Author: Dan Blank

This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.

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by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

I realized last night, as I was lying in bed, that it was a year ago this past Friday that my agent and I got an email back from Christine, who would become my editor at Crown. She’d stayed up reading Bittersweet, and had dreamed of summer that night, and she wanted me to know she loved the book. (Squee!)

But!

She didn’t love the ending, and was wondering: would I be open to changing it?

My agent called me immediately. It was Friday afternoon by this point, and I had the kiddo all day Saturday, but what I felt, as Anne explained some of Christine’s notes, was “yes.” Not just because Christine was the first editor in a string of editors (in, let’s be honest, a string of books) who might actually be saying “yes” to me, but because what she was saying was editorially sound and true. She was advocating for my characters in a way no one else had in years.

My agent, Anne, is flinty and honest and I love that about her. She said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if this new ending was waiting in Christine’s inbox on Monday morning?”

But I had the kid all day Saturday! And these changes were new and big and ambitious and would change the whole tone of the book (making it, yes, more bittersweet than it had ever been)! And yet I knew she was right: I had to try to get something done by work starting on Monday. Because my book had already stood apart in Christine’s head. But what if I, as a writer, could stand apart too?

So I called up my son’s former babysitter and she kindly welcomed him into her home all day Saturday. And I cancelled my Sunday brunch plans and holed up in my office, and using Christine’s notes as a blueprint, and a particularly brilliant suggestion from Anne, rewrote the last twenty pages of Bittersweet.

They were waiting in Christine’s inbox a year ago today, on Monday morning. And though it was nearly three weeks until the book was bought on Valentine’s Day, and those intervening days were nerve-wracking and hope-filled, I believed that I was at the beginning of something exciting. It’s been a great year since.

This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.

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By Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

I’m going to sound like your grandmother, but here goes:

When in doubt, write a thank you note.

I’m talking to you, writers. I’m talking about spending some money on some fancy stationery, unearthing your fountain pen, and putting some appreciative thoughts down on paper. Thank you notes: they’re your secret weapons.

See also: chocolate bars for the subrights people who’ve sold your book abroad; holiday presents for the marketing and publicity and editorial people who are getting the word out about your project; small, topical presents for the people who blurb your book or go above and beyond to spread the word on your behalf; handwritten thank you’s to the independent booksellers with whom you have even a tenuous relationship, and which can be sent out with your galley when the times comes; and yes, using the acknowledgements section of your book to its utmost potential.

(See also: handwritten notes to authors you are asking to blurb your work, in which you make it clear you have actually READ their work, and point out what about that work is compelling to you before you ask them to do you the huge favor of reading, and then writing positively, about your book).

Why should you write thank you notes and the like?

Well let me ask you this: when was the last time you were the recipient of a handwritten thank you note (or another, similar, appreciative gesture)? In this digital age, I’ll bet you remember it. I’ll bet you spent some time with that note, that you smiled at it, and felt happy that whatever you had done for that person, which prompted the “thank you,” actually mattered to them. I’ll bet you’d be more likely to do the same thing for them again.

That’s why you should write some yourself. Being genuinely generous, genuinely appreciative, and showing that you’ve taken the time to SIT DOWN WITH FANCY STATIONARY AND A FOUNTAIN PEN to say thank you especially to whomever you were thanking- that you didn’t just write an email, or send them a text, or post on their Facebook wall, or or or- is a form of human connection! And if there’s anything we need more of in the publishing world, it’s human connection. It’s breaking down the behemoth of the publishing machine and remembering we’re all people.

Also, make sure you spell their name right.

Okay, off my grandma soapbox.

This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.

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By Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

The idea for my web project, FriendStories, grew out of Bittersweet, but I can’t claim credit for it. What happened was this: I was writing a book. People I know and like knew and liked that I was writing a book. So they’d ask me about it. Usually the question goes something like, “What’s it about?” In the early days of working on a book, this is a very difficult question to answer- much more difficult than it seems it should be- because I don’t really actually know all the way what the book is “about.” And yet, with Bittersweet, I knew enough to say: “It’s about two best friends from college- one of them’s a plain-Jane named Mabel, the other is her beautiful, wealthy roommate, Ev. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at her family’s estate on Lake Champlain, and that’s when things get interesting.” (There were a lot more “ums” in there when I first started answering that question).

In any case, what happened next was, to my mind, amazing, because it happened nearly every time, especially when a woman was the one who’d asked me to share the gist of my book.

To a woman, each listener almost immediately responded to my little spiel with: “I had a best friend in fourth grade and…” or “There was this girl I loved and hated in high school…” or “I love stories about best friends because my best friend and I have known each other since…”

You see what I mean? My unelegant, unpracticed little spiel was consistently spurring potential readers to spill their guts about their own best friends! Better yet, these stories ran the gamut from juicy to shocking to hilarious to heart-breaking. And better yet, each time I found myself on the edge of my seat, eager to hear what had happened next.

In my own reaction to these stories, and in these listeners’ reactions to mine, I discovered a hidden truth: that tales of girlhood friendship have something innately riveting about them. Maybe not to everyone, but definitely to me, and definitely to those friends whose stories spilled forth unprompted.

So I started thinking about how I might create a space for those stories to live.

A couple months after I sold Bittersweet, I went into Crown to meet my editor. Also there was Molly Stern, the publisher of Crown. I was a little scared to meet her, but she made me feel right at home, most especially because one of the first things she said to me was, “You know, your book really got me thinking about my own girlhood friendships…”

Aha! There it was again. The publisher of my publishing house was sharing something as deeply intimate as her girlhood friendships with me because my book had made her want to! I went home that night with a resolve to create a place where such stories could live together. I really didn’t know anything about running (or building) a website, and so, I was grateful that when Dan and I started working together the following month, he agreed that this was a project worth pursuing, and assured me he’d be with me the whole time, holding my hand.

We spent last summer brainstorming about FriendStories- what we wanted it to look and feel like, what we wanted the experience of the reader to be. I knew I wanted it to be simple and clear- simply a place to share stories of girlhood friendships. Honest but respectful, and, in focusing on the story of a friendship (or a particular moment in a friendship), shedding a light on the person telling the story. Easy to contribute to; clear guidelines, but with room to grow.

Around that time, I started sifting through photos of my own childhood, and realized I loved the saturated, Kodak film, 1980’s color of those pictures. They were nostalgic, vibrant, and eye-catching. Next, we thought about how to talk about the project. Then I came up with a list of people I could ask to help.

This list has been very central to this project. I crafted a basic email, describing the FriendStories project, asking if the person in question would like to contribute, and laying out some clear guidelines. Over the course of the fall, I sent this email out to writers, yes, but also to non-writing friends- both in person, or via social media. People I knew I had a good chance of connecting with, who I thought would find something in this project that allured them.

And you know what happened? People wanted to contribute! People started to contribute! People promised to contribute!

Come January, we knew we had enough FriendStories banked to get us through the next couple months, with two stories being posted a week. The frequency with which we post may increase, based on how many new FriendStories are contributed over the course of the winter and spring; I don’t have the answer for that yet. And I’m not sure if the way we’ve gone about soliciting requests will be the way we do it in the future; eventually, my list of people to contact will run out, and hopefully by then the project will have been buoyed up by its own momentum, but if not, that’ll be something I’ll have to figure out.

Is this a promotional project for Bittersweet? Well, yes, to some degree. I’m five months out from publication, and I love the idea of this project growing over the course of the spring, offering people who might not know about me a chance to come at the book from another direction. But let’s put it this way: it isn’t just a promotional project. Its growth has been utterly organic, and that’s one of the things I’ve taken the most pleasure about with it- it feels as though it sprang into being because there was a need for it. Bittersweet, and how it urged women to talk to me, helped me identify that need. But FriendStories is what is fulfilling that need. It’s nice not to be alone with it anymore- I’m excited to see where FriendStories takes both me, Bittersweet, the readers and the contributors as the months pass!

This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.

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By Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

This is me putting the final touches on FriendStories.com before it becomes a real, living breathing thing. I’m so excited about T. Greenwood’s poem, Winter Haven, which is launching the site today. Thursday will bring a funny and thoughtful piece by Carla Sosenko about pudding wrestling at summer camp- yes, you heard that right.

Thank you to everyone who has helped FriendStories come this far! It’s wonderful to be making this dream come true.

 

This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.

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By Miranda Beverly-Whittemore

One of the things that I’ve loved best about working with Dan this past 7 months is that he’s been a slow and steady encourager of change and expansion. I find my natural authorial state is to be curled up like a little chipmunk, quietly dreaming of my next book idea. Even though that’s an important part of my job, I have another, visible, part of my job that I knew I had to get better at even before I sold Bittersweet. It’s the part of me that must interact with the world- from dressing a little nicer when I’m even working in the neighborhood (because- yes, my publisher lives in my neighborhood, and yes, I’ve run into her on more than one occasion and breathed a sigh of relief I’d remembered to pluck my eyebrows that week), to cultivating my social media presence more thoughtfully.

But this change didn’t come about overnight. It’s been a slow and steady journey, one that involves a lot of iteration, and takes into perspective my learning curve and anxieties and the fact that I have a lot of other work on my plate too!

Here’s the truth about my internet savvy: when I met Dan in the fall of 2012, I had a website I hadn’t revised since 2007 (and didn’t actually have any idea how to revise), and a personal Facebook account.  That was it.

I took Dan’s Building Your Author Platform course beginning that September, and, in addition to thinking about many of these ideas in a more holistic way, I started a Twitter feed (but I was terrified of it).

In the summer of 2013, when Dan and I decided to work together on the Bittersweet book launch, we made (what seemed to me to be) an overwhelming list of what we wanted to accomplish online, all of which was meant to be spreading the word about me, and Bittersweet. And you know what? I think we’re getting there! I can’t believe it, but I’m starting to see the fruits of our labors:

– My newsletter, which I just started last week, is a weekly roundup on Fridays of what’s been going on with me, from the work I’ve been engaged in to what I’ve been making in my role as Brooklyn mom (so far, that’s been an indoor treehouse for my son’s fifth birthday present, and a loaf of homemade bread). You can sign up here.

– This blog, the Bittersweet Book Launch, which we wanted to start to talk to writers about the efforts we were putting into getting Bittersweet off the ground in the year before publication, has started to attract people I don’t actually know! This feels like a huge accomplishment, capped off by the warm response I’ve gotten recently for the Failure post I wrote last week, and the Likability post I wrote this week (and I think a lot of this response ended up coming from Twitter- more of that below).

– FriendStories.com, which sprang organically from the central friendship between Mabel and Ev in Bittersweet, is officially launching on Monday! This web project- which has attracted dozens of submissions and I believe will attract many more- was only an idea when Dan and I started this project.

– MirandaBW.com didn’t exist last summer either! MirandaBeverly-Whittemore.com was what I had, and believed I was stuck with. But Dan convinced me that my name didn’t have to be an albatross, that my website could align to my Twitter handle, that I could have a website whose content I could manage myself, that it could have a personal, warm tone, and that it could be pretty.

– My Facebook Page– I was very resistant to creating a Page in addition to my personal Facebook profile, but the Crown marketing folks convinced us this was a tool worth having in place, especially once Bittersweet is in the world. Already it’s proving to be a great way to get the word out about my book to folks I don’t know! It was especially helpful to have some author friends of mine encourage their friends to follow this page, which means my reach is extending beyond just my personal friends on this page.

– Goodreads– I’ve had a Goodreads profile since 2007 but I had no personal content on there. Between linking it to this blog, to making my bio more personal, to the giveaway of twenty ARC’s that Crown ran in December, I now have over seven hundred people on there who’ve said they want to read Bittersweet.

– Amazon Author Page – I was resistant to this one too. But it makes sense to take advantage of a free author platform on the website where most Americans buy their books, doesn’t it?

More than all of those signposts, I’ve tried to be more socially engaged on social media, treating it like a dinner party where I get to engage with fascinating, good people. That makes it a lot less scary. And a lot more fun.