things you can’t do much to control. No amount of your personal scrambling is going to make up for the pandemic.

Have some idea what is going on. No author I talked to for this (including myself) had a deep sense of what was going to happen in terms of marketing and publicity. Ultimately some of those things are going to be an unknown (ie, they are not going to tell you the dollar amount of what they are spending on marketing.) Some people had expectations based on seeing what others got: ads, a launch event, book tours, but this was not in the cards for them. Some people had absolutely no idea of what to expect—in which case it would be better to have a conversation with your agent about the sorts of things that would happen launch year (ie, most people are not going to get sent on book tours [which don’t make money anyway], but most people are going to be asked to write articles with a pretty quick turnaround). Some authors, unfortunately, were told they were getting things they never got. This is because publishers can change their minds midstream, or that whatever person was backing them has since left.

One author reported that they thought they would be happy at the precipice of their book coming out, but was instead plagued with anxiety. In the run up to the book being published it became apparent that the novel was getting less support than what had been promised, so that by the time it was publication day, they were burnt out on self-promotion and somewhat gave up on it. Worse still, their agent parted ways with them just then. This happens. Sometimes you write a second book that just doesn’t gel with your agent. Or maybe you realized you don’t like working together. Or maybe they are more of a shark and are going to dump authors who they don’t think will bring in a lot of money. As I mentioned earlier, it’s not the case that once you sign with an agent, you board a ship to the Undying Lands like Frodo at the end of Lord of the Rings. Many authors will switch agents one or more times.

Think of your career overall, not this as a sole event. This idea has two components. The first is that your debut is not the be-all-end-all of your career. I know I said earlier that debut sales will affect your ability to get future book deals, but that doesn’t mean that modest sales on your first book will end your career. People get relaunched. Sometimes under a different name, sometimes not. (A lot of people thought Ottessa Moshfegh’s first novel was My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It wasn’t—her debut was Eileen, which had a resurgence after My Year did well.) As one author put it, “your first book is still just a book.” Some authors don’t have a breakout until later in their careers.

Another thing debuts reported to me was the stress of signing a multibook contract. When you’ve been pounding the pavement for years and all the sudden a publisher is interested in you, signing a multibook contract might sound like a great idea…. But it also means you’re boxing yourself in to both 1) do your first launch and 2) write your second book at the same time while also under deadline. Think really hard if this is something you will be able to do. How good at you at keeping deadlines? How much of book two do you have outlined/written? How accurate is your understanding of the burden of PR-related work during your launch year? How is supportive is your day to day life in terms of allowing you to churn out another book that fast? Talk to people who signed multibook contracts.

Be prepared for unexpected emotions. I think there is probably a baseline thing that happens to all people who have a lot of lead time before a major event. You are anticipating and anticipating and stressing, then the thing happens—pub day, the dissertation defense, maybe even your wedding. Then it feels anticlimactic. It’s a day like any other. I’ve talked to a dozen or so people who experienced a mild depression after such a major life event, and I think it’s normal. If I had to guess, I’d say that constant low-grade stress probably releases a lot of stress hormones, then your body says, what the fuck.

One author reported that after the fact, they realized that they had thought that publishing a book would earn respect and recognition from their family—that they would finally see that they were a real writer. This did not happen, the relationship did not improve, and it became another thing the family didn’t talk about. I know several authors who had content about their friends or family in their book. In some instances, it was fine—in others, it led to family members no longer speaking to them. (This is why it is best to invent a cover story. “Is this character based on me?” ::absolutely withering look that humiliates them:: “No, it’s based on decades of research about Martha Blount, the supposedly platonic friend of 18th century British poet Alexander Pope.”)

I have seen authors discussing online that they were disappointed that some of their friends and family (the non-bookish types) were fairly disinterested in their book coming out. Maybe they were uninterested in various book-related updates, didn’t congratulate you, or didn’t show up to your launch. I even saw one author—who might have been suffering from altitude sickness because of how high the horse she was on—saying that of course they didn’t expect all their friends and family to buy their book. I will die on this hill but IF YOU HAVE CELEBRATED MAJOR LIFE EVENTS WITH SOMEONE, IE, BOUGHT THEM A WEDDING, BABY SHOWER, HOUSEWARMING ETC GIFT THEY SHOULD BUY YOUR MOTHERFUCKING BOOK AND IF THEY DONT THEY ARE A BAD FRIEND. They don’t have to read it, much like I don’t have to hold their baby or be interested in what it is doing on a daily basis because I assure you, I am not interested. But consider the fact that 50-60% of the weddings you went to will end in divorce while your book will still exist and possibly even be read after you are dead. 99% of authors will not get a book deal. Getting married, graduating, having a baby is something most people will do. You got into the Olympics, statistically speaking; your friends should buy you flowers and buy your book, even if it is just being used as a doorstop.

Advice from former debuts to future authors:

Self care. Pretty much everyone I talked to mentioned this. Do things to de-stress. Keep physically and mentally healthy.

Don’t let pie-in-the-sky dreams take away from you actually accomplished. If you were dreaming of being in Oprah’s book club and you don’t get picked, don’t let that take away from the fact that you accomplished something that 99% of people couldn’t have. Another harsh reality is that publishers treat different authors differently. The big deal multiblockbuster author is going to get a bunch of Things a midlist author is not. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t midlist authors pulling in six-figure royalty checks. Don’t ruminate about comparisons just to hurt yourself.

Don’t forget that you used to love this. Sigh- but once we turn art into commerce it takes some of the shine off, doesn’t it. Remember that you love telling stories. Yes, it would be nice to make a bestseller list, but what really, truly made me happy were occasional notes from readers saying things like “this made me laugh really hard when I was going through a difficult time” or “I stayed up late at night to finish this.” Remember that feeling of disappearing into the page, of cackling at your own jokes.

Thumbnail photo by Joshua Sukoff on Unsplash.