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.
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Breaking news! See up there? On the top right shelf, in red (my favorite color, no less)? It’s the British ARC of Bittersweet, which will be published by the Borough Press!!! Looking forward to getting my hands on the actual, physical book soon!
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.
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
I’ve spent part of the last week putting together an excel spreadsheet of “like” authors, that is, authors and writing peers whose written work and online presence I aspire to emulate. This involves, essentially, stalking that given author online: googling them, and clicking through every page that comes up, and making a spreadsheet of every example I can find of who this author has written for, what online presence they’ve built for themselves (eg Twitter, website, etc), and who has written about them or reviewed their books:
In the case of Jami Attenberg (hey, Jami! I swear I’m totally non-threatening), I’ve learned a lot. She’s got a big online presence, between her website, Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. She’s written about her book extensively, but she’s also done something nice and tricky, which is to write for Oprah.com about turning 40, and Elle about her cowboy boots, and the NY Post about what’s in her library. On the surface, these topics don’t seem to have much to do with her writing career, except that they reach out to her readers and say “hey, I’m cool, and oh yeah, by the way, here’s my bio that includes information about my books.” I bet that snags her a lot of readers who enjoy her column in the magazine and come to her books through that portal.
I’ve also noticed a lot of trends in doing this research- many writers I admire have written for The Rumpus and The Millions, both places where I haven’t made any connections yet. So that probably means I need to introduce myself and figure out how to contribute to those communities so that, down the line, I can make a bit of a writing home there.
This work is not especially fun on the surface, but once you get over the spreadsheet aspect (and feeling like a creepy stalker), you actually start to find out a lot about where you might find welcome reception to news of your book. The tricky part is this work is never done; I could probably spend the next twelve days doing this work, and still not feel done. I’m definitely not going to do that. So I’m not going totally stalker crazy, at least not yet.
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.
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
As Kai and I edit my book trailers, I’ve been looking at a lot of other book trailers for a sense of how they got across the essence of their novels. There’s a wide range of styles (and, I imagine, successes) out there, probably. I think most authors have a hard time knowing how to best pitch their own books to a viewing audience, or what would go “viral.”
But this trailer, for David Gilbert’s & Sons is tongue-in-cheek, intriguing, and sports a cameo from Brooke Shields.
It made me ask: what is this book about? I wanted to read it to find out.
Over the weekend, I read & Sons, about a reclusive, curmudgeonly, Salinger-esque writer named A.N. Dyer and his relationship with his sons and the other men around him. The book plays with the idea of the myth of the father, and the trailer plays on this idea– the mythology of a Great Man.
David’s also got a page on his website sporting the “body of work” of A.N. Dyer, which I imagine must have been very fun to create.
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.
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
This week, I’ve started reaching out to possible contributors to FriendStories. So far, I’m reaching out to women, because this project extends from the friendship of Ev and Mabel, the two young women in Bittersweet whose friendship lies at the heart of the tale. I’m so excited to see what the world is going to do with this tiny little seed of an idea of mine, the notion that every woman had a girlhood friendship that marked her in some profound way, and that other women are interested in reading and thinking about such tales.
The people I’m reaching out to initially are friends, Facebook friends, and members of various listservs I belong to. Not everyone is a writer (although many of them are, because many of my friends are writers), and I hope very much that this project will extend beyond both the writing world and my circle of friends.
I’m reaching out to ten people a day. Why? Because that’s a manageable number for me to handle along with all the other work I need to accomplish in a given workday. Because that way this part of the experience stays pleasurable for me, and I feel I can make a genuine connection with every person I’m asking to help me in this endeavour.
It’s been so thrilling to get such an overwhelmingly positive result already. People have replied with a majority of yesses, and most no’s come from the wonderful news that they are working hard on something else they love. I’ve already gotten two submissions, and man, they’re really really good! This is actually turning into something! I believed that it could, but I didn’t know it would.
If you’re reading this and you’re interested in contributing as well, please visit FriendStories.com for further information. Yes, I’m reaching out to folks I know, but I’m so excited for folks I don’t know to become part of the conversation. Also, today, I opened a Twitter account for the project: @FriendStories1. If you’re on Twitter, please consider following the account! Onward and upward!
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.
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
I spent yesterday at Kai’s apartment. I’m lucky to call Kai my neighbor, collaborator, filmmaker extraordinaire, best friend, and, oh yeah, sister [sometimes I call her my sisbor = sis(ter) + (neigh)bor]! This summer we shot a lot of fun footage up at the lake house, to be made into 8 or 9 thirty-second book trailers that can be released in the weeks leading up to Bittersweet’s May publication. I came over to say dumb things like, “um, can it be more…slow at that part?” and she did everything else brilliant and complicated involving Final Cut Pro and a computer.
Yes, that is a crossbow over her shoulder. No, a crossbow will not be appearing in any of my book trailers.
Most of the day, this was my view. Feeling filled with gratitude and pleasure, peppered by long periods of time in which she clicked buttons and the mouse and “rendered” and edited, and, awestruck, I kept thinking, “My little sister knows about to DO things.”
There was a tornado watch, so naturally, for a break, we went to her roof.
I know, probably not the safest idea, but it hadn’t started raining yet and the sky was still bright all around us.
Then it started raining in earnest and we decided it was probably best for me to head home. We’d only gotten rough cuts of half of our book trailers, but this is why it’s so great to have my sister: she insisted she’d get them done in the evening, and pushed me out the door. Before that though, it was just the two of us on the roof, admiring the world:
