Publication week!

What it's like to get a book published when you feel like everything is riding on it.

It’s a funny week, the week your book comes out. A huge event and yet no event at all, really. You spend months writing something and then bang, something like a year and a half later, it’s launched. What exactly am I supposed to do at this stage? Hover by everyone? Peer over the nation’s shoulders’ while they read it? Not the nation. A portion of the nation. But what size is that portion? Therein lies the anxiety.

People will ask “how’s the book going?” and the honest answer is “I don’t know. What have you heard?”. In comedy, for example, two bits of data are available immediately. The size of the audience and how much that audience laughs. With books it’s more a case of walking up and down the underground until you see someone holding your book and then shouting “WHAT BIT ARE YOU UP TO?” at them.

Most book launch parties are arranged and paid for by the author themselves. Famously, Dickens used to favour All Bar One in Leicester Square. I chose not to do one. Too scary, like a birthday party times one hundred. Come one and all and celebrate me and the fact that I have once again done… my job! So I arranged to go round a friend’s house to celebrate my book, pancake day (big day) and, belatedly, their birthday. That way I could tell myself that the smiles on the children’s faces as they ate pancakes and birthday cakes were all down to the publication of my hardback.

Sadly, my son came down with something so we cancelled. Instead, we took him to bed, then had an Indian takeaway and some bubbly. There was the ever so slight fear that he’d get a high fever and I’d find myself at A&E trying to explain the alcohol on my breath: “I know it’s a Tuesday but my book came out, you see… Cozy mystery… You can order it wherever you get your books… here, hand me your phone. I’ll find a link for you… sorry, yeah, my son…”

This is, absurdly, the fourth book I’ve had published. You’d think I’d have worked it out by now. Not at all. I still feel completely at sea and out of place in the publishing industry. I don’t understand the lingo or the figures. Maybe I do. I feel as if I don’t though. This particular book has introduced me to new experiences, things that feel different to my past books. My agent took me for lunch at the Ivy this week, for example. That was new. Felt like I’d stepped into a new pasture, past a velvet rope or something. If I get the Ivy, where does Osman’s agent take him? The top of the Burj Khalifa?

I signed some copies at Goldsboro Books in town. A pile of first editions, displayed nicely, and then Isabel from my publisher and a lady from the shop, taking pictures as I reenacted signing them because we forgot to take photos while I was actually doing it. I felt as if I were pretending to be a real author, playing the role. I at least took my Blue Jays cap off, but still wore my Reeboks. Now that I’m a proper author, now that I’m the sort of writer who does signings and whose agent takes him to The Ivy, shouldn’t I be wearing a tweed blazer or something? Shouldn’t I have a glass of red wine in my hand?

And then there’s the self-promotion. I had a nice review in the Daily Mail, I’ve appeared in a few podcasts, on plenty of blogs, but ultimately the best chance I personally have of influencing sales is by appealing directly to the audience I have on social media. But there’s a balance to be struck there. Most people started following me because they enjoyed my videos which were, crucially, free. Now every post is a case of me chasing them down the street, as if they’re a girl who once said she fancied me, but now doesn’t seem as interested, and shouting ‘DO YOU STILL LIKE ME? I MAY HAVE ONLY MENTIONED THIS THIRTY TIMES THIS WEEK BUT DID YOU KNOW I HAVE A BOOK OUT?’. I have to do it though. It’d be stupid not to. “Why do you think your book never quite took off?” “I was too shy to post on Instagram about it.”

This one feels different. This one feels like my chance. Oh God, I feel sick, writing that down. Might as well be honest. My other books had a relatively small, very enthusiastic audience comprised of the sort of people who can tolerate a whole novel in which almost every single sentence is a joke. There’s only so many readers with the appetite for that.

With the new book, the idea was to chuck a serial killer into a cozy mystery and to see if it worked. What was different for me is that rather than deliberately writing bad, purely parodic prose, I was given the terrifying task of writing well. Still funny, but not only funny and importantly, not shit. After handing in the manuscript and not sleeping for a week, worrying that I may have entirely misfired, I was both delighted and relieved with the gushing response from my editor. I had, at least, got close to doing the job he’d asked of me. Then I went back to worrying about everything else in my life and the financial situation twenty years as a hit-and-miss entertainer had left me in.

But then, two or three months later I found out that there’d been a bidding war in Germany for the translation rights. And then Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House in the US, bought the rights. This was definitely different. Hugely exciting but also oddly terrifying because this might be it, this might be my chance at something approaching a sustainable career, one in which I know what my job is. One in which I know how I’ll pay my bills not just this month but maybe next month too, and maybe the one after that.

So here we are. Publication week. Here is the pudding and now we are looking for the proof. I’m currently finishing work on a new book and starting work on another. I am a professional writer. A real one, one whose agent takes him to lunch at the Ivy, one who has enough work to fill the rest of the year. Is this a moment in time or is this just the beginning? There’s no way of knowing.

Of course, I’ve hardly got any work done this week. Just refreshing and refreshing the Amazon page in each country, to see if it’s gone up or down in the rankings. Is that too vulgar to admit? Does Ian McEwan do that? On the first day, Amazon sold out their initial order which was a) a good thing, because it meant people were buying it but b) a bad thing because it meant they hadn’t ordered enough and now some people would, I worried, move on and not bother buying it at all. No matter the news, I will find the cloud. I’m told Amazon have sorted it now.

So I wrote this for something else to do. Checking if there are some untapped suckers in my substack following whom I can squeeze a sale out of.

Did I tell you I have a book out this week? Did I mention that first week sales are hugely important? It’s called I’m Not The Only Murderer in My Retirement Home. It’s about a retired serial killer who goes to live in a retirement home. When someone is murdered, all fingers point at her, but she didn’t do it, so now she has to find out who did and clear her name. It’s a fun read and its success or failure will determine the rest of my life. Available wherever you get your books. No pressure.