Terry Prone: Thoughts and prayers for writers navigating their book launch

Storm Babet prevented me from getting to the Justine launch, so I can’t report what Vincent Browne said, but I’d be prepared to bet that the writer was anxious in advance about what he might say. On the other hand, he is unlikely to have come close to either Rosenstock or Geoghegan-Quinn when it came to author-mortification.

At the Cooper launch, Mario Rosenstock first of all noted that people present preferred to stand rather than sit in the front row, directly in front of him, which I thought made a lot of sense, since Rosenstock combines comedy and terror in pretty equal amounts. The combination meant Cooper spent much of the introductory speech with his head in his hands. The rest of us had a great time as Rosenstock portrayed Cooper as a workaholic speaking in a Cork soprano voice.

In advance of the launch of my memoir, I was pretty chuffed to know the speech was to be made by a former justice minister, former EU Commissioner, current head bottle washer at the University of Galway.

Based on her in-depth knowledge of me and my late husband, Tom Savage, I anticipated some properly encomiastic rhetoric.

Big mistake, right there.

I had forgotten that MGQ, in her political days, was regarded as the most lethal practical joker in the Oireachtas, where the word was that no friend of MGQ went untortured.

So, on the day, she stepped up to the podium in the Grafton Street Dubray bookshop, and started well. Then she recalled something I have spent more than 20 years trying to forget — her gift to my husband on his 50th birthday.

“I thought the best present would be a French maid arriving in fishnet tights, frilly apron, and tiny skirt, to sing Happy Birthday to Tom and — shall we say — deploy her duster around his — his — person. Which she did. Tom rolled his eyes but stayed still until it was over and the applause broke out.”

That’s what she said.

Most people present at the time thought it was funny. Me, I boiled with fury. And still do. Having it revived at the book launch put me in the Matt Cooper position: head in hands. But it did seem to put everyone present in good humour, which is required of those attending a book launch, which is part celebration and part hard sell.

Two kinds of people turn up at book launches — the invited and the uninvited. The uninvited may be attracted by advance publicity or simply drawn in by a poster in a bookstore window, suggesting that if they want to join the eager throng for Head-the-Ball’s book launch, they’d be welcome.

A small cohort of the knowing is aware that any book launch is good for a glass of wine and some finger food, which combination may also act as something of an incentive. After the speeches, someone from the publishing house indicates that the author has graciously consented to sign books bought by the visiting punters, although the publisher would never refer to them as punters. The hope of a decent queue is one of the prayers every author silently utters, because big gaps between individuals coming to have their purchase signed is a devastating indication of the author’s lack of popularity.

When a populous queue forms, the writer is grateful and guilty in equal measure because they know all the people coming to have books signed, and worry about friends feeling pressured to buy one.

On the other hand, when someone in the queue produces not one but two books for autograph, the writer would practically go home with them, such is the gratitude that wells up. Shades of Sally Field: “You like me. You really like me.”

The launch comes in the middle of a rosary of author prayers starting with the manuscript. You think you’ll be happy forever if an agent takes it on. But then you have to pray the agent sells it to a publisher, followed by the prayer that the publisher, dizzied with the thrill of bringing out your book, will leave it the hell alone.

That last prayer is particularly prevalent among journalists and those who have previously published books, who become possessed of the notions that (a) they are wordsmiths whose output is untouchably meritorious and (b) that the editor or line editor who starts making nit-picky points is a pain in the posterior up with whom they should not have to put.

This is the rock a writer might perish on, because the editor who really loves your work is the one who gets most nit-picky, and, like your mother, should always be listened to.

In the case of a memoir, the next prayer is about the cover. This is one where the writer has no rights whatsoever, which leads to many writers’ secret conviction that their publisher picked the worst possible picture of them out of spite over them fighting on other fronts. What you want, and what I got with my current offering, is a picture so flattering that people say “Great photograph” in an ironic way, as if they believe it was taken 30 years ago and photoshopped every year since. Then you pray the book will arrive on time. When it does, you get the ultimate pleasure of holding it in your hand. 

Now, some writers would say this experience does not compare with the joy of holding your first baby in your arms but they’re parentally deluded.

It’s at this point the prayers turn to publicity.

The book has to appear in mainstream and social media in a concentrated couple of weeks in order to motivate purchasers to leg it to their local bookshop to order or buy it.

The publicist must promise each media outlet that the writer will give that outlet an exclusive section of the writer’s entrails and be prepared to answer questions on anything from their attitude to Hamas to how, where, and beside whom they want to be buried.

If the publicist does their job, the next prayer is for decent reviews. Ideally filled with those reviewer words like “liminal” and “luminous”.

“Shallow,” “tawdry”, “self-serving” or “fatuous” no writer wants.

This last phase is the prayer for a bestseller. Never satisfied, writers.