When I walk into the bookshop, the first surprise is that I am not the first one here; that there are already rows of benches lined up with people on them. The second, bigger surprise, is that I don’t recognise any of these bench-sitters. They are members of the general public.
The process of publishing a book is a slow one. While a new hardback hits the shelves with all the fuss of something fresh, shiny and ink-wet, the people who got it there have, at this point, been familiar with the contents for numerous months or years. In my case, I started writing the first draft of the first essay about four years ago. I signed my book contract just over two years ago, and finished writing the thing a clear thirteen months ahead of its publication.
So by the time I see my book for the first time in the wild, I have become quite accustomed to its existence – just not its availability. My writing has, at last, been turfed out of its far-too-comfortable laptop folder home, having only ventured out thus far in the odd email attachment. Here it is: a holdable, flickable, smellable object.
[Note: I should specify, here, that the bookshop in question is small and that the ‘general public’ number enough to count on about three hands. Most of them, no doubt, are part of the lovingly cultivated community that this little business has grown through regular events and monthly reading groups. Nevertheless, they are readers whose interest has nothing to do with their obligation to me. They are sitting proof that my book is ‘launched’: catapulted into the hands of strangers.]
About two weeks before publication, my oldest friend gave me some advice: ‘Have you thought about what you do and don’t want to share?’
‘Yes,’ I said, stretching under the afternoon wash of my attic Velux, phone greasy on my cheek. ‘I guess I decided all that when I wrote the essays.’
‘I mean, have you thought about your Instagram?’
The point she made to me, quite rightly, was that I was making a shift: from personal sharing, to public sharing. My self – or a version of it – was going to be available to people I didn’t know. How did I feel about that?