I am now less than three months out from my debut book’s publication (Spells to Mend Broken Hearts — out Sept 15th with Scholastic). Word on the street is that this is when things really start happening. But what are those things? And when? And should I whip myself into a frenzy over making Canva graphics for Instagram?

The Writer, as a Self-Promoter

It’s a reality that anyone who makes art, save those who are extremely successful, and often, reclusive, are in a constant dance of self-promotion. Promoting to your readership, your audience, to the gatekeepers who decide whether you get to play again. Building an audience and a community, I can get behind that, but the steps you have to take to get there — making a brand, finding your niche online, or else just praying that your work does so well that your publisher will deliver sales on a silver platter — well, I find all of that really hard.

I’ve always been a proud “late adopter” — a trait that I understand makes me very annoying and self-righteous. Some of it might be genetic — my parents didn’t get cell phones until 2006, we had dial-up until 2009. When the smartphone craze began, I was dead set on never having one. I bought flip phones and second-hand Sidekicks until 2014, when I finally caved so that I could stay connected when I lived abroad.

I have never used Snapchat, have never opened TikTok, and I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy making my iPhone SE as dumb as humanly possible. It’s black and white, has a minimalist interface, and has very strict time restrictions on apps. If my literal front door didn’t need an app to be unlocked, I might be in the insufferable club of 2026 flip phone users.

No need to dive into the psychology of why I’m like this, only that when it comes to promoting myself, or even just regularly engaging, it sometimes feels unnatural. A naive, moody teenager inside of me whines, “Can’t I just write????”

Which, what a world if that was the case! If painters could just paint, if musicians could just make music, if their art was cherry picked for merit, and then disseminated by benevolent beings to the exact right audience, money cascading back to the creator.

I’m not meaning to complain. I understand very well that making an effort in promoting yourself and your work is important and just part of the game. I just find it to be hard. So, three months out from my book debuting, I’ve got a difficult itch I need to scratch. I met with a friend who is very social media savvy, who gave me great ideas and tips, which I plan to use. I dove back into the massive Discord server for debut writers, gratefully gobbling up any morsels of advice and jumping on collaborative posts. I am seeing what is fun for me, focusing on that.

And yet, I spend a lot of time suddenly panicked, wondering if I should be making custom bookmarks to hand out like business cards (yes) or if I should be posting something every single day (probably not) or if I need to do a giveaway, a contest, commission character art, do a trending dance, sacrifice myself at the altar of the algorithm (no).

The real wisdom I’ve gleaned from watching others do this and hearing others talk about their experiences, is that there is no one right way to do things, that every book is different, every writer is different, every publisher’s support varies. I am in an extremely lucky position with Scholastic — my book is destined for the book fair. And if I could tell nine-year-old me that, she would have simply dropped dead of excitement. So, as I whine to myself about Instagram posts and fret about submitting to conferences and festivals, I need to remember that this is an absolute dream scenario.

Speaking of self-promotion, it really helps out writers (including myself) when you pre-order their books!

Right, but What Is Happening to a Book at This Stage?

The book has been finished for a while now. I’ve written acknowledgments and bios, approved the jacket copy. I’ve emailed with my publicist and started the process of planning a launch event.

Apparently I will see a physical copy for the first time, sometime in July. I will cry and scream and probably drink in the smell of its freshly printed pages like an absolute freak.

Beyond all of this, it’s the Great Mystery of Publishing. I could just keep emailing my agent and editor with questions like “Okay but what’s happening now?” but it’s best to interrogate when I actually need to know something and when I’m just plagued with curiosity. If I could go where they print the books and ask questions to the manufacturer, I sure would.

And perhaps, I just like to see how things get made. My latest obsession has been YouTube videos of pasta factories, sometimes veering off that path into any kind of manufacturing that I suddenly have a curiosity about. So maybe what’s in order here is just a long YouTube video of books being printed and bound, so that I can imagine that they are my words shooting out of impressive pieces of machinery.

A Book Recommendation That Isn’t My Book

I recently finished a draft of my Secret Adult Project and found myself taking a short break from drafting anything, which means that I can read whatever I want. Of course, I know that I can always read whatever I want, but I tend to read in-genre or stick to things to keep me inspired when I’m writing. So with no writing on my to-do list, I ventured to BookPeople and bought some books to read based solely on what caught my eye.

If you like nonfiction, literary history, a bit of journalistic mystery, and/or some geopolitical errata, then Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious Case of the Kingdom of Redonda by Michael Hingston, is something to behold.

Hingston, at the whims of his own literary curiosity, stumbles upon a kingdom of sorts — the micro-nation of Redonda — ruled by generations of writers and eccentrics. His research takes him to strange places and into the annals of literary history as he tries to figure out what the heck is up with this tiny uninhabited Caribbean island.

Would be a great gift for a bookish dad on Father’s Day. Or for a weird geography nerd in your life.

P.S. I have a new kitten. His name is Bruce.