Launch Date

Tomorrow, my fourth book Shadow Hill is officially released.  I’m having a book launch party on the patio of one of my favorite restaurants here on the coast called Floyd’s 1921 Restaurant.  It’s an outside venue which has become an important factor now that the Delta Variant of Covid is raging through the unvaccinated public.  

Sadly, only about 35% of the population here in our coastal county has been vaccinated and the number of illnesses and hospitalizations are spiking. 

So, I’m writing about good news/bad news.  

A book launch is always good news but why are they always on Tuesdays?  I’ve Googled it to death and no one has a solid answer.  One theory is that Tuesday is the slowest sales day.  That really doesn’t make sense to me, but there it is.

Another theory is that all the new books launching on that particular week are out on the same day, there’s less of a cost for distributors.  But why Tuesday?  Why not Wednesday?

Yet a third theory is that if the book sells really well early on, that gives a bookstore an opportunity to order more before the weekend.

The real reason?  They’ve just always done it that way.   

In the past, a book launch date was just that, the  first day you can buy the book.  But for Shadow Hill, that didn’t seem to be the case.  For the last month, Amazon has been shipping them out as quickly as the orders come in.  Barnes & Noble was shipping and selling at the beginning of August.  Other bookstores had them on sale as well.

Am I complaining?  Absolutely not.  Sell those books as fast as you can.

Anyway you look at it, launching the book is really good news.

What’s the bad news?  The Delta Variant of Covid is raging through the unvaccinated public.  Just this past week we heard that Bouchercon 2021 in New Orleans was cancelled.  It didn’t come as a surprise. If you have any kind of presence on social media and you’re friends with other writers, they were dropping out one at a time.

I’d been asked to be on a panel and to moderate a second.  I reached out to the five panelists last week to introduce myself and immediately, three of them told me they had cancelled.  

With New Orleans being one of the cities with the highest infections rate, it made sense for the conference organizers to make the painful decision to cancel.  They offered to refund my registration fee or I could donate it back to them.

I know they have expenses to cover so I didn’t hesitate to donate it to them

Tomorrow, I’m raising a glass with my friends, signing some books, and eating the outstanding appetizers that Floyd’s will be serving.  And for the rest of today, I’m looking over a manuscript due to be released in 2022 that has been marked up by my editor.  

Cheers.