Books to Newcastle

[desperance]

As I said above - no, I'm sorry, I guess that should be below: so confusing, adjusting the language to suit the new orthodoxies - it's publication day (s'okay, I've only got another ten hours to keep mentioning this, then it stops being true) and no sooner had I posted the previous than there was a knock at the door, and fifty books arrived, fresh from the States. It's funny, I used to be a novelist, and only a novelist; the business has changed so much in the last ten or fifteen years, these days I'm a performer and a lecturer and a tutor and a bookseller and a publisher and an impresario and now an importer also. Of the second printing, alas, because the book sold out before publication; but hey, I'm not grumbling. And if anyone really, really wants the first edition, there's plenty out there. Anyone who doesn't care, they can buy a (signed!) copy from me, with a swift e-mail; or from The Aust Gate in the UK, or Amazon anywhere, or yr local bookstore, or other specialist dealers, or...

But that really is enough of the shameless self-promotion for now. I've got a launch party to organise. Did I say above, was party organiser on that list of Things I Do Now?

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

why didn't they ship you copies from the first batch?? are you fetishistic about that sort of thing? Maybe your editor has a copy in-house of the first printing he/she could send you

In order: cock-up, apparently so, and done that, thanks. I think they were as taken by surprise as I was, by the first run's selling out (when I were a lad, we were always told that the first copy that came off the presses belonged to the author, as by right; I never actually believed it, but it was a lovely legend, now blown completely out of the water). I was ordering copies for my launch party, and they said I'd have to wait for the second printing, and I said oh, okay, too bad, but I hope my own copies will be first editions? And they said whoops, no, sorry - at which point I discovered that yes, I am fetishistic about this sort of thing. I did the weeping-and-wailing thing (well, in a very British stiff-upper-lip kind of way: I sort of harrumphed disappointedly, which they correctly interpreted as absolute hysterical breakdown), and the nice editorial assistant went scuttling round the office pinching all the firsts she could find. So I'm okay, and so is my mother (who actually wouldn't care, but I care for her) and so is my webmistress, and anyone else who wants one can have all the fun of hunting it down.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on getting hold of your own first editions. After all, that's got to be worth making a fuss about.

And welcome to LJ!