Book progress - promotion, booksellers, and other confusing navigations.

I am stumbling along through this brand new world of pre-selling promotions. I remember feeling confused about a friend's upcoming book last year. When it was finally published, I thought, wait, wasn't it out months ago? I felt I'd been inundated with her book's news. Now I am doing the same thing. My friends will surely have book fatigue before the book is even released. 

Slowly, "the way things work" is unfolding - how to talk to bookstores and libraries, how distribution will work, which tasks are mine versus my publisher versus my publicist. My communications have resulted in a mix of "oops" and "awesome." Happily, the state of Maine is filled with friendly, forgiving folks, and I have some enthusiastic booksellers in my court now!

Three books about book promotion are on their way to my local library through interlibrary loan. I am a book business freshman.

Here's another lovely blurb! This one's from a writer/biographer/historian who became a friend and mentor during my Rachel Field research years. Thank you, Benson!

"This wonderful book--based on meticulously thorough, devoted research--is a lovingly tender, wise, and judicious account of Rachel Field and her world.  Its unusual blend of memoir and biography helps to illuminate the life, even as a poignant dialogue between the author and her subject unfolds.  Truly, a tour-de-force!"
--Benson Bobrick, award-winning author of Angel in the Whirlwind and Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution it Inspired.