Well, I will tell you what: remembering to blog (is that still a word) here has not been at the top of ye olde “to do” list, but maybe I’ll be better about it next year, and you can see what I’m up to with Michael Taeckens and Whitney Peeling over at BroadsidePR. Right now though I am over the moon to announce my projects for the first half of 2021:

Jen Silverman‘s debut novel, We Play Ourselves – Random House, Feb 9 – about a NYC playwright involved in a humiliating (but fabulous for readers) public scandal who flees to LA. There she meets an ambitious/monstrous filmmaker and starts work on a documentary tracking a group of young girls in a female fight club. But what it’s really about? Female rage – especially repressed female rage, queerness, crushes, and figuring out how far is too far to go for success/fame/glory. You’ll read it quickly and it will stick. Jen Silverman writes magnificently developed characters to love, hate, cringe for, cry about, laugh with – they just get up and run all over her pages. ALA Booklist’s starred review says We Play Ourselves is “A beautifully realized novel about choice, ambition, and revelation…This memorable novel deserves a standing ovation.”

Li Juan’s first major publication in English, Winter Pasture: One Woman’s Journey with China’s Kazakh Herders – Astra House, Feb. 23 – Since it was first published, Winter Pasture has been critically acclaimed around the world, winning the 2011 People’s Literature Award, and has long been a bestseller in China. Astra House is launching their imprint with this extraordinary, rare, and beautifully told account of the annual migration of Kazakh herders by one of China’s most important and acclaimed writers. Rachel Friedman (author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost) says, “Near the end of Winter Pasture Li Juan asks herself what it means to be “a passerby” in the lives of others. Her intimate depiction of a family of Kazakh herders is itself an answer to that complicated travel writer question: to connect the reader with people and stories she likely otherwise would never encounter.  In doing so, Li Juan is an empathetic, interrogative, and entertaining chronicler. She offers up a fascinating portrait of life in one of the world’s most remote corners.”

Imbolo Mbue‘s second novel, How Beautiful We Were – Random House, March 9 – African villagers rise up to fight against an American oil company that is destroying their land and killing their children, featuring a magnificent young heroine readers will remember forever. You might’ve read Imbolo’s debut novel, Behold the Dreamers – international bestseller, Oprah pick, on every single “best of the year” list. I love what Kirkus said about How Beautiful We Were in their starred review: “Among the many virtues of Mbue’s novel is the way it uses an ecological nightmare to frame a vivid and stirring picture of human beings’ asserting their value to the world, whether the world cares about them or not. One can both grieve for Kosawa and be inspired by its determined fight for life.”

Laura Lindstedt‘s US debut novel, My Friend Natalia – WW Norton/Liveright, March 23 – a linguistic sexual thriller (you heard me) narrated by an unnamed, ungendered therapist and their patient, Natalia, who arrives seeking help saying she cannot stop thinking about sex. The story becomes a gripping examination of the power dynamics that are present, but not often talked about, in therapy and sexuality. Think Nabokov meets Anais Nin…in Helsinki. I’ve done work over the last few years for FILI, Finnish Literature Exchange, and met Laura through them. On Feb 29, 2020, a date, (right before Covid hit the US), that I refer to as “the last good time” – we had a celebration of Finnish writers in NYC with FILI, the New York literary community, and a ton of Finnish ex-pats. Laura gave a magnificent reading at McNally Jackson’s South Seaport store – it was an absolutely fantastic night and Laura had the packed audience, and me, on the edge of our seats. The rights to My Friend Natalia have been sold in 13 territories – I expect Lindstedt World Domination ESPECIALLY here in the US.

Rebecca Donner‘s nonfiction debut, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler – Little, Brown, New Pub date! August 3, 2021 – I’ve known and admired Rebecca for years, ever since she was running the KGB Bar’s literary series in the early 2000s. But I didn’t know that when she was a teenager, her grandmother handed her a packet of letters and notes and said, “Someday you will write a book about this.” “This” is Rebecca’s great-great-aunt, Mildred Fish-Harnack, hailing from Milwaukee, she was the only American leader of the German Resistance in Berlin. All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days tells the little known, riveting story of Mildred, and also provides a rare vantage of the rise of fascism from a woman’s perspective. Rebecca fuses elements of biography, political thriller, and scholarly detective story to put readers right there on the streets of 1930s and 40s Berlin. Deeply researched and highly personal – Rebecca delivers a powerful, enthralling story to reconstruct the moral courage of an enigmatic woman, executed on Hitler’s direct orders and nearly erased by history: her great-great-aunt.

👉All these books are available for pre-order at your local independent bookstore or on bookshop.

When I was a bookseller in San Francisco, I would write up shelf talkers for books I particularly loved. For Cathleen Schine’s third novel, Rameau’s Niece, I wrote, “The perfect book for smart women who sometimes do stupid things.” Guess what readers in San Francisco love? We ended up selling around 700 copies, and when Cathleen came to the store she signed my book like this:
We stayed in touch over the years, and I am over the moon to be working on her new novel, her 11th!, The Grammarians, about two red-headed, word-obsessed identical twins and how sometimes you may not like your family so much, but you always love them. The reviews, I’m thrilled to say, have been rapturous. From Heller McAlpin’s rave on NPR, to the COVER of the New York Times Book Review, to the Associated Press review that called The Grammarians “captivating” and said it was, “written with the tender precision and clarity of a painting by Vermeer, had that 17th-century Dutchman portrayed scenes of middle-class Jewish life in mid- to late 20th-century New York.”

A VERMEER. Can you even?

And if you didn’t read Cathleen’s “By the Book” – you must. The whole thing is brilliant, but get to the part about who she’d invite to a literary dinner party. It’s here.

Go buy The Grammarians from your local independent bookseller, of course, and let me know what you think!

Mark the date! Pre-order from your favorite bookstore now! Susan Orlean’s THE LIBRARY BOOK will be published by Simon & Schuster on October 16.

If you went to BEA this year, you couldn’t miss the banner hanging in the Javits Center’s main hall.

I’m so happy to be helping S&S’s inimitable Anne Tate Pearce with publicity – advance copies have gone out to long lead media and Susan is headed to New Orleans this weekend to confab with librarians from across the country at the American Library Association Conference.

THE LIBRARY BOOK was announced in Entertainment Weekly and three advance quotes have just come in that are 💥💥💥

“This is a book only Susan Orlean could have written. Somehow she manages to transform the story of a library fire into the story of literacy, civil service, municipal infighting and vision, public spaces in an era of increasingly privatization and social isolation, the transformation of Los Angeles from small provincial hamlet to innovative colossus and model of civic engagement—and the central role libraries have always and will always play in the life and health of a bustling democracy. Beyond all that, like any good library, it’s bursting with incredible tales and characters. There could be no better book for the bookish.” —Dave Eggers

“Susan Orlean has long been one of our finest storytellers, and she proves it again with The Library Book. A beautifully written and richly reported account, it sheds new light on a thirty-year-old mystery—and, what’s more, offers a moving tribute to the invaluableness of libraries.”—David Grann

“After reading Susan Orlean’s The Library Book, I’m quite sure I’ll never look at libraries, or librarians, the same way again. This is classic Orlean—an exploration of a devastating fire becomes a journey through a world of infinite richness, populated with unexpected characters doing unexpected things, with unexpected passion.”—Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts, and Dead Wake

Keep checking Susan Orleans’ website and follow her on twitter @SusanOrlean for more information and especially details of her two-month-long book tour – which will start, of course!, at the Los Angeles Central Library on October 16. Media: If you need an advance copy or have any questions, just let me know kb (at) broadsidepr (dot) com.

What! It’s been 6 months since I’ve updated here. Aughhh. Okay. I go back and forth between admiring publicists who keep their websites updated and make timely social media posts, and wondering how they do it. There is so much to keep up with, in the book world, in the world world…and sometimes I take one look at twitter and want to jump a flight to a remote island.

Last October, instead of a remote island, I flew to the Frankfurt Book Fair. #nerd. Publicists don’t generally go, and more than a couple lit agents told me not to bother, but I’ve been in publishing so long and it’s the biggest book fair in the world, so thanks to dirt cheap airfare and insatiable curiosity, I went. And it was wonderful. First off, Frankfurt is cool. It is an easy city to navigate, full of friendly people, has a beautiful river, and a food hall that was heaven. Secondly, the fair gave me what I went hoping to find: a new perspective. The Frankfurt Book Fair is massive: around 300,000 people attend – with 7300 exhibitors from over 100 countries, (as a contrast: Book Expo America is attended by 22,000 people). It was great running into agents, authors and foreign rights agents I already knew, but equally great to walk the many, many, (many!), halls seeing so many people I didn’t know, all speaking passionately in different languages about something I love so much. I met authors who sell millions of copies in their countries but are (pretty much completely) unknown in the US. And wondered, not for the first time, why that is. It blows my mind that we, (a country of immigrants). don’t look as much to the literature of other countries as our own. If millions (and I mean millions) of people are reading, for instance, Guillaume Musso (a French author translated into 24+ languages), shouldn’t our literary media at least shine a light on him? It made me want to pick a few of the top selling authors of various countries and a) read them and b) just start pitching them. (As far as Francophone authors though, I think (I hope!) the US media is about to get on the bandwagon of Leila Slimani when her 2016 Prix Goncourt winning novel Chanson douce, comes out here next week as The Perfect Nanny. On va voir…). I appreciated that the emphasis at the Frankfurt Book Fair is laser-focussed on the author rather than, it seemed, on any individual book. At Frankfurt, exhibitor booths were adorned with author photos and their signatures, more than

From Slovenia. Do not tell me that Mojca Kumerdej doesn’t have the best author photo of all time.

book jackets, and it seemed like publishers took pride in their author’s entire career. And that celebration of The Author, as a publicist and as a reader, was a pleasure to see.

The Scandinavian hall

I knew there were a lot of Hachette imprints…but there are truly A Lot. 

Colson & Hanya. Note the author signatures on the wall behind the display.

Markus Dohle CEO Penguin Random House; Sir Salman Rushdie; Juergen Boos President & CEO of the Frankfurt Book Fair

Margaret Atwood was everywhere and awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade

Belgium = Tintin

Leïla Slimani

Readers.

Victoria Redel‘s new novel, BEFORE EVERYTHING, is about 5 old friends. They’ve known each other since grade school and are in their late fifties when one of them, the group’s shining star, has cancer that returns — she decides enough is enough and enters hospice. Does that make this book sound sad? It might be if it was a straight chronicling of a friend’s death, but as it is, I don’t know if I’ve ever read a novel so infused, like to the core infused, with love.

Victoria tells the story in short chapters (I mean, short. Some are a paragraph, some are only one sentence) to show how one woman’s life affects all the people around her. The result is kaleidoscopic so the stories layer on each other to produce a sort of Sensurround experience. You’ll probably cry at moments reading, but it’s a joy as the novel becomes a celebration of friendship that reminds you of the people you love in your own life. One BBC reviewer said that after reading BEFORE EVERYTHING she called her friends to have a glass of prosecco.

Of course BEFORE EVERYTHING has its roots in a true story. You can see Victoria’s piece about losing her best friend Nance in this month’s O Magazine. This piece is so good, so exactly full of the love I’m talking about, such a beautiful tribute to her friend and their friendship, that I’m posting it here to make sure you see it (go on read it, it’s short. And see more about Victoria at her website, here.)

The Epiphany That Helped One Woman Let Go of Her Grief.

For months after my best friend, Nance, passed away, I was a broken-down mess. Some weeks I couldn’t sleep, followed by weeks when I couldn’t pull myself from bed. Grief congested in me like the flu. Reading, my go-to solace, proved impossible; I’d idly turn pages without comprehension. I was exhausted, drained, as if cell by cell my body was learning to live without my best friend of more than 40 years. I didn’t want to learn. Nance had been the most alive person I’d known—funny and complicated, a loyal companion and a better mom. Going to work or the supermarket, I’d put forth a decent effort—under-eye concealer, matted hair brushed smooth, a pasted-on smile—but the world seemed sharply lit, too jarringly eager. I didn’t know whether I still belonged to that buzz of everyday life. Mostly, I chose to be alone.

Then one afternoon, slumped in an Adirondack chair next to a lake, I cracked up over one of the idiotic-to-anyone-else jokes that Nance and I had found hilarious. We’d had no shortage of them. This one was hatched during a grade school sleepover, when we’d drawn up an invitation that read “We’re having a party, and you’re not invited!” For hours we playacted sending it out, and then for years we whispered the mean-girl phrase to each other at inappropriate moments, to our uproarious delight.

I heard my laughter echo over the water; it startled me. It occurred to me that laughing—deep, stupid, belly-clutching laughter—was a truer expression of our friendship than the blanket of grief I’d been tangled in for months. I tipped my face toward the dappled light. For the first time since her death, Nance wasn’t lost to me. There she was in our endless goofy jokes. There she was in the simple, lazy drift of an afternoon—the glug of lake frogs, my bare feet on a wooden dock. Holding tight to grief, I now understood, was a betrayal. Being awake to delight had always been at the heart of our friendship, something we’d promised each other when we were girls: In fourth grade, we’d taken a blood-sister oath that included a vow to be up for all challenges and fun. I would stay true to our pact.

It was suddenly clear: This was the party, and I had a standing invitation. I jumped off the dock into the cold water. Nance would have wondered what took me so long.

Read more:

http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/victoria-redel-letting-go-of-grief#ixzz4nmWrRsyh

BEFORE EVERYTHING is in bookstores now. Media/book critics, as always, let me know if you’d like a review copy.

Jessie Chaffee’s stunning debut novel comes out this week…Grab a copy, pronto!

FLORENCE IN ECSTASY is the unforgettable story of one woman’s attempt to find meaning – and – herself in an unstable world. Hannah, a young American, arrives in Florence knowing no one and speaking little Italian. But she is isolated in a more profound way, estranged from her own identity after a bout with starvation that has left her life and body in ruins. She is determined to recover in Florence, a city saturated with beauty, vitality, and food―as well as a dangerous history of sainthood for women who starved themselves for God. Hannah joins a local rowing club, where Francesca, a welcoming but predatory Milanese, and Luca, a seemingly steady Florentine with whom she becomes involved, draw her into Florence’s vibrant present: the complex social dynamics at the club, soccer mania, eating, drinking, sex, an insatiable insistence on life. But Hannah is also rapt by the city’s past—the countless representations of beauty, the entrenched conflicts of politics and faith, and the lore of the mystical saints, women whose self-imposed isolation and ecstatic searches for meaning through denial illuminate the seduction of her own struggles.

This is one of the most transporting novels I’ve read in ages. In fact (no kidding) I booked a ticket to Italy shortly after reading the manuscript. (Pro-tip: fly into Milan MXP and take the train to Florence. It’s prettier, and cheaper, and just as fast since there are only connecting flights from the US.) Jessie Chaffee’s debut is beautifully written, powerful stuff.

Read an excerpt on LitHub, here. 

“Florence In Ecstasy evokes the beauty of the Florentine landscape as vividly as it depicts the physical, and spiritual, turmoil of a young woman on the edge. Jessie Chaffee’s Hannah is never defined by her illness alone, but by the breadth of her intelligence and the depth of her emotional life. This is a remarkable debut – frank, serious, eloquent.” – Alice McDermott, National Book Award winning author of Charming Billy and Someone

“Jessie Chaffee’s protagonist Hannah finds herself in Florence far from home, unseen, unknown, estranged even from her body: in the most literal sense, in ecstasy. Chaffee’s fierce debut brings Hannah’s struggles, discoveries, and sweet triumphs to life.” – Claire Messud, bestselling author of The Emperor’s Children and The Woman Upstairs

“Jessie Chaffee’s debut novel is an unflinching look at a woman’e attempt to outrun her demons…displaying not only diligent research but also an emotional intuition that brings Hannah to startling life.” — Publishers Weekly

 “An engaging debut.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Be ready to be provoked and transported by Florence in Ecstasy, a haunting, beautiful novel of womanhood, the saints, and the mysteries of the body. Jessie Chaffee writes all this, an more, with a lyrical, fierce fragility.” — Krys Lee, author of How I Became a North Korean

“Jessie Chaffee’s luminous debut Florence in Ecstasy is a hypnotic, addictive read. The shade of E. M. Forster stalks the heels of this story of one American woman at a crossroads in her life, in prose as lyrical and precise as it is evocative and haunting. Florence in Ecstasy delves with insight into the foreignness we find so often in our own bodies, in our own selves, giving name to that strange tension between presence and absence. Hannah of Boston tiptoes toward her own kind of hideous rapture, a beauty so devastating that we cannot look away.” ―Katherine Howe, author of The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

“Florence in Ecstasy is a deeply affecting novel. It reminds us how easily the self can be lost and sometimes, with great difficulty, recreated. In perfectly calibrated prose, Jessie Chaffee depicts a woman in the throes of a devastating existential reckoning.” ―Linsey Abrams, author of Our History in New York

Note: Book Critics, as always, if you want a review copy, email me: kb (at) broadsidepr (dot) com

When I got out of college, I took the first job I could get and people, I’m here to tell you: I was bored, bored, bored. With hope of keeping my mind moving, and a still-warm English Lit degree in my pocket, I took a part time job at my local independent bookstore, Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA. For me, it was a first glimpse of heaven and the perfect job – the people I worked with were curious, smart and nerdy, just like me. Opening boxes of brand new books and then shelving them in the exact right order completely satisfied my OCD tendencies. But the best part were the customers who would come in and ask me what they should read. In fact, even better were the people who, remembering previous books I’d recommended, came back in and asked for more.

My job now as a literary publicist could be thought of as a bookseller on steroids – instead of telling people about books I love one on one, I pitch books to journalists, critics and producers who will (best possible scenario) turn around and spread the word to millions. But there is still nowhere in the world I feel more comfortable, more myself, than at a bookstore.

So I’ve been cheering for my friend Samantha Schoech since she founded Independent Bookstore Day four years ago. This year was the most successful day yet – a one day national party at over 470 independent bookstores across the country (only Hawaii and Arkansas sat it out this year. Hawaii – okay, I get it. Arkansas – you have no excuse). There’s a great story of the Seattle Times book critic, Moira MacDonald, hitting 19 different Seattle stores in one go, here. She called it, (of course she did!), “a perfect day.” The San Francisco Chronicle highlighted a free, two hour Bicycle Book Tour and a Book Lover Quest giving participants the chance to win a library of books worth over $1000 here. The LA Times talked to Samantha about how bookstores all over the country are committed to becoming sanctuaries in our current political climate, here, and pointed out the 15 Los Angeles area stores that were hosting special Indie Bookstore Day events. Bustle had a run-down of all the literary Indie Bookstore items being sold, here. Elle Magazine ran a page from A Literary Cocktail Party, a book produced exclusively for Indie Bookstore Day – author Meghan Daum‘s delicious, true, Ode to Rose, here. Not to be left out, LitHub posted newly-minted Granta Best Young American Novelist Lauren Groff and Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s cocktail recipes, here. Domino Magazine has the first (of many to come) stories of Emma Straub and Michael Fusco opening their gorgeous new Brooklyn bookstore, Books Are Magic, two days earlier than scheduled so they could celebrate Indie Bookstore Day, here. There are more reports and photos from across the country on Shelf Awareness, here.

If you missed out this year, just mark your calendar for next year – it’ll be the last Saturday in April, 2018. And until then – here’s a list of Independent Bookstores. Go talk to a bookseller – they will be happy to lead you to books you didn’t know you needed.

Richard Mason’s magnificent new novel WHO KILLED PIET BAROL? will be published by Knopf here on January 26, but it’s already out in the UK where it’s received rave reviews and been named a Best Book of the Year by the Guardian, the Observer and The Times of London, which describes it perfectly:

“In 1914 Cape Town, Piet Barol and his wife Stacey, are outrageous fraudsters cutting a dash through colonial society. In an attempt to make money, Barol sets off for an adventure in the forest, accompanied by two skeptical Xhosa companions, Luvo and Ntsina. The likable Barol’s ignorance and greed will trigger a catastrophe for Ntsina’s home village. The story is told from various viewpoints, with a manic charm. This is a highly original book. Part magic realism, part fable, part history and wholly engrossing.”

The US prepubs are just coming in – with Publishers Weekly saying Richard writes “with the élan of a seasoned raconteur” comparing this novel to Paul Theroux‘s Mosquito Coast (publicist says “Hello! Thx PW!”). Kirkus says, “Mason continues to earn his reputation with exquisitely crafted sentences and a dizzying knack for storytelling.” And in their starred review, Library Journal says, “In elegant, sensuous prose … Mason imbues the forest with life, taking readers inside the psyche of each tree, animal, or insect… Mason’s previous novels have been long-listed for the IMPAC, Sunday Times Literary, and Lambda Literary awards. This profoundly tragic tale, in which colonialism battles tribal customs, and divisions of race and class sow distrust, should put him over the top.”

Take three minutes to watch Richard’s video on the creation of this novel – It is completely compelling … and not only because of Richard’s perfect pronunciation of “Xhosa” with a glottal ‘X.’

Book critics, as always, please let me know if you’re interested in an advance copy for review. 

WHO KILLED PIET BAROL? is available now for pre-order at your local independent booksellers, Amazon, iTunes, BN.com, and everywhere books are sold.

Ask The Publicists: A Monthly Literary Advice Column from Broadside PR

The excellent literary news site LitHub just posted the second installment of BroadsidePR‘s monthly advice column. Last month’s column, our first, began with a question that’s been asked by almost every single author we’ve ever worked with: What about my book?! We talked about what authors can do to provide momentum for their books and you can see our advice here.

Today’s column is about what to do if your book gets a bad pre-publication review, and our advice is below. Whenever Whitney talks, it’s just soothing and reassuring. She’s so intelligent and hilarious, and I love Michael’s advice to create a piñata doll in the likeness of your critic, whack it with a stick and devour all the delicious, delicious candy. (It’s the second “delicious,” right?) I love my BroadsidePR partners. If you haven’t seen our column yet, take a look! We’d love to hear what you think, and if you have ideas of questions for future columns, please leave a comment or email us: ahoy@broadsidepr.com

I’m devastated: I got a bad pre-publication review. What should I do? Does a bad pre-pub review really matter? What if I get other negative reviews when my book publishes?

Whitney Peeling: Nothing produces quite as much anxiety in an author as the first review. Pre-publication reviews are usually the first unbiased public reactions to a book, so they have the potential to boost an author’s spirits early on or hit a nerve that remains raw for quite some time. Pre-pubs sometimes run as early as a few months before publication date but can run on or even after publication date, so the name “pre-pub” can be confusing.

Whatever the timing, pre-pubs are brief reviews that run in Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Library Journal—these are all industry-facing publications, so aimed towards publishing professionals, book review editors, and librarians. Some online booksellers have arrangements with a few of these publications so that their reviews automatically upload to the Editorial Reviews section of a book’s page. That’s why authors sometimes see, say, a Publishers Weekly review there in full next to blurbs and excerpts of other coverage

My feeling about pre-pubs is this: thank goodness for them. As space for book review coverage, in general, has gotten so teeny tiny that it sometimes feels like there’s only enough space for five or six books to get critiqued in any given month, I’m grateful that these publications remain committed to paying attention to as many new books as possible. And in my experience, when these reviews are starred and have an exceptionally quotable piece (“This is the absolute best book that has ever been written since the dawn of time”), they’re really helpful. When you get a few starred pre-pubs, it can really give a book a lot of early momentum. But when pre-pubs are lackluster or outright negative, to be honest, I think fewer people notice them.

It’s disheartening to get a bad review anywhere, of course, but one bad pre-pub review doesn’t spell disaster for your book launch. And once a bad pre-pub is posted by an online bookseller, the publisher can try to disempower it by sending blurbs and positive press for the bookseller to run above the dreadful commentary. Also remember that you’re probably obsessing over your own Amazon page in a way that no one else is. So your dog walker or your boss or your arch enemy isn’t likely to look at you with pity the morning after it posts and be, like, “Hey. . . I saw that awful review in Publishers Weekly . . . I’m so sorry.”

Kimberly Burns: Which leads to another question, pre- or post-publication: do reviews even matter? I die a little inside when people in the industry say book reviews don’t sell books. It’s the sort of sweeping generalization that makes the world a less beautiful place. One of the best parts about being a publicist is talking with critics (and I mean critics to include reviewers, editors, and radio and television producers) about books you love—their opinions and thoughts inform our thinking and the way we continue to pitch those books. When written with real passion and knowledge, a review by the right critic can put a book immediately on a bestseller list—even when there are quibbles in the review. A bad pre-pub can be deflating, but it’s not going to stop your book’s momentum. (See our column from last month on how an author can help create her own momentum.) Think about how you discover new books: the single best way is when a friend recommends it to you. (“Friend,” of course, includes your local independent bookseller.) And chances are that your friend found out about that book by reading a review (or hearing an interview with the author). If the review has successfully conveyed what the book is about, it doesn’t really matter if the review is positive or negative. How many times have you gone to buy a book and can’t remember the author or title, but you can tell the bookseller that you saw a recent review in the New York Times about “that novel about the guy in Bulgaria,” or there was something in Entertainment Weekly about that book set in the South of France, or you just heard a review on NPR about the novel about horse racing?

To be successful, a review only has to do a few things: It should offer an overview of what the book is about, provide a critical evaluation, discuss the book in relation to the author’s other work, and show how this book stands out from other books like it. Hopefully the reviews your book gets accomplish these things. When they don’t, you have every right to fume. These are the types of reviews that make steam come out of my ears: reviews that contain spoilers (good reviewers know how to write without giving critical plot points away); reviews that read like they’re book reports (book reviews should be a commentary, not a summation); reviews written by a reviewer whose first intent is to show off his own cleverness (aughhh!); and the worst: reviews that criticize the author instead of the book (this happens mostly with authors who have achieved a certain level of success, so if it happens to you… congratulations!). The point is: If your book gets a negative review, try to step back and see if it is truly worth the energy of your fury. Reviews are just people expressing their opinions, which is why your book is out in the world and not sitting in a drawer.

Michael Taeckens: I think all authors should be required to read When Bad Things Happen to Good People before their galleys are mailed out. (Although some authors should have to read When Bad Things Happen to Bad People.) Because the fact of the matter is, part of being a published author is learning how to deal with the reality that complete strangers are going to read your book and accepting that not everyone is going to love it. It’s sad, but true.

It would be ideal if every single review—from the pre-pubs to the trades, Goodreads to every last blog known to humankind (including that one blog by the precocious 11-year-old who blogs about books she shouldn’t be reading until she’s in college)—praised your scintillating prose, ingenious narrative skills, and your fully realized characters that leap right off the page, but welcome to the jungle (we got fun and games). Criticism happens, and the sooner you accept it, the better.

Here are some tips for what to do:

– Talk, moan, kvetch to your friends and family. Get it out of your system.

– Create a piñata doll likeness of your critic, whack it with a stick, devour all of the delicious, delicious candy.

– Write a foaming-at-the-mouth angry letter and then delete it.

– Meditate. (Good advice for everything in life, tbh.)

Here are some tips for what not to do:

– Don’t spit in the face of your reviewer should you run into him at a literary conference. (AKA the Richard Ford Method.)

– Don’t take a book published by the critic who gave you a bad review and shoot bullet holes through it. (Also known as the Richard Ford Method.)

– Don’t write a letter to the editor pointing out how stupid/wrong/idiotic the critic is.

– Don’t reply to negative reviews on Amazon, Goodreads, blogs, etc. NEVER EVER DO THIS.

All of this is to say: negative reviews suck; learn to take good care of yourself and soldier through. Review outlets have been eroding for well over a decade now and the competition for space is tighter than ever: decide whether a negative review is better than no review at all. Perhaps the greatest comfort can be taken in the fact that you’re not alone: seriously, have you seen how many famous books have been excoriated by critics? Know that you’re in very good company and stay committed to writing the best work you can. And trust in yourself. No review can take away from your belief in your own writing unless you allow it. (Ok, that may sound woo-woo, but it’s true.)

Kimberly Burns, Whitney Peeling, and Michael Taeckens are the co-founders of Broadside PR. They work regularly with publishers and authors to launch exceptional works of fiction and nonfiction, as well as with literary organizations and prizes to strengthen the value of the written word. If you have a question you’d like Broadside PR to consider for our next column, please send it to us via email: ahoy@BroadsidePR.com

Figuring out comp titles to help describe Danielle Trussoni‘s new memoir, The Fortress, was easy: It’s “A Year in Provence” meets “Eat, Pray, Love” meets “The Shining.”
This is Danielle’s true story of falling in love with a talented, charismatic Bulgarian writer, their whirlwind marriage, having a beautiful baby in a terrifying hospital in Sofia, and finally, years later, as a last ditch attempt to save their marriage, moving to a 13th Century stone fortress in the small town of Aubais (pronounced ‘obey,’ as in ‘love, honor and aubais’) in the South of France. (You can see photos at Danielle’s Tumblr.)

The Fortress is the best kind of literary page-turner (especially when you get to “The Shining” part). Elle, Entertainment Weekly and People have it on their “must read” lists for September.

Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, says, “With vivid eloquence and wrenching honesty, The Fortress lays bare one of the great mysteries of modern life: the secret emotional world of a failing marriage.” And Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild, says “The Fortress is a bold book about the most intimate things. Danielle Trussoni’s clear-eyed examination of how she loved and lost her husband is both a page-turner and a profound meditation on the nature of desire and freedom in the modern age.”

Danielle Trussoni by Beowulf Sheehan

You can see a brilliant interview Danielle did with writer and actress Mary-Louise Parker on the Amazon Page, here.

Watch Danielle’s launch event, in conversation with writer/actress/singer Molly Ringwald, at The Strand Bookstore in NYC, here.

Read an excerpt and see a book trailer at The Rumpus, here.

And as always, if you are a book critic or if you blog about books, and would like a copy to consider for review, please let me know.