Getting published
Our publication date is coming up fast! When we signed our original deal, and even when we submitted our manuscript, the publication date was so far away it didn’t really even feel real. But it feels real now! It’s gone from being over a year away to just the other side of Christmas…and it’s scary!
A few people who have got the book on pre-order have been telling me that they’ve had a notification about the date, and that they’re looking forward to reading the book. Thank you to those wonderful people! I didn’t appreciate how important pre-orders are to authors – it makes a massive difference in how you get treated by people who may or may not sell your book. Basically, if you have strong pre-orders, booksellers will be more likely to stock it – which seems kind of backwards if you think about it!
Here's some stats for you that blew my mind a bit. The odds of getting a book published are only 1-2%. The average traditionally published book sells around 3000 copies over its lifetime and less than 500 in the first year. For a first-time author, selling a few thousand copies is considered a success. And to get on a bestseller list, the process is even weirder! Basically, each week, booksellers across the UK and Ireland submit their sales figures to a market research company called Nielsen’s Bookscan. About 95% of sellers do this, so it’s pretty accurate. Then each week, Nielsen announce which books have sold well the previous week. Then sellers decide which books they should stock, or re-stock based on those figures.
The number you need to sell each week therefore varies depending on what else has sold well and how busy the book market is in general! So, it’s a moving feast but only relates to sales in that previous week. (Thanks to www.thebookroom.uk for most of that explanation.) The short answer is, if you get on a bestseller list, you’ve done pretty well – but you might be able to do that with between 1-2000 sales in one week, which to me seems a pretty small number really! I thought that bestselling books were selling hundreds of thousands of copies – I guess some are, but it seems like maybe not as many as I thought!
The other thing that’s weird about the approaching publication date is knowing that people I know will have read the book I co-wrote. Again, that seems kind of obvious, but Leo and I didn’t really write it for people we know. In fact, I’d go so far as to say we actively didn’t write it for people we know! We wrote it to help other trans people, their families and friends, supporters and allies, and just people who might be interested to know more about what transitioning means. So, knowing that people in my local gym, beauty parlour, and shop will soon be reading about what an absolute arse I made of myself on numerous occasions is a bit uncomfortable! But this is balanced with how incredibly proud I am of Leo and his side of the story – his strength, courage and passion. So, if you’ve got a copy on order, thank you and sorry in advance if my bits make you wince. But Leo’s bits I hope will really make you think.