A Washington Post writer had a tweet this week wherein he said (paraphrasing here) that praise from a copy editor was the highest praise and from a publicist was the lowest. It started me thinking, because I disagree (I do that sometimes.).

I get what he means. Publicists are paid the big bucks (!) to hype and promote, by definition. Copy-editors are often obsessive-compulsive (by deifnition, almost!), detail-focused, and have no liaison to the market.

But that pair of truths gets only part of the way and misses an important point. It is because a publicist (or marketing person) spends his or her whole day thinking of ways to promote/sell/extol every book on the list, to one degree or another, that serious personal praise and support from them matters so much.

Think about it. Every morning you psyche yourself up to promote titles that, in your innermost being, you know are forgettable, interchangeable with others, even boring, not your thing, opposed to your own ethics or views. You still have to get on the phone or computer and do it. Find ways to hype. You can’t only do your job when you love a book.

So the flipside is, when you do love a book, when you think it deserves to be read, reviewed, discussed, awarded, that author is a gift to you, and you become a gift to him or her. The job can become a passion again. Your enthusiasm is real, your commitment when you talk to a reviews editor or magazine editor about a profile will be unfeigned and passionate – and that comes through. I have heard it too many times from the media side of the discussion. They can tell when someone means it. Actually, most of us can. Nothing helps a book or a writer as much as the fire of those discussing it. Nothing.

That applies to the publisher’s sales reps too. They are inundated with titles each seaosn that they have to ‘get out there’ to their bookstore accounts. It applies to those accounts, too, the buyers for independent bookstores or chains, or the managers and sales people at those stores. ‘Handselling’ books is still a real part of the process. A customer walks into a store and a salesperson they know says, ‘The new Kay is in! I love it. You have to read it.’

That’s another gift to a writer. And, if all goes well, to the customer who buys that book. Relationships get started that way.

So, with all respect to the view at the top here, that started me thinking, I’m not down with the idea of placing publicity or marketing at the bottom of the ‘value’ scale when they praise or love one of my books. I am moved and very happy when that happens. If the passion for the novel is real, it actually matters more, in the formal scheme of things, than the endorsement from a copy editor.

This doesn’t take into account whether the copy editor is someone whose taste and judgement matters personally to you (as is the case for me with Catherine Marjoribanks), nor does it factor ‘routine’ remarks of praise from the marketing people, the kind where you might feel they are saying what they have to say. If these elements are in the mix, then we are talking about something completely different: the individual judgement of a trusted person or the supportive mumbling that comes with the territory.

But, no, real enthusiasm for a book from publicity and marketing and sales? Priceless.

I spoke with Sandra in Production this morning and we set up our scheduled meeting to go over anything the proofreaders queried (as opposed to just correcting, as in a typo). But on the phone she told me that one of them had noted a particular word cropping up a fair bit, and wondered if I’d want to have a look.

The glories of the PDF age. I was able to search for it, note the pages, and this splendid proofer was entirely right. We can fall into vocabulary rhythms and over two years + of writing and revising might not catch ourselves repeating. But someone reading the book steadily and fast and with a necessarily obsessive word by word focus might spot these.

So spent an hour this morning addressing that. And no, before anyone asks, I won’t say what the word was (it was not ‘tangible’!) because you’d all become hyper-aware of it. I’m being good to you. But I’m also really grateful to the proofreader for the alert.

This next hour or so are actually a nervous time for me, irrationally. The book will be picked up any minute and couriered to the publisher across town. It is way too easy for an author to have ‘Homeland’ style nightmares of car accidents, or brazen daylight robberies by rival publishers or desperate readers (just.don’t.say.it.). Sandra has promised to call me as soon as it is in her hands.

Here’s a memory. First novel I ever wrote, never published, was drafted on the south coast of Crete, handwritten. Partway through the winter I woke up one morning with the sudden thought that if my room was ransacked and robbed, or there was a fire or anything, I had zero backup. I couldn’t work that day. Took the bus to the north side of the island to a town called Rethymnon and found a mom and pop shop with a single photocopy machine. I got a lot of change and made two copies, eventually gave one to a friend to keep in his room in my village, and mailed the other home immediately. But on the bus over the mountains north and walking through Rethymnon, that envelope with the manuscript stayed tightly clutched in both hands.

So I have a long tradition of worrying about the fate of the only finished copy of any book.

Alec, one of the coordinators of brightweavings.com asked and I can confirm that the launch on April 4 will absolutely be open and free of charge. Sometimes events have a fee, at author festivals, or when a bookstore has to rent a space because they expect more people than the store can hold, but this one won’t.

Oh. There will be good UK news very soon. They are doing a press release. I’ll wait for that. And a new, unexpected foreign rights offer. Still being finalized as to terms, so I’ll tease with that only, for now. But I love new, small markets. It says something really affirming about books and human nature if people in so many different cultures want to read something we write.

I just said over on Twitter that readers (and publishers) can make it hard to be properly irritable. I may need something like a hockey lockout or no Yankee 3rd baseman to regain duly dour mien.

In a nutshell, the Penguin Canada team knew exactly what they were doing – they just didn’t believe we would do it so well, or that readers would be that responsive. I suppose I could claim ‘Author Wins Stunning Victory!’ because it took just ver 25 hours for the 500 Shares to land over on Penguin Canada’s Facebook page and unlock the next instalment of River of Stars.

But it would be churlish of me. This was a blending of supportive, generous readers, and publishers knowing how to alert them online that something was happening. So I can’t claim a win for the amazingly quick unlock (remember the ‘war’: the marketing team knew they’d get interest but wanted it to run through weekend, into Monday or so, and I was teasing about wanting it hard and fast) . It is their savvy, and readers’ interest that caused this to just explode this afternoon. How to stay focused on curmudgeonitude?

Well, really, who is going to play 3rd base, dammit?

We’re all touched and pleased. Penguin Canada decided that the enthusiasm deserved a response, and they have just unlocked all of chapter 2, instead of staging a third unlock/reveal … and I am completely onside with that. I think it is great.

Next step, because without it none of this means anything, is for readers to decide if they like what they see. As I mentioned before, I am completely down with the idea that many will want to wait till spring and read/consume/devour/skim/inhale/flick through the book then. Others like a small taste of what is coming, and there are a lot of people who will have never read me, or not for years, and who might be inclined to see what River is like before they commit. That’s a part of what this is all about.

When Penguin approached me with this, I suggested limiting it just two chapters, because – as I mentioned a few days back – each of the first two introduces one of the main figures, and does so (in parallel, but widely separated) when they are quite young. The two opening chapters make for a tidy introduction to some of what will be at stake while not giving away where the plot will go. And they have a different structure from some of my other beginnings.

As it happens, my ‘reading passage’ is different this time around. I’ll try to remember to write a bit about that here (the whole process of public readings interests me).

But for now, back to proofreading. Due Monday, and I’ll make it. As always, I am still making tiny trims, comma cuts, single word changes. I will owe Sandra Tooze in Production a latte or Sidecar or something, this does mean extra work for her and her team. But I have to do it. I always do.When I deliver Monday that’s it.

I really want to say that proofreading is therefore my last kick at the cat, but after the cat-on-chair photo of a while back here, I have terrible feeling someone would decide … well, you know.

There will not be seven veils in this dance. There will be three (3). The second is coming. It follows the first (1st) and precedes the third (3rd). Just to be clear on all of this social media mystery theatre.

I’m still fascinated by the whole process, still sorting out my own responses to it. Here’s an example. I was (as I said last post) really happy and touched by how quickly (and by how much) readers blew past the 150 Facebook Shares to unlock chapter one. (Chapter one introduces Ren Daiyan, one of the two main protagonists in River of Stars, chapter two will introduce the woman who is the second central figure.)

But the publishers, ironically (to me), were wishing they’d set the bar higher so it would take time. I get what they mean (after it was explained to the naive author here). If it becomes ‘blink and it is unlocked’ they have no time to discuss it, tweet it, monitor. It is … up and it is over. So they tell me … to almost-quote Jaws, ‘We’re gonna need a bigger number.’

Because I am a self-confident sort of fellow I am prepared to be out there with jokes along the lines of ‘Guy wanted it to be fast, but the others wanted it to last longer.’ I’m safe. Nancy Huston already won the Bad Sex Writing Prize yesterday!

But, joking aside, I remain intrigued by exercises like this. I’m fine with a chapter or two being released (we are splitting chapter 2 midway with a good ‘curtain’, it is a very long chapter – I do that sometimes). I discussed it last post, how old the tradition is of serialized chapters from novels. What is new, where the changing culture and tech come in, is this empowering or enlisting of readers in the process. The intersection of social media and the book world.

The covers are up on Amazon.com and .ca and on Indigo and Barnes&Noble, which is nice. Won’t be anything new for those reading this … you can just look at the top of the Journal, but I like seeing them out there, adds an element of the tangible to the book. (There was a major riff on ‘tangible’ in the journal for Under Heaven because I used the word 3-4 times and then noticed I’d done that, and promised something – I forget what – if I used it again.)

The Canadian and American covers will be identical in look, though will feature different quotes. That is normal in the industry. All countries showcase major quotes form their own markets, which makes sense. Canada will use the Globe and Mail, the American edition will use the Washington Post. Not sure yet which quotes (one or two, usually) will go on the back of each.

Back to proofreading, the wild, ecstatic joys thereof. About 125 pages to go. But have to read slowly, or you miss things.

I did promise something new this week. Have a look at

https://www.facebook.com/PenguinCanada?ref=ts&fref=ts

As of today, my two North American publishers are offering an early look at the beginning of River of Stars. They are making it a bit of a game (why not, they said) so chapter 1 will be ‘unlocked’ once 150 people ‘Share’ their cutesy locked cover image on Facebook.

If this goes smoothly then, yes, the plan is to unlock chapter 2 at some level of sharing, and likely in two parts (it is a long chapter).

I wasn’t so much arm-twisted as skillfully cajoled this time. It is kind of interesting (I think): I do a book every three years or so, and the market changes a lot in that time. Chapter reveals are becoming more normal, though I am told this particular process is a bit newer, just for the fun part, I guess. In addition, as pre-orders become easier at the major online booksellers (with, I really hope, good discounts for buyers) that’s another factor.

They originally wanted three chapters. I am drawing the line. (No, do not ‘share’ arm-twisting, OR cajoling.) As it happens, chapter 1 introduces one of the major protagonists, and chapter 2 introduces another so together the two chapters do a nice stage-setting job. Chapter 3 starts to complicate that. (As I tend to, I guess.)

And, not incidentally, for all those who prefer to wait and read the whole thing in what I (and Mrs Malaprop) like to call one swell foop … don’t peek! I get that! But I also know, over the years, that many people do like an advance taste, like the small spoons at an ice cream parlour.

So if you want to taste River of Stars, and meet Daiyan, and then Shan, when they are young … they are there. Or will be when unlocked. Enjoy.

I am trying not to be a tease (he says, teasing). There will be some real announcements, one as early as next week, but at this point everything is about coordinating and I need to let my various publishers do their thing.

I’m about halfway through the proofreading. Have spotted only 6-8 straight typos, or missing commas etc, but I am guilty of my usual transgression: am cutting on average about 3-5 words a page. Simple trims. I am very aware I am making work for the production people … depending on how a paragraph ends, dropping one or two words can alter the page breaks. I do feel contrite (see I am even noting that here!) but I also know these slight, invisible trims make me happier.

Italics are dying en masse.

New York tomorrow. A long day, straight from airport into four separate meetings, then more on Friday. This is the US equivalent of the meetings I had here last week and on Monday of this week.

Oh. I think I can say this: the worldwide launch event for River of Stars looks like it is confirmed: will be here in Toronto on April 4th. Details, as always, to follow.

I’m proofreading, if the header didn’t give that away. For reasons discussed earlier (production department joined marketing department in having their way with me) this is the first time I’ve seen River of Stars on the page, as opposed to on screen. I know that some readers will never not see it on a screen (or perhaps hear it as an audio book) but it makes a difference for me.

I know I’ve said it before: italics are louder on the page than they are in pixels. I delete many of them as I go through this time. I need to force myself to slow down, too, read for typos, not making last-chance edits. I am very happy two others are proofing (both professionals) and one friend has volunteered to do a read, as well. So far I’ve only caught a handful of punctuation errors and a few bad choices as to stretching or compressing words to make a line-break work.

Another meeting at Penguin here Monday afternoon, as to which I cannot (yet) speak or write. Then two days of meetings in NY at end of week, publishers, marketing/pr team, agents (including foreign rights). I’ll get to a gallery or two as a NY perk.

BTW, I’ve been sent a PDF of the ARC cover (fyi!). It looks terrific. I’ll check with Penguin as to whether I can post it here. Everything of that sort now involves coordination among several people in different locations (and the UK is about to come on board). I’ve always said these Journals are very much about looping readers in to how books get made and marketed and sold, and I have to say that the game is changing very fast. That includes all publishrs trying to organize releases and reveals together. Even in the three years since Under Heaven everything has altered. The online dimension was present then, and increasingly significant. Now it is a huge component of the process, for just about any book.

Back to proofing. Pass the italics excising knife.

Really good meeting today at Penguin Canada with Nicole Winstanley and the marketing team, headed by the Tag-team Wrestlers. (Beth and Charidy are easy to tell apart, one loves soccer and the other loves musicals. Since I like both, they manipulate me easily.)

Beth showed up with a 7-item agenda and rolled through it.  A couple of them surprised me. A few elements are going to start soon, but I shouldn’t do more than tease (here’s me, teasing) for yet.Seriously, at this stage they have some clear ideas as to timing and sequence, and I wouldn’t want to mess that up. A book does best when editorial, marketing, pubicity and sales all see it as their baby, too.

We will do, all going well, one of my favourite small things: a charity auction of the first book off the press. We usually use a literacy charity, and it is a fun process to watch. The same man has won the bidding for the last three auctions.

Tour was discussed, spring author festival gigs (and fall as well), the launch night here in Toronto (even which bookseller to have selling books). The marketing trio really wanted the ARCs to go to press immediately, as in today, since the monthly magazines are already doing their April issues, and they need to read it.

I came home and did the good soldier thing, finished my fast scroll through the typeset ARC, wrestling it into submission (I freely admit I used ‘wrestling’ here purely for the echo of headline and opening paragraph). Only one killer error (a poem set with all words jumbled together, no spacing at all, and as prose). I asked the production editor on the phone when I called it in, ‘How did that happen?’ A pause. ‘I have no idea.’ It was fixed. It will be printed asap. Nicole said these will be the most handsome galleys they’ve ever done, which is obviously nice. She sees it as emphasizing book-as-artifact, which suits the setting and story.

I am doing the same thing in NY next week, another set of meetings there.

There’s more in the works, I’ll save some for later. I’ll also have a U.K. announcement here soon. Again waiting on others.

Anyone see that News Corp (HarperCollins) is in discussions with Simon and Schuster? That was always going to happen once Random Penguin was done. Twitter has a few of us playing the name game (how can one resist?) One guy is offering a recipe for a Simon Collins (usual Tom Collins ingredients + agent and author tears). I think the gamesmanship involved just about demands SimHarper as a name. Gamers, get in the comments thread and tell me you laughed!

Home from a genuinely rewarding weekend in Montreal at their Salon du Livre, as guest of my Quebec publisher, Alire. The Salon can actually restore, however briefly, some optimism about the book world. 120,000 people over 4 days or so, paying to crowd their way in to see … nothing but books, publishers, and authors signing at booths like people in a revolving door. I was a revolver. Four sessions over Saturday and Sunday.

As Alire’s only translated Anglophone author, I am not the star attraction at their booth for a French-langage fair. But my time there, among other feelings induced, reminded me how lucky I am (how lucky all English-language writers are) as too the language in which we write and sell. I always say I feel fortunate to be able to write the books I want to write, at the speed that lets me research and polish them, but a trip like this reminds me that the good fortune includes my principal language of publicatuon.

Alire’s star is a writer named Patrick Sénécal. He sells hugely in Quebec, one of the top 3 in the province, had lines starting for each of his four sessions long before he arrived. But his work is not translated into English, it is not even in France … because the French have an extremely narrow view of Quebec writers. Patrick does Stephen King-like horror-thrillers, and Louise and Jean of Alire are appalled that he hasn’t achieved a wider breakout. It is tough to be a Quebec novelist, and I was genuinely happy to see the crowds honouring and responding to their own.

They were awfully good to me, too. There’s ongoing political language tension in Quebec, the nootious Bill 101, restricting the use of English on signs, new questions about the teaching of Engloish in schools … but I was touched and humbled by how generous every single reader who came up for a signature was. My spoken French is clumsy, ungrammatical, and appallingly accented … and without exception people shifted into English for me, and many then apologized for their English. I kept pointing out that they were idulging me, shifting into my language, that I was the one who needed to apologize.

Many amusing moments, but here’s one: there was a pair of readers, about half an hour apart on Sunday. Each reported at the signing table that I was their ‘2nd favourite writer’. When asked (how do you not ask?) one said Tolkien was his #1, the other actually blushed, looked away, didn’t answer. I will admit that a part of me wondered if 50 Shades had me beaten out with her (so to speak). Um, that’s an off the cuff joke, of course.

I was also touched by how many had read all of my books (and some brought all to be signed). I have been associated with Jean Pettigrew and Louise Alain in Quebec for twenty years now. This is a friendship and a really happy publishing relationship.

And yes, yes, I know … this is further eroding the curmudgeon image. Is it a rescue if I point out that Winokur’s very funny The Portable Curmudgeon is one of my bedside books?

Didn’t think so.

The late comedian George Burns did a series of routines of a Farewell Tour, then The Next Farewell Tour, then The Last Farewell Tour …

I feel that way sometimes when thinking about being finished with a novel. There are so many stages of being ‘done’ it can actually be funny. So, Wednesday I wrapped my review of the copy edited manuscript, did my photo, drank my Springbank, went off to a scotch tasting night with friends (pure coincidence, that timing), and woke up yesterday to a crazy busy day!

It was mostly the map. Martin and I must have exchanged a dozen emails each way and half a dozen phone calls to sort the fiddly things that make these things work. Mostly to do with where the text is specific about something. If a stream is described as visible from a farmhouse, the map can’t have it too far away, even knowing that people allow cartographic license (I just made that up) in the interest of legibility. If someone walks east from a set point and crosses a river to get to a town, that town needed to move east on the map – and I needed to be alert enough to catch it – after several encounters the night before with a superlative 21 year old Glengoyne.

Then Martin had to do some nimble footwork (well, fingerwork) to stretch the map a bit (too much and words look weird) to be more rectangular, as it is a two-page spread in the book. (It may actually go on the endpapers this time. I like that effect, easier to turn to it, and a little larger, too. Though that only works for the hardcover, of course.)

Then I received by email from Penguin the ‘interior design’ sample pages. These were fine (identical to Under Heaven, which I liked in design terms) with one exception. Ready for more dingbat discussion? Latecomers will perhaps have forgotten, or never known, more likely, that ‘dingbats’ are the small section dividers (like asterisks, but classier) and can also be large Part 1, Part 2 dividers, as decoration. For Under Heaven the larger ones were a horse Martin designed, and that suited the book very well.

Can’t use that this time, and I disliked the one proposed in the material sent to me (too modern). So the ARCs (advance reading copies) will either just say Part 1, Part 2, with no decoration, while we figure it out for the actual book, or they may have something since we went into overdrive yesterday looking at options. To be determined today. I made calls to the Royal Ontario Museum, to see about access to a particular image… if that happens it’ll be fun.

I also wrapped the Acknowledgements. I find these tricky, and said so in them this time. On the one hand, I want to mentionall the books I found even slightly useful. On the other hand, I read 100+ texts and about 40-50 articles. Would be ridiculous! (And not everything read is equally useful, obviously.) So it requires focus and selectivity. People are easier (hmm, what curmudgeon has ever said that?).

Then a last close look at the Character List (this was all ‘last look’ country as River of Stars will be made into ARCs based on this week’s work!). I was sorely tempted for awhile not to have one. I know, I know, people like these. But I had a weird sense that since the number of characters is really not so huge, that it might look more daunting to see all the names on two pages at the front, than it really is as they emerge organically through the story. Still, as Catherine pointed out when we emailed on this, people read books in widely different ways … someone might set it down for a week to deal with life or something (shocking, I know) and a reminder at the front does help. So, it is in there.

But, being in there, it compels some decisions. I elected to identify everyone by their role as they first appear. Anything else spoils plot hooks. I mean, if we meet Mary as a law student, and she becomes a congresswoman, then President … I think you get it. I’ll describe her as Mary, a student at Georgetown Law…

Then there were emails and phone calls relating to tomorrow’s trip to the Salon du Livre in Montreal, then more concerning an online marketing idea that will launch soon. (That’s a tease, I know.)

And next week I get the book back, typeset, and three of us proofread that in about a week. (Um, thanks, no volunteers needed. They have it covered!)

The true shame is that we finished off that Glengoyne … I could use it. First time any one bottle has been polished off at our group. Usually the host gets 1/3 of a bottle or so to put in his liquor cabinet. Not this one.