Book Marketing is Like an Avocado
The one where I try to make sense of my pre-publication brain
Friends.
In one week, UP TO SPEED: The Groundbreaking Science of Women Athletes officially launches into the world.
One week. Seven days. 168 hours.
To be honest, I’m feeling a lot of feelings about this whole situation. Two weeks ago, I was excited and motivated. I was ready to take on book promo. I was energized by the author panel at the Boston Marathon and another event in New York City. My schedule was filled with interviews, mostly podcast interviews. and I was working though a couple of other media-related things.
Last week, I was tired. And anxious. While I’ve had a countdown ticking in my head, it hit me that book launch was really upon me. Like soon. And I still had a lot of details to figure out and a lengthy to-do list. But when I squared those things against the calendar, there weren’t enough days for everything.
The whole book marketing and publicity rodeo has felt like waiting for an avocado to ripen. You take a lot of care when picking an avocado at the store, looking at the color and texture. Feeling the fruit’s firmness. The deliberation feels akin to polishing off a manuscript. You imbue this thing—an avocado or your soon-to-be book—with a lot of hope for what it will be in the future.
Then you go home, put the avocado on the counter and wait. And wait. You want to try to hasten the ripening process just like I wanted to speed up the clock to get me from submitted manuscript to publication day.
I had roughly a year between submitting my final manuscript and pub day. It’s a lot of time to stew and obsess but mostly, I wanted to make the most of it, to prepare, to grease the wheels of the marketing and publicity train. I had lists of podcasts and media outlets to pitch. I wanted to set up interviews early so I wouldn’t feel rushed and harried in the weeks leading up to publication.
But I was often told that it was too early. Not yet.
So I waited some more.
Then, 2-3 weeks before launch, everything ramped up. For that brief moment your book (or avocado) is ripe, this small window when it feels like people are ready to listen and consider coverage. But you can’t do it all and the timing doesn’t work. If you miss this window of ripeness, your avocado turns brown and rubbery.
I’m in that brown, rubbery, overripe avocado phase and I’m wondering if there’s a way to salvage it. If there is anything I can do at this point in the process to help get my book the right coverage, the coverage that will make all the difference, that will make it a break-out success.
(OK, I’m being a little over-dramatic. I know there are a lot of things in the works but this is how it feels to me and my brain.)
Of course, there’s no one thing (or two or three things) that I can do that will move the needle on the book—its reception or how many copies are sold—in a meaningful way. It really doesn’t matter what I post on social media or if I try to pitch a last-minute article on a related topic. In so many ways, this book is already out of my hands.
And yet, my brain would still like to think that it matters and I can control these things. (Habits developed over years of overworking and living with perfectionism are hard to break.) My brain would also like me to believe that the only measure of success is whether or not the book makes a bestseller list or any other of the numerous lists in the publishing industry. Apparently the path to being a published author can feel like an existential test (crisis?).
What I don’t want is to walk through publication like I did when I had my first child. I was so numbed out from the experience, always looking ahead and anticipating what would go wrong, an incessant worry fueled by some combination of postpartum depression and anxiety. I didn’t enjoy it.
I’d really like to pay attention to this period of time because I will never get it back. I only get to debut once. I want to take note of what’s going on around me. I want to enjoy it. Does it really matter that I ended up with the rubbery avocado?
I’ve been thinking a lot about why I wrote this book, a nudge from
to create a narrative for myself and my book and as a way to ground myself before I get swept up in the book launch frenzy.Sure, it’s a logical next step based on my reporting over the last five years. I’ve carved out this beat—the intersection of women athletes and sports science—that I love and that gets me excited. But just because something is the logical next step isn’t enough to sustain a book-length project, both in terms of material and motivation.
I attended an event earlier this year called, The Power of the Romance Heroine. (Yes, I read romance novels. Yes, stick with me. I promise there’s a relevant point.) Towards the end of the discussion, author Sarah MacLean said something that made me pause. She said:
“We’ve all said before how important it is that we see ourselves in the text, that we see ourselves in happiness and hope and triumph and passion and pleasure and all the things right? And that too often I think when we look at media that gives us that feeling, as a society, we say that’s less important than feeling hurt or harmed or suffering…We really need to interrogate why hope and happiness and power in the hands of people who are not naturally given it is less valuable to society right now.”
And that’s the crux of it, isn’t it?
There are so many ways that this book could have focused on the negative—how women have been systemically excluded from sports and scientific research, how sport science doesn’t care about women, how sports doesn’t care about women, how we keep letting girls and women down, how we never do better despite knowing better. And while all of those issues are true and discussed in the book, I didn’t want to make that THE book.
Just like how romance novels present an alternative reality, I wanted to open the conversation about what an alternative reality for sports and physical activity could look like for active and athletic girls and women. I believe that there is so much good that can be gained from sport and movement. But in order for that to really be true, we also need to make those spaces safe and accessible and relevant to all people.
I wanted to show women thriving and triumphing in spite of all these obstacles and how they are advocating and creating change. I wanted to show that there’s hope. I wanted to give them power. Because we need to see that on the page too.
So, one week until pub day.
Come celebrate with me?
Come see me in person during launch week! I’ll be at Athleta Flatiron in New York City on May 16 (advanced registration required), Books, Inc. Laurel Village in San Francisco on May 19, and Berkeley High School on May 22 (registration requested). Other events are listed here.
Help spread the word, whether it’s telling a friend, requesting the book from your library, adding it to your Goodreads, or suggesting it to your book club.
Of course, pre-ordering or purchasing the book would be tremendous. You can order a signed copy from my local independent bookstore Books Are Magic (deadline May 12 for ordering!) or anywhere books are sold. (You’ve probably heard the spiel about why pre-orders matter, especially for debut authors like me, but here’s more info.)
What I’m Reading/Watching/Listening To:
This great profile of journalist
. Virginia's new book, Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture, came out a couple of weeks ago and hit the New York Times bestseller list. It is a phenomenal and much-needed book. (I had a chance to chat with Virginia about it for an upcoming story.)This video of Giannis Antetokounmpo. His response to a reporter’s lazy question about whether he considered the season a failure because the Milwaukee Bucks lost to the Miami Heat in the NBA playoffs is a good reminder and perspective.
This episode of Terrible, Thanks for Asking which, wow, was everything that I didn’t know I needed.
Thanks for being here. More soon.
Christine
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Good luck! I think you’d be a great guest for the Trail Society podcast and/or Koopcast and suggest you send your book to them & ask to be on their show. Both are science/research-oriented and have a big following in the trail/ultra world. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trail-society/id1579961692
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/koopcast/id1489494447
I also think they’d respond better to personal outreach than a PR firm.
I’ll add your book to my Goodreads :-)