Apologies for the slightly negative angle on the title for this post! But as a seasoned published author, I feel duty bound to reassure any debuts out there that they are not alone in finding publication week a little bit, well, tough.

The thing about publication week is that it’s nothing like any other week in the life of an author. We are so used to being alone with just our thoughts and our imaginary friends for company, and then suddenly we’re thrown out into the big wide world and expected to be all jazz hands and flashy smiles and do ridiculous things like sum up our entire book in a sentence and convincingly talk about its themes and remember our characters’ names and all kinds of other CRAZY things.

My first ever publication day! Flowers from my publisher :)

It can all feel a bit… hard. Impossible. Draining.

Awful?

Also a caveat – I’m calling it ‘publication week’ but really it’s more like a fortnight of hell right in the middle when Everything Is Happening, with a few weeks of purgatory either side.

So how do you cope with it all? Here’s the best advice I can give you…

Accept that all the feelings you have are normal

OK, so I am willing to bet that publication week will come at you like a runaway train full of Big Feelings that you really weren’t expecting.

I hate the rollercoaster analogy because it’s so overused but it’s absolutely spot on. It’s completely normal to find publication week an explosion of all different kinds of emotion: from euphoria to disappointment to frustration to plain old exhaustion.

So just remember, whatever feelings you’re feeling during publication week, they are all completely and utterly normal.

You are normal. There’s nothing wrong with you and you’re not broken.

“I think the sheer exhaustion of publication week is one of the things that every author, no matter how chilled out they usually are, experiences”

There are so many demands on your time during the week – you might be preparing for a launch party, you’re undoubtedly doing some publicity or events, visiting bookshops to see copies on the shelves, meeting up with your editor and agent to celebrate, and you’ll be inundated with notifications on social media.

And all the while you’re probably also on tenterhooks waiting to hear how your book has sold.

It’s a lot to cope with!

Of course, you might love all this – it’s certainly an adrenalin rush and I do know some authors who’ve mastered the art of enjoying their publication week (weirdos).

But if you’re a more typical introverted author, who’s used to spending most of your time alone in your room with only your laptop for company, it can feel like you’ve been plonked in the middle of a hurricane.

So my biggest tip here? Be kind to yourself. It doesn’t matter what those feelings are.

Happy? Normal. Great, embrace it.

Exhausted? Normal. Take a nap. Cancel anything you don’t have to do.

Hysterical? Normal. Reassure yourself that this will end at some point and your sanity will be restored. Apologise to all your loved ones.

Shot with anxiety? Normal. I promise there’s a glorious time in the not-too-distant future when your anxiety will have dissipated and you’ll remember why you decided to pursue this godawful, ridiculous career.

Whatever you are feeling, it’s all totally normal. Don’t beat yourself up. Go with it, and remember it’ll all be over soon.

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Don’t obsess about your sales figures

OK, I’m not completely naïve. I know that this is like asking you not to care about your bad reviews. But take it from someone who has published six novels and counting… your launch week sales figures are not the be-all and end-all.

Perhaps you found out a few weeks before publication that your book wasn’t going to be stocked in as many stores as you’d hoped. Perhaps it didn’t even get into any shops. It’s OK. It doesn’t mean the book is dead in the water and it doesn’t mean your career is over.

My third novel, The Perfect Father, didn’t get any retail slots. No supermarkets, no WHSmiths, no Waterstones… I was so depressed and disheartened. I really thought that I was going to have to give up.

But then my publishers switched strategy to focus on the ebook. And somehow, despite all the odds, a few months after publication, it took off – making its way into the top 100 on Kindle in both the UK and the US and staying there for nearly two months. It also hit the USA Today bestseller chart.

To date, it’s sold more than 70,000 copies and it’s the only one of my books to have earned out its advance in the UK. It’s done really well in audio. And yet, it didn’t get stocked in a single physical store.

There’s always hope for your books to take off as long as they’re in print. I know so many authors who didn’t break out until their third, fourth or even ninth book.

So please don’t give up on your book if the initial sales figures are not what you’d hoped for. Publishing is an unpredictable and infuriating business and you just never know what’s around the corner.

Lean on your author friends

This is my number one tip for coping with just about anything the author life throws at you.

Get yourself a good, solid group of author friends and make the most of them at every opportunity, but no more so than during publication week.

After all, they are the only ones who truly know how insane you feel. It’s really impossible for anyone outside the business to understand just what it’s like – it’s the culmination of a dream, but then there’s such a huge weight of expectation on it that it feels more like a nightmare.

I give all my author friends carte blanche to whinge with impunity during publication week. I’m there to listen and tell them ‘this too shall pass’ on repeat.

Sometimes all you need is a kind and patient ear, and for someone to truly understand when you complain. Knowing how hard it is to get a book published, authors often feel bad for moaning about it, but other authors will totally get and validate your feelings, so make the most of them.

If you don’t know any other authors, ask your agent or editor if they can pair you up with someone – most authors are more than happy to make more author friends!

Do whatever you want to on publication day

Like I said, I’ve published six novels and it was only on novel number five that I finally mastered the art of publication day itself.

With my other books, I felt forced to ‘celebrate’ the day somehow, by going to lunch with friends, or my partner, or my agent and editor.

But actually, I realised that publication day is often so hectic (thanks to social media among other things), that going out for lunch was just one more thing to add to the day that I didn’t really need.

And so on my last publication day I did something quite radical – I spent the whole day alone!

Well, not completely alone, because I booked a facial in for the afternoon. But my other half was away working, my daughter was at school and I kept the whole day clear from other commitments so that I could literally just chill.

I spent a few hours on social media in the morning thanking people for their kind messages and retweeting reviews on Twitter, then I went for a long walk by myself along the river, and then for the facial in the afternoon and didn’t say a word to the beautician about it.

I did not drive round to all my local supermarkets to see if my book was on the shelves yet. I did not spend the day refreshing my email account to see if I had any news from my editor. I didn’t hold a drunken Zoom party with any of my friends.

I went to pick my daughter up from school at 4 and we came home and had dinner together. I didn’t open champagne or eat cake or do ANYTHING special.

And it was the best publication day I’d ever had.

Of course your ‘best publication day’ might look quite different from mine. So you do you. Whatever you want to do on the day is absolutely fine. Just don’t feel pressured into doing anything that you don’t want to.

It’s YOUR day, celebrate it how you want to.

Try to take a moment to congratulate yourself

Look, I’m the absolute worst at this so I feel a bit hypocritical even writing it down.

So perhaps just consider this a reminder to myself!

‘There’s a crazy lady taking selfies with the books in aisle 3’

The thing is – once you’ve been offered your book deal, you’ve achieved Your Dream. And what happens when you achieve your dream? You get a new dream. The goal posts shift. Suddenly it’s not enough to have a book deal. Now you want to be a lead title. And how come you didn’t get a hardback?

When you strive for something for so long and then achieve it, it leaves a hole that your cruel writerly brain has to fill. Don’t worry, just know that every author experiences this. Every author wants more. It’s what keeps us writing (and made us able to write a book in the first place).

Even so, try to take a few moments during the craziness of publication to really sit back and congratulate yourself. What you’ve achieved is really so amazing – so few people ever complete a novel, let alone have one published – so do try to take a moment to remember this, and look back on how far you’ve come.

I also strongly recommend carving out some time for self-care. Whatever relaxes you, try to schedule it in at some point during the publication week, because it’s so easy to get burnt out.

Perhaps exercise works for you. Or having a facial like I did. Or even a trip to the cinema (one of my favourite activities because it’s the only place where you’re really forced to switch off).

Whatever helps you wind down, try to carve out some time during publication week for it. I think it’s hard to appreciate just how exhausting the publicity merry-go-round can be, and you’ll feel so much better if you take some time to rest in between all the promotion.

And the weirdest thing about publication week?

After a few weeks, when the madness has died down, and no one’s messaging you to congratulate you anymore, you might find that you actually miss it…