News & Blog

As we move steadily toward the October 8 pub date for Dying Is My Business, St. Martin’s Press has begun to focus on their marketing plan. To that end, they sent me an author marketing questionnaire. I’d never filled out a marketing questionnaire that was quite so thorough before. You should have seen this thing. It was five pages long and had dozens of questions! It took me half a day to get through it all! But it’s all good stuff, information they can ostensibly use to market the novel (and me) more efficiently. Questions ranged from the personal (Do I have hobbies? What countries have I traveled to?) to the ubiquitous convention panel-type questions (What inspired me to write the novel? What kind of experience has writing the novel been for me?) to the professional (Have I ever been nominated for an award? Which magazines do I think should get review copies?) to the kind of questions that are probably best left to others to answer (What features distinguish my book from others on the subject? What about me as a working writer do I think might be interesting or unusual?). It was a fascinating experience, actually. I found that being forced to think of myself in marketing terms was unexpectedly rewarding. What does make me interesting? Why would anybody want to read my novel? Discovering that you can actually answer questions like these makes you feel pretty good about yourself and your work.

I also had a productive and friendly conference call with both the Marketing Manager and the Director of Digital Marketing and Social Media at St. Martin’s. We discussed various online strategies to get readers’ attention, as well as some interesting ideas I never would have thought to make use of. (To my relief, they seemed okay with the fact that I will never, ever go back to being on Facebook. Ever.) These folks really know their stuff. Apparently, there is also a publicist who will be assigned to my novel to help with offline stuff, but I won’t get to chat with him or her until closer to the pub date.

So far, I have to admit my experience with St. Martin’s Press has been pretty great. From my editor to the online marketing folks I spoke with, everyone seems top notch, experienced, knowledgeable, and eager to make the book a success. I feel like I’m in really good hands. Now I’m just antsy for the damn thing to be published already!

Advance reading copies of Dying Is My Business! Books don’t always get full-color covers when they’re in ARC form, so I’m extra excited about it!

Click on the picture for a bigger version.

(And yes, that is my extremely cluttered home office behind me.)

In the hopes that it might be of interest to some of you, I promised a while back that I would use this blog to detail the journey my novel, Dying Is My Business, takes from manuscript to finished book. Well, to that end, today I’ve got two new and exciting developments to share with you.

First, a month or so back my editor contacted me with a “dummy” of the proposed interior design of the book (complete with everyone’s favorite lorem ipsum placeholder text). My editor, my agent, and I tweaked it just a tad before coming to consensus pretty quickly — which was easy to do because the proposed design is amazing! I’m not just talking about what font or text size they’re using, though that’s an important part of book design, too. No, one of the things I’m really coming to love about working with St. Martin’s Press is how they go the extra mile. In terms of design, that extra mile includes an actual, recurring image motif. And it’s a doozy! (No spoilers here. You’ll see it when the novel hits shelves on October 8!)

Next, I received a mysterious and unexpected package from St. Martin’s a couple of weeks ago. I thought it was the copyedited manuscript being returned to me because they didn’t need it anymore. Thoughts began racing through my head about a reader giveaway or a charitable auction — you know, all the things much bigger and more popular authors than me think about doing with these things — but when I opened the package it was something else entirely: the typeset manuscript, incorporating that same amazing interior design. (Can you still say manuscript when it’s typeset? I’m going to go with yes.)

Along with the typeset manuscript (see?) came the instructions to correct any typos or grammatical errors I find within. But I was deeply focused on finishing the next book, and frankly, I’d already read Dying Is My Business so many times and in so many different versions that I no longer thought I could trust myself to focus on finding errors and not, instead, add whole new conversations between characters because wouldn’t it be cool if… Luckily, my darling wife offered to proofread the typeset manuscript for me. I knew it would be in good hands because part of her job is to proofread all her company’s public magazines, brochures, and emails. And indeed she found a small amount of typos left over from the copyedits. Only four or five, though, which is a pittance in a novel that’s nearly 400 pages long.

Alas, there’s no such thing as a perfect book, as much as we wish there were, so it’s possible typos will still slip into the finished book. Just know that we all did everything we could to make sure the novel offered as clean a reading experience as possible. Believe me, I know nothing can pull the reader right out of a story faster than a glaring typo! But yeah, no matter what we do, they’re still going to happen. You can pretty much count on it.

St. Martin’s Press has pushed the pub date up to October 8 from October 15. I can only assume it’s because they didn’t want anyone to have to wait a whole extra week before reading this awesome novel! (There could be other reasons, but this one is obviously the real reason, duh.)

You can still pre-order it from Amazon for more than $5 off the cover price, or pre-order it from your favorite bookseller — only now you’ll get it a week earlier!

In the meantime, check out these amazing advance blurbs!