Hello Substack Readers!
I loved writing this book. Marketing this book, however (and marketing anything, ever), is wildly uncomfortable for me. But this is how book publishing works now, and so we have to do it 🤷♀️. The pre-order phase is the most crucial, and that fortunately ends in about two weeks.
Anyway, there’s a video above which you may have already seen on Facebook yesterday, and I’m now going to paste in the transcript of that video below. Thank you for being here. I appreciate you. 🙏📙❤️🥰🔥
Video transcript:
Hi Everyone,
First, I am deeply uncomfortable with this video but am making it at the behest of my “pushy New York agent,” Alison Fargis (her words, not mine!).
With only 2.5 weeks until book launch, things are becoming urgent.
Like a lot of women, I am wired to do, and produce, and share, and give, and never to ask. Asking is hard. And I want to be clear that I am not asking you to buy a book you don’t want to buy, and I am definitely not asking you to buy a book you can’t afford.
BUT. If you’re considering buying the book, for yourself or for someone else, or if you’ve gotten 30 dollars worth of value out of my work and out of being a member of this community, I am asking you to pre-order.
I did not understand until recently how much power there is in pre-orders. I don’t think I’d ever pre-ordered a book until I wrote my own and was made to understand that the best way to support writers is to pre-order their books.
Pre-orders send a powerful message and they mean media and political respect and a funded tour. Right now the tour is being funded by me personally, which is why it’s so small and midwestern. If pre-order numbers are strong enough, it could also mean we land Burn the Haystack on the NYT list.
I’m sharing this not as pressure, but as information for anyone who doesn’t know, as I didn’t know.
I’m not going to take any more of your time, but thank you for listening. I will post the link to pre-order from your preferred retailer in the comments.
Link to preorder: Please click here.
***Addenda:
1. the Burn the Haystack team at HarperCollins is really advocating for me and doing a LOT for this book --- all publishing budgets are tough right now and funded tours are no longer typical, so I am not complaining at all --- I’m delighted and extraordinarily grateful for everyone I’m working with and made the decision on my own to travel because I think it’s important to meet this community in real life to the degree possible (and pre-orders could make it much MORE possible in terms of getting it funded).
2. The one exception to my self-funded tour is the San Rafael event, which is supported by Congregation Rodef Sholom.
