Gemini73 wrote:Not to undermine anyone else's current state of mind, but for the first time in ages I'm truly happy with most aspects of my life.
Really glad to hear this mate!
Clarkman wrote:In a bad headspace currently, mostly because of the weight of expectation I've created for myself around the book.
Nearly everyone tells me 'you must be so excited!', which doesn't help. We've probably sold under 200 copies and the media cycle around it is already over. Launching in the same month as Atwood hasn't helped, but it feels like a real disappointment to have received basically no buzz or PR.
I worked for years on the project, and your future opportunities as an author depend a lot on debut performance. Very cutthroat world.
Very low and self-indulgently sad.
Really not glad to hear this. I can get on board to this to an extent (through journal article publication and book chapter publication, although the latter isn't officially published yet), but to even get to the stage you have reached is so much further than the vast majority of aspiring authors get to. Re: PR, are you using all your social media outlets to the max?
Re: the "you must be so excited!" thing - that's usually what people just feel the "correct" response is to something like a book publication, because they don't have the experiences to make further comment or to empathise with your true likely emotions on the subject. Don't let this get to you - it's purely the standard, inexperienced reply.
You've done fantastically well to get to this stage, and I have no doubt the sales will continue and that number will rise. Snowball effect etc. The more people who read it, the more people hear about it etc.