Books are amazing things. I have spent my entire life surrounded by them, loving them, investing myself in them. I have read them, written about them, made them, and now written one. The lion’s share of my life has seen me living for and through books. And all that only serves to make publishing a book profoundly weird.
You see, when you are like me and your book gets published you are not worrying about making money; you are simply worried about the book doing well enough to secure you a contract for the next book. That is all that matters: doing another one, and another one, and then another one…
Sure, I’d love to make some money, but I love writing books. Books are so different than publishing a pattern; in a book you have space to work between the individual elements, to weave them together to create a bigger picture. In fact that is what a book really is about to me: it is an object that allows for the spaces in between to develop a profound meaning, both by simply interconnecting diverse ideas and by allowing for a larger conversation to emerge in writing about the ways thing entangle.
And that is what I have tried to do with this book; it is about so much more than the patterns. In fact I would have preferred to have done it without explicitly writing out the patterns, instead allowing the quilts to simply illustrate the ideas and issues at hand. I am glad that the patterns are there, but they are not the essential part of this book. But I digress…
I have had several people tell me that they are waiting until I visit their guild later this year (or next year) to buy the book, so they can purchase it from me. And yes, many authors sell their books at talks and workshops; they can buy them at wholesale and make a bit more money at the event. I may well do that, but that means deferring sales until later. Meanwhile I have already submitted my proposal for the next book, but any sane publisher will wait for sales data of one book before moving on to the next. In that light the extra money earned later doesn’t really help me if my goal is to get the next book greenlighted soon. You see; publishing gets weird very easily…
So, here is my request. If you want to book, buy it now. Don’t worry about buying it from me; the extra cash is not important to me. And if you want me to sign it, bring to the guild event; I will gladly sign it then. If it is at your local shop or bookstore; get it there. If they don’t have it ask them to order it. If all that fails, get it online. But the next two months of sales data are extremely important, and that is why I am all stressed out. It isn’t because I am worried about this book; it is because I am worried about the next book.
And I suppose that is part of what those 5-star reviews are about. They help the logorithms that Amazon uses to do the crazy things they do, and they send signals to publishers. That is also what having lots of people post their own reviews is about; it creates organic buzz, which publishers like to see. All of the stuff that I don’t like to do: the asking for stuff, the very direct marketing, etc… All of that goes into securing the next contract, and that is what it is all about for me.
You see, I think I have at least another twenty books in me. There is so much to talk about when it comes to quilts, so many lines of thought and investigation, so many possibilities. I want to write about it all, but first I have to secure a second contract, and for that I need sales data, and for that I need you.
Yep, that’s the meta data. That’s the between the lines of everything beyond the pages of this particular book. And that is what is at stake, and why I seem to keep twitching…
The twitching is driving me nuts.
So, one more day until the official launch date, when Amazon starts selling rather than pre-selling, and people can leave those reviews. Not at all nervous…
Thus, with just hours to go until the book is official, I will leave you with this. Please forgive me…
-t
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