I have a publicist? (or, A Good Use for the Word “lolwut”)

I received a bizarre email tonight. It was a message from a woman associated with my recent publication credit who announced herself as my publicist.

What? Publicist? My publicist?

I read this sentence about three times before it made any sense to me, and when I skimmed on through the rest of the email, several more key phrases popped out at me:

“Interviews: I have mailed a copy of the book to your hometown newspaper…”

“Book signings: …call your local bookstore…ask if they would be interested in a signing…”

“Public speaking: …organizations that target your book’s audience are a great place to do a reading…”

I freaked out. And not in a good way. My heart rate went up and I started squeaking at my dad and sister that I couldn’t understand it, that I was one out of 101 people in this book, and how could I possibly justify something like a book signing based on that? If I were one out of five, or one of of ten, then maybe–

Then my sister pointed out the bits of the email I’d overlooked in my alarm:

“…if you are interested in hosting a signing…”

“…if you do not wish to be contacted for interviews…”

Nice going, Ari.

Still, I find it interesting to ponder why I reacted to this the way I did. As I explained to my father in my earlier moment of panic, a lot of it had to do with the fact that my contribution to this book felt so minimal that I couldn’t imagine why a book signing with any one contributor made any sense.

Another part probably had to do with the fact that organizing a book signing is a lot of work (finding a venue, advertising, making/posting flyers, etc.), which also seemed hard to justify based on my having contributed such a tiny part of the whole. Additionally, while I would fully expect to be involved in marketing a book that I wrote, it never even occurred to me I might be asked to do that for an anthology (maybe it was in my contract and I just forgot?).

Finally, there was the fact that it just felt uncomfortable–sort of weirdly pretentious–to hold something like a signing (or even an interview) in this kind of situation. I mean, the piece that I submitted was written several years ago, and my actual submission was a pretty casual affair of copy-paste-obliviate! I just feel like I didn’t put any work into the finished product (apart from one round of edits), so how could I hold a signing for that?

But the more I think about it, the more I realize that the true problem here is that, in my efforts to not draw “undeserved” attention to myself, I’m actually taking a rather selfish view of the whole affair. After all, I’m not marketing just myself; I’m also marketing the other contributors and the book itself (not to mention the series) and doing my part to help the publisher. Moreover, maybe I should be considering this a practice run for actually having a book of my own. And the more I think about it, the less scary it seems.

Anyhow, I’m still undecided, but I’m at least considering it.

Thoughts, dear readers? Leave a comment if you have an opinion/advice/whatever. Maybe I’ll just crowdsource my decision.

A Tale of Fame, Fortune, and Semi-Accidental Publication

I might be lying about those first two. Or perhaps they’re simply things to aspire to. However, the last item is entirely true, and here’s how it happened:

For reasons I don’t quite recall, last September I ended up on the website for the Chicken Soup for the Soul books (I think I was trying to look something up about one of the editors or something like that–it’s not really relevant). While I was there and scrolling down the page, my eye alighted upon the following button:

Submit Your Story

I don’t know why it caught my attention. Given that, as previously discussed, I’m not much of a hand with nonfiction, it was hardly logical for me to think, “Oh hey, I should submit something!”–but for some reason or other, I went digging through my files and came across a funny little essay I’d written about my experiences in theatre in high school. With nothing in my mind other than, “What the hell,” I copied and pasted the text into the submission form, pressed the send button, and promptly forgot about the whole thing.

So imagine my shock when, six months later, I was contacted by the Chicken Soup editors to say that my story had made the final round of submissions and would likely be published.

I always imagined that my first real-world (as opposed to internet) submission for publication would be a big deal in my mind. I figured I would write some little short story, slave over it for days and days in order to perfect it, send it, and then start clicking the refresh button on my email every three minutes in anxious anticipation of a reply. Weirdly, though, that’s not at all what happened. My first time being published in something that is actually going to appear in lots of brick-and-mortar bookstores is a bit of nonfiction about my struggles with comedy.

Which does not mean that it is not FREAKING AWESOME.

The reason I’m thinking about all of this right now is because I just received my ten contributor copies of Chicken Soup for the Soul: Just for Teenagers: 101 Stories of Inspiration and Support for Teens yesterday afternoon. I’ll post a picture as soon as I can. They’re beautiful. I know they’re not *my* book in the way that Unfamiliar Spellings is (more on this later), but they have my name and my writing in them. And on July 26th, you’ll be able to walk into Barnes and Noble and get one. HOLY FREAKING CRAP.

Also, did I mention I get paid for this? I need to find a very special way to spend that check–or maybe I won’t spend it at all. Maybe I’ll just hang it up on my wall and stare at it whenever writing or editing or querying is starting to seem like a chore.

After all, if I can get published by accident, I ought to be able to do it when I’m actually trying as well, right? *grins*