How to Talk About Your Own Book

Today I have my very first press event for my new book, which is out in July. I, along with three other wonderful Ecco authors, will take part in a lunchtime Zoom meeting with various members of the media and booksellers, during which we’ll be interviewed by Ecco’s associate publisher. I’ve been thinking a lot about what to say, and how to talk about my book in general.

I will not use this space to workshop anything, I promise. I’m not here to sell this book to you. But I do think my many years as a books journalist has primed me to understand what makes for a good talk, and I want to tell you about what I think works, while also reminding myself. Stage fright is real, after all.

I won’t have a script, just a few notes. I know how important it is to actually have a conversation, and that means being present and listening to what other people are saying, too.

The goal is to talk about the book in more detail than the marketing copy that my editor so carefully crafted for me, but to still be pithy and precise. The book has gone through so many iterations, and I have to have a handle on what it is now, after many rounds of edits and much feedback from my agent and editor and a few trusted friends.

In my career covering books, in podcasts and in print, I’ve conducted hundreds of author interviews, and the very best ones featured writers who were able to make a tight, cohesive narrative out of, well, the narrative they’d already written. As an author, getting the story right is the most important part of writing a book, but getting the story of the story right is the most important part of promoting it, of getting readers to want to buy it.

Often the authors who have the best grasp on the concept of storytelling to sell their own work are also teachers, the ones who are used to speaking to an audience in classes and keeping their attention until the end of the session. The biggest pros I’ve encountered have four or five stories that they can trot out for any occasion when they’re talking about the book. Does this mean that every article or interview they do is entirely original? Absolutely not. Do average readers read every single piece of press that’s written about a particular book, even the ones they’re interested in? Absolutely not.

It has just about always been the job of the author to help sell the book long after they’ve finished the job of writing it. I think we like to pretend that in the past authors could simply write a book and then keep their heads down, letting their publishers take care of getting the word out. To be fair, before the technological changes of the 21st century (namely social media) authors could be more passive in the promotion of their books—Philip Roth never had to connect with readers on Twitter or do a bunch of podcasts, after all. But he did have to, in interviews and at bookstore talks and signings, make readers want to buy what he was selling.

Now, in a landscape where books don’t get tons of traditional media coverage and social media overall gets less and less reliable, it’s more important than ever for authors to take an active role in talking about their books (reminder: we love our in-house publicists and marketing gurus, but there’s only so much they can do on a tight schedule with a punishing work load). As icky as it may feel to have to be the chief salesperson of one’s own book as well as the writer, who else has more of a vested interest in making sure the book finds readers?

My hope is that after I’ve discussed my book today, more people in the industry will actually get a chance to read it, and they’ll be able to tell me what they think my book is about. They have more distance from the work than I do, and I welcome their interpretations. In fact I welcome any good faith takes on my book, although because I am also the chief protector of my own sensitive feelings, I may not have the emotional bandwidth to consider them all.