The F Words: Publication!

Publication is very exciting — a book which may have been in the works for many rewrites and several years is finally available for the public to read. In my blogs I’ve talked a lot about the writing and rewriting of The F Words. Now that my book has been published, I’d like to talk about the many, many steps that went into preparing the book once I signed a contract with the publisher.

2020 — City of Light Publishing did all the hard work. This included editing the manuscript, designing both the exterior and interior of the book, and filling out maybe hundreds of forms on who-knows-how-many sites — because that’s just part of what publishers do in getting a book ready for release. Their work begins the day they acquire a manuscript, and probably ends . . . never.

JANUARY 2021 — My work was not as critical or as difficult, but I did throw myself into helping book sales. Knowing that I would have more and more work to do month by month, I started off easy in January. In order to get one small chunk of work out of the way, I rewrote the bio on my web site and on any other social media, such as my Authors Guild listing, updating each of these pages to include The F Words.

FEBRUARY 2021 —Early in February City of Light had the Pre-Order button for The F Words up on its site, and a week or two later on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, and elsewhere. I wrote emails to friends about the forthcoming book and made sure to include the pre-order link. I also sent an email to each and every library in the state of Illinois — because the book is set in Chicago. Likewise, I wrote to bookstores in Chicago, bookstores in the suburbs, and bookstores throughout the state. And I made a note to write to each of these groups more than once. I mean, I would remember that my book was coming  out in September 2021 . . . but that doesn’t mean anybody else would. So in addition to a February reminder, I also sent a May reminder and an August reminder.

In February I spent a lot of time researching which magazines my publisher and I could write to for possible book reviews. The F Words, I felt, qualified for review in political magazines, poetry magazines, maybe running magazines, teen-lit publications, and main stream publications.

At the request of my editor, I wrote a list of Discussion Questions to go at the back of the book — for book clubs and for teachers.

MARCH 2021 — I searched online for author-interview sites and wrote to them — and got some great interviews! I’m especially fond of the one at Authors Answer.

I also began writing to public periodicals, websites, and podcasting sites that review books, informing them about The F Words.

APRIL 2021  — Thinking that it couldn’t hurt to be on YouTube, I taught myself how to make YouTube videos about different thematic elements in The F Words. The first of these videos had a steep learning curve because I had to figure out how to run Zoom with Keynote running full-screen at the same time, then record and convert to an MP4 file, then to a Quicken file, then edit the Quicken file, then upload the finished product to YouTube. Some of these steps were easy, but the Zoom-Keynote synchronization was difficult for me.

As it turned out, I ended up recording several of these videos: Protest and Poetry; Injustice and Oppression; Cross-Country Running; Friendship; and Humor. You can intuit which one I recorded first when you realize that in one of them, my head is partly cut off. As I said: Steep learning curve!

MAY 2021 — One of the most daunting tasks my editor and I worked on was asking people to read The F Words before publication and write testimonials — those words of praise that are often printed on the back cover of a book. This was an intense, time-consuming, nerve-wracking task — but the results were absolutely wonderful and definitely helped The F Words get reviewed in journals.

During the last week of May I did a third proofreading of the ARC (Advance Readers Copy). This was good, because I caught several errors, all of them dealing with italics. Words being referred to as words in a sentence are italicized, as follows:

Dana said she wanted liberty.
Dana said liberty was her favorite word.

In The F Words, a lot of words are being referred to as words, so we had to be very careful to italicize them when they appeared.

JUNE 2021 — In early June we decided on the back cover of the book. For months my editor and I had been thinking, on and off, about whether the back cover should consist of testimonials, or of enticing information about the story. We happily settled on a mix of the two.

In June I visited many different bookstores in person, taking each of them a sell sheet which listed all the necessary information on and excitement about The F Words. Where possible, I set up future events — for after the book was published. You can’t really have an event until you have the printed books! Getting bookstores to commit to an event during the pandemic is not easy. Most of them don’t know if they will be hosting a live event or a virtual event. Or hybrid. So they hesitate.

The F Words is a book that should appeal not only to teens, but also to teachers. Particularly English teachers. So my editor and I decided that The F Words would benefit by having an Educator Guide to offer. This would be a free, online guide available on the City of Light website. In June I wrote this guide. And then I rewrote it a couple of times. 

After I  wrote the Educator Guide, I decided to write a  set of ten quizzes to go with it. Plus, of course, the Answer Key.

June also required one more proofreading of The F Words. 

And then came podcasting. Once I learned that I could turn my blogs into podcasts very, very easily, I decided to do that. Rather than have a robot read my blogs, I opted to record them myself. There was a short but steep learning curve on this because Anchor, the podcasting site, cut any Safari browser users off at 5 minutes, while allowing Google Chrome browser users to record for a full 30 minutes. This meant I had to switch to Chrome for my podcasts (keeping Safari for everything else).

JULY 2021 — At the beginning of July there were 60 days until publication. And still: much to do.

I contacted the Chicago Public Library to see if they would carry copies of The F Words in all of their branches and consider the book for their YA Book Club. Likewise, I tried to get in touch with English teachers in the Chicago Public Schools, to suggest that they consider teaching the novel in classes, especially because it has a strong Chicago setting. I wasn’t successful at this. Contacting all the English teachers in the Chicago Public Schools was something I just couldn’t figure out how to do. In fact, I’m not sure it can be done.

On the video front, I tried uploading each of my  videos about The F Words to Amazon. I had successfully uploaded book trailers before, with Dirty Proof and Sound Proof, with no problem. With The F Words, however, I encountered extremely frustrating (F word!) problems: Amazon kept rejecting my video as not meeting “community standards.”

After several days of exchanging emails with various Amazon departments, I learned that neither I nor any close relative could post videos about my own work. But other people could, and so I began to ask different friends to  upload a video or two. They, too, were unable to do so, leading me to think that perhaps Amazon doesn’t allow videos until after a book’s pub date.

Meanwhile, I was able to upload all the videos to GoodReads: no problems at all. (And I surmise that the reason I was able to upload videos to Dirty Proof and Sound Proof is because I was the publisher as well as the author.)

In early July I started sending review requests to the smaller journals that weren’t covered by the work my publisher was doing. I included some podcasts and blogs in my list.

Also, I decided to  print 2,500 copies of a bookmark. Friend Robin Koontz designed it, with me supplying the info for the back of the bookmark. I uploaded the PDF design to the SharpDots web site out in California, paid for the bookmarks and shipping, and waited for them to arrive. They arrived August 3.

On July 9 the first review of The F Words was published. This was in Windy City Reviews. You may recall that I sent out a request for such reviews back in March. The review was  good and my publisher and I were very happy. I then shared the review on social media and in emails. And I made sure to thank Windy City Reviews.

July saw the introduction of The F Words in ebook format. This had actually been around since April, but for some reason wasn’t showing as available. All kinks were finally ironed out and in mid-July the ebook was introduced to the world. It wasn’t up for sale yet, but anybody browsing could see that there would be an ebook on publication day.

In the middle of the month three of the testimonials I had received back in May went up on Amazon under “Editorial Reviews.” Such reviews are read with great interest by anybody who’s considering purchasing the book.

Also in mid-July came the first “industry” review of The F Words. Here the word “industry” refers to the book industry, and  industry-review magazines are those that  bookstores, librarians, and teachers look to for evaluations of new titles. Examples are Kirkus Reviews; Booklist; School Library Journal; and Publishers Weekly. My first industry review came from Kirkus, and it was favorable. This was exciting because such reviews help get books into bookstores, libraries, and schools. 

Toward the end of the month I decided to learn how to use Canva so that I could create posters and share them to both Facebook and Twitter. My main aim in doing this was to create posters with live links: i.e., links that went to a URL at which the person who clicked could buy my book. I spent one long day trying this, only to conclude that neither JPEGs nor GIFs would hold live links. And if they would, then I wasn’t the person to figure out how to do it. I later learned that graphics files do not contain live links.

However, I did post my creations on both Facebook and Twitter: they just didn’t have live links.

But at the same time these good things (reviews) were happening, my publisher experienced great delays in the printing process. Delays caused by the world-wide pandemic, which caused huge backups in book printing. (Too complicated to explain here.) So the publication date was moved from September 1 to September 15, 2021

AUGUST 2021 — So much of the work I was doing to publicize The F Words was for social media. My social media, which is Facebook and Twitter. But teens, who are the audience for which I wrote The F Words, don’t use these media much. They use Instagram and TikTok. My publisher was posting regularly on Instagram, so I didn’t have to worry about that.

But what about TikTok? It seems that short videos (10-20 seconds long) are the way to go with TikTok. So . . . I decided to try making a video. Mainly because making a video for free is something I could do on my newly found site, Canva. I made this video not for posting, but to share with City of Light, so that their media person could perhaps use it as a guideline of what to say. 

My first author interview was published in August, from Authors Answer. I was delighted with this interview!

In August the Educator Guide that I had spent so much time writing back in June was designed by City of Light and made available, free, on their website. This very rich, detailed Guide, full of fascinating activities, would help sell The F Words because it would provide teachers with free help.

During the last week of August I submitted copies of The F Words to many daily publications, in the hope that some of them would review it.

Meanwhile, I had a major event coming up September 11 & 12  — Printers Row Lit Fest, where I would sit at the City of Light table and sell copies of The F Words. To help sell my book, I created a lot of posters and posted them on social media.

SEPTEMBER 2021 — At last — publication month!

But still a lot to do.

My editor managed to upgrade the Printers Row Lit Fest table to a table under a tent! The tent would not only look impressive: it would protect us from the sun and the rain. The tent would not protect us from wind, of course, and as it turned out, both days of Lit Fest were very windy: book covers flapping, leaflets flying.

News on the Green, the newspaper which services several small towns in NE Ohio, printed their interview with me.

Just before the start of Lit Fest I heard from my editor that the Children’s Book Council selected The F Words as one of their September Hot Off the Press Picks. This kind of selection is of great benefit to writers and their books because librarians, both public and school, respect the CBC and its picks. In fact, I noticed an uptick in Amazon pre-sales for several days after the CBC announcement.

Printers Row Lit Fest was a fun experience, just as it was each of the five previous times I autographed there. It was particularly enjoyable autographing with Judy Bradbury, whose second Cayuga Island Kids chapter book City of Light published this month. Friends dropped by to buy books, and strangers bought books and initiated conversations. 

On September 15 The F Words was published! 

I realize that the nine months I’ve documented in this blog might make the whole process seem very long. But to me it seemed very short, and that’s probably because I was so actively promoting my book. And whatever I did, my publisher did at least three or four times more —  about which I am both happy and grateful.

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The F Words is available wherever books are sold, as a paperback and as an ebook. It’s also available through libraries. To get updates and the latest news on The F Words, subscribe to Barbara Gregorich’s Newsletter.