And we have a cover at last.
Uncovered
Defending Jacob
Public Writer, Private Writer
Preparations continue for this winter’s publication of Defending Jacob. The cover art is locked in (sneak preview soon). Yesterday I spent six hours being photographed on Boston street corners in various brooding writerly poses. This morning comes news that the book has sold in China, making it the rare product that we export to them. (Hang on, America, just a few more books and I’ll get this darn trade deficit turned around.)
But the strangest bit, to me, is that I will soon go off on a “pre-publication tour.” In September and October, I will visit regional trade shows for independent booksellers in New England, Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, southern California (Long Beach) and northern California (San Francisco). I am delighted to do this, of course. Author tours, pre- or post-publication, are rare today. Not penny-on-the-sidewalk rare — unicorn rare. So I’m very grateful to my publisher for putting increasingly scarce resources behind my book.
At the same time, I can’t help thinking that I am a hell of a lot less interesting in person than I am in my books. In person, I am a perfectly pleasant guy, I suppose, but no author can replicate the intensity and intimacy of a good reading experience. Most authors I’ve met? Meh, the book was better. That’s the nature of reading, which requires the reader to conjure the author’s voice out of squiggles on the page. Inevitably the voice you, the reader, create in your head has a special quality. It seems to come from inside you, it seems to originate in your own thoughts. A good book hijacks the inner voice that burbles constantly in every reader’s head. That’s what makes the medium so powerful: the story takes place inside the reader’s consciousness. No wonder the author’s voice seems so familiar and authoritative.
The author’s voice is not my real, conversational voice, of course. When you read my books, you hear only my most articulate, well-crafted sentences. My best and most refined self. That’s what good writing is. The rest — the clumsy phrases, the not-quite-right words or metaphors, all the inarticulate flubs that characterize ordinary speech — is edited out. Even my realistic dialogue is not quite real, the quotation marks notwithstanding. It is shaped, polished, crafted, improved. Every stammer and stumble is calculated for its precise effect. It is the way you would talk if you had a writer scripting your life. (How great would that be?)
Surely readers know all this, but they crave the writer’s personal presence anyway. They want to meet the awkward, bashful, inarticulate writer behind the exalted, hyper-articulate authorial voice they’ve heard in their heads. That’s why there are bookstore readings and author tours and Oprah (well, there used to be Oprah).
[Read more…] about Public Writer, Private WriterPromoting Jacob
The publicity onslaught continues! Random House has printed a second round of advance editions, this one for independent booksellers, and again it’s a doozy. The cover is below.
Obviously this is incredibly flattering. It is not every day that the publisher herself personally goes to the mat for any novel, let alone endorsing one in such glowing terms. I am deeply grateful. Thank you, Libby!
It is odd to read such enthusiastic praise while I am in the early, floundering, confidence-crushing stages of my new book. Even now, with three decent novels under my belt, I feel like an absolute beginner every time I start a new one. I think that will always be true for me. Novel-writing will always be an uphill struggle. It can’t be mastered. That is especially clear now, at the start, when the story hasn’t revealed itself yet. Everything I learned writing the last book does not help much when I sit down to write the next one. So this endorsement comes at a welcome moment. After all, Defending Jacob was a struggle, too. It is helpful to remember that.
Win an advance copy of “Defending Jacob”
For the next couple of weeks, you can win an advance copy of Defending Jacob. These pre-publication editions are actually pretty rare. Intended for reviewers and booksellers, Random House is printing fewer of them than they used to, as all publishers are these days. I was only able to wheedle a few of them out of my editor. I’ll be giving away four to people who are on my mailing list. Details are here.
And while I’m openly shilling for my books, a little reminder: if you haven’t “liked” my Facebook fan page, please do. I’d love to have all these social-media channels ready when the book comes out next winter. The only way to promote a book is word of mouth, and this is what word of mouth looks like now.
Pre-first edition
A sneak peek at the cover for an advance promo copy — an ARE, or advance review edition, in Random House parlance — of my new novel. This is how buzz is built (we hope).
Defending Jacob update
We received a couple of very nice blurbs this week. I particularly loved this one from Lee Child:
Waiting for a new Landay novel is like waiting for a guy from Cremona to build a violin: anxious but worth it. Defending Jacob is smart, sophisticated — and suspenseful on more levels than one.
At the moment I am struggling mightily to get my next book started. I feel more like a guy from Hackensack building a ukelele. So thank you, Lee.
Author Stephen White also sent along this endorsement:
Nuanced understanding of the psychology of carefully considered, layered characters makes Defending Jacob more than a terrific legal thrill ride with courtroom scenes that explode off the page. William Landay’s latest is a heartfelt exploration of the unanticipated complications of loyalty among old friends, and an unflinching appraisal of the darkest, most poignant consequences of the love that binds, and blinds, families. Defending Jacob is one of those rare books that calls for contemplation and insight along with every breathtaking surprise. Read it.
I am grateful to both Lee and Stephen. The generosity of established authors never ceases to amaze me. It’s not just the blurbs, which I suppose you could write off as self-interested logrolling. It’s also the warmth and respect these guys consistently show to unknowns like me at the various conferences and events that authors are subjected to. When you are are trying to break in, it is hard to fight off petty jealousy and resentment. Publishing seems to be a zero-sum game: a finite number of books will be sold each year, therefore one writer’s gain is another’s loss. It just isn’t true. The way the best authors constantly help out the “competition” is the proof. In any event, I’ve compiled all the blurbs for Defending Jacob here, if you’re interested.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes my publisher continues the buzz-building effort. Ballantine-Bantam-Dell will be printing early galleys — advance copies, basically — to hand out at BookExpo America, an important publishing-industry conference in New York in May. In fact, Defending Jacob is the only Spring 2010 title that BBD will be printing early galleys for, which is wonderful news except for what it suggests about the reduced resources across the industry for publicizing new books.
The early galleys will also include a call to action to drive people to “like” my Facebook fan page. Facebook could be an important channel for me to reach new readers, so if you haven’t already — not to get all Sally Field on you — like me.
Blurbathon
More blurbs continue to roll in for Defending Jacob. I won’t reprint them all here. I hate to turn this blog into an endless infomercial for my books. But if you’re curious, I put together a page to gather up the advance praise — read: blurbs — for the book. My sincere thanks to the authors who chimed in recently, Chevy Stevens, Stephen Frey and John Lutz, as well as the earlier contributors, Phillip Margolin, Lisa Gardner and Nicholas Sparks.
Blurbing Jacob
We have received a few early blurbs for Defending Jacob and they’re doozies.
“In Defending Jacob, William Landay makes bold use of his genuine storytelling gift, his amazing ability to craft believable dialogue, and above all, an extraordinary understanding of what it means to be a husband and father to present us with the unforgettable tale of an ordinary marriage and family in crisis. In his hands, the tender, passionate union of Laurie and Andrew Barber — of anyone’s marriage, by implication — is tested by the notion that parenting is never quite what one imagines it to be. On the surface, this novel reads like a first-rate thriller, but at its heart, it’s a love story. It’s the story of a man who adores his wife and child, but more than that, it’s a novel that describes the fine edge between love and madness, and the lies we sometimes tell ourselves. Landay has proven himself to be an extraordinary writer, and Defending Jacob is an amazing novel. Do yourself a favor and read it. It’s that good.” — Nicholas Sparks
“William Landay has hit a home run. Defending Jacob is a stunning novel that will be compared to classic courtroom thrillers like Presumed Innocent and Anatomy of a Murder.” — Phillip Margolin
“A powerful portrayal of a family, a crime and a community. Defending Jacob compels you to flip frantically through the pages, desperate to know what will happen next, then leaves you gasping breathlessly at each shocking revelation. A page-turner with a bite … and that’s before you get to the end.” — Lisa Gardner
All three are perennial New York Times bestsellers. Actually, in the case of Nicholas Sparks, that is an understatement. He is a phenomenon, one of the best-selling authors out there. He is to the Times bestseller list what Godzilla is to Tokyo. Sparks rarely blurbs at all, let alone with this sort of enthusiasm. And because he writes in a very different genre, romance, his endorsement could introduce my books to a much wider readership — readers who would not ordinarily consider a “crime novel.” So I am very excited at the news, and I sincerely thank all three authors. Still, is it wrong to be greedy for just one or two more?