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Fiction Debut Author Roundtable
10.
AOTW: How did you feel and how did you react the first time you saw your book on a shelf in a bookstore?
Michael Redhill: It's a strange moment. On one hand, you become aware that an important transition has occurred, from your book being this shielded, safe thing that exists first in your mind, and then in your computer, to this thing that is a product that people can buy. On the other hand, it's immensely gratifying as well, that your work has paid off. At least to the point that you're able to control it: you wrote it, you got it published. The rest is out of your hands, so that first moment in the bookstore, the realization that nothing else that happens to this book will be the least bit related to your own will is also present. And that's something to be a little fearful of.
Kate Manning: I felt naked.
Karen V. Siplin: My book will be out on June 11th and I'm sure I will be very excited when I see it on the shelf for the first time.
Jill A. Davis: It was great. Amazing. Then, of course, you start wishing they had more copies than they do. Last weekend I was walking on the beach and I saw someone reading Girls' Poker Night. That was the first time I'd seen someone outside of my family reading it. I just assumed the only people who bought it were related to me.
David Rosenfelt: It was cool. Very, very cool. Then I saw the other thousands of new books coming out simultaneously, and it was scary. Very, very scary.
Terrence Cheng: I felt a little weird, and very happy. Maybe it's because I work in publishing and I'm a bookworm so I am surrounded by books all the time. But it was indeed a bit strange, thinking that I was now a part of this world --- the world of published authors --- that I had been striving to reach for so long, and the transition into that world was actually quite seamless. Suddenly, there it was. There I was. And I am no different as a person. I'm still anal and possessive about everything. I still need to lose ten pounds and quit smoking.
Arthur Phillips: It's wonderful, joyous, of course, but also temporary, and oddly enough, kind of irrelevant. The joy of it is the joy of knowing that "business is going well" and that "product is on the shelves" rather than anything related to the thing I do with a pen every day. I realize that makes no sense, but give me a break: this is my first book and it just happened.
Stella Pope Duarte: Again, a sense that invisible powers can make dreams come true. Humbled by all the wonderful writers around me, I felt small, yet great at the same time.
Jill Bialosky: I can't wait! It's such a thrill to see your book in the bookstore. I know that through the two poetry books that I've published, The End of Desire, and Subterranean, both published by Knopf. The thing I like most about the feeling of a finished book is that it's finished. I can't tinker with it anymore. And suddenly this great feeling of distance or divide from the material sinks in. It feels as if it were written by someone else.
Gary Shteyngart: It has not yet appeared in bookstore. I still can't imagine seeing it on a shelf.
Ali Smith: Best was when I saw a man in front of me in a queue buying my first book. That was very exciting. I think it was the picture of Louise Brooks that did it for him. I often wonder if he liked the stories.
David Benioff: When I was fourteen I finally managed to unhook a girl's bra. My reaction on seeing naked breasts was similar to my reaction on seeing my book on the shelf: great pleasure and great relief that I'd achieved my dream at last.
Masha Hamilton: Seeing Staircase in a bookshop, even now, gives me a thrill --- but also a measure of discomfort, the same sensation I might experience if I were standing naked in the store. Bizarre, huh? I think the discomfort stems from the fact that I have this image of storytelling as a fully intimate act: the storyteller snuggled with her children in bed, or at the very least, alone with her reader. The story itself, in this vision of mine, is meant as a small, private gift to break through the reader's isolation and lift her to a place both familiar and foreign. Seeing the book on a public shelf is a bit of a shock because it yanks the experience out of this cozy realm that I imagine.
Ad Hudler: Honestly? It was buried in the stacks and I was a little bothered by it --- so I moved it to an end cap. I sometimes engage in guerilla marketing; in one store, I wanted to turn it cover out, but there was no room to do it --- so I had to move Victor Hugo to another place! (Incidentally, I was just as excited seeing my website for the first time).
Steve Almond: Really, for me, the big thing was the day that I got the offer from Grove. That was the moment where I really felt the impact. And it wasn't joy so much. It was more this monumental sense of relief, that I could finally relax, that it was actually, at long last, going to happen.
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