My redesigned website will be launching in a week or two, but I couldn’t wait to share this review of Epitaph with you — and with everyone else in the world I can think of, frankly. I have been FLYING since I read it this morning.
Publishing a novel is a glacial process. After the final manuscript is submitted to the publisher, there are still dozens of little decisions and tasks for the author. A whole team of people becomes involved with the project — artists and graphics designers create the look of the book, inside and out, while copy editors cope with repeated passes through the text. The publicist starts thinking about how a tour might affect sales and which reviewers to approach while the production editor shepherds the book through printing and binding and distribution. And then there’s the audio book and the electronic edition and all the rest of it…
It’s not as complex as making a movie, but from the agents to the acquiring editor to the reviewers (amateur and professional) to the salesperson in a Kansas bookstore deciding what book to recommend to a customer, thousands of people contribute to a book’s emergence. And at the end of it all, there’s you.
Thank you.
Thanks for finding me, out of all the millions of writers working today. Thanks for reading my stuff. Thanks for nagging your friends to read it. Thanks for giving my books as gifts. Thanks for sticking with me, novel after novel, even though you hate science fiction, or you thought there was nothing left to write about the Holocaust, or you never heard of the 1921 Cairo Peace Conference, or you didn’t expect to care about Doc Holliday or Wyatt Earp.
You keep reading? I’ll keep writing. Promise.