Rachel Simon's Blog

And suddenly, it was 5:30. Time to race down the hallway of this Washington, DC hotel to take the elevator from the sixteenth to the first floor. Time to snake my way through the throngs of bookstore owners and publishers’ sales reps and fifty-five authors coming out with books this spring. Time to enter the gigantic ballroom adorned with delectable hors d’oeuvres I would have no time to eat, make my way to a table piled high with advanced reader’s copies of my soon-to-be-released novel, shake the hand of the internationally famous writer sharing my table, and prepare to sign The Story of Beautiful Girl for hundreds of booksellers.

Time for the big time.

But first, one quick check in my hotel mirror.

One year ago, I never could have imagined I would find myself at this moment in my life. I had just spent three years writing The Story of Beautiful Girl, almost all of it without showing the book to others or even disclosing to those closest to me that I was writing it. I felt I owed it to the characters in the book – who’d come to feel fully alive and emotionally connected to me – to give them the privacy to reach their fullest potential first. After all, the two main characters are people with disabilities caught up in dire situations. In some ways their story mirrors the stories of many people with disabilities I’ve met, read about, cared about, and loved. The book also tells a powerful and important history that has been hidden from or overlooked by America for so long, it might as well be a secret. So for three years, I filled my characters’ spirits with my knowledge, hopes, and heart, feeling compelled to give them all I had before introducing them to others.

As a result, when my agent submitted The Story of Beautiful Girl to publishers last January, it had probably been seen by fewer than ten people. To my delight and amazement, Grand Central Publishing made an offer within six days of receiving the book. The editor was over the moon about the book, and Grand Central is an imprint at Hachette Book Group, one of the largest and most successful publishers in the business, so I knew my book had found a good home.

But what a great home it turned out to be.

Last June, soon after the edits were completed and a publication date was set for May 4, 2011, my editor called. “A lot of people here are reading your book,” she said almost breathlessly, “and they really love it.” It was nice to hear this, but I didn’t understand what that might really mean.

I started to get a hint of it at the end of the summer, when she called back. “They like your book so much, they want to meet you.” In my entire writing career – five previous books, published between 1990 and 2010 – it had always been me who wanted to meet people in the publishing house, not them who wanted to meet me.

I went to New York in September for what turned out to be a big meeting full of major executives. I wrote about this meeting in an earlier blog post, but the very abbreviated version is that the individuals in that room – publicists, editors, sales and marketing people, etc. – were profoundly affected by my book. They made it clear they wanted it to be a big success.

Again, I thanked people. Again, I didn’t really understand what was happening.

Then, a few weeks later, I heard from the publicist who was handling my book. “We’re going to send you on a pre-sale tour,” he said. “Are you free the last two weeks in January and the first in February?” I had never even heard the term “pre-sale tour”, but I said yes, sure, I’d be free. And then the wheels were in motion.

I soon learned that a pre-sale tour is a rare and special thing, done selectively at the request of the Sales department and/or booksellers. It consists of the publisher sending the author around the country months before a book comes out. In each city, the publisher sets up meetings with booksellers, which, in my case, would be at a series of private dinners in upscale restaurants, attended by people from the publishing house and up to fourteen or so booksellers. During the dinner, I would be expected to talk about my book in an informal way. The goal would be to help build interest and excitement for my book, and to build buzz. I would go to eight cities, for eight dinners, in twelve days – after a big kick-off event at a huge booksellers’ conference in Washington, DC.

That was the conference I was about to attend now.

I didn’t like what I saw in the mirror. I’d had such a busy day, I’d checked into the Marriott Crystal City at the last possible minute, three scarves around my neck to shield me from the chill of the January dusk, stomach mewing for its usual five p.m. snack, hair askew from a wildly busy day and a hurried walk here from the Metro. I’d run to my sixteenth floor room, hastily tossed my coat and two scarves, and chucked a few pumpkin seeds in my mouth. But oh, my hair. My usually lively, bouncy, curly hair had lost its verve. It slouched and sulked. It wanted a nap.

No nap allowed! Especially because it was my own fault that my hair was looking so lackluster. I could have just decided, when the publisher set up the pre-sale tour, that I’d do what I needed to do and nothing more. But no. I felt so committed to my characters, and to the secret history told by their lives, that I decided I had to make the most of my time in each city. So for the last few weeks, I’d been setting up meetings with people in the disability community in every city I’d be visiting, and today – the first city, the first day – had been packed.

I’d begun it by taking the Amtrak to Washington, then meeting a prominent person from Easter Seals Project Action. Brought together over lunch in La Taberna Del Alabardero Restaurant near the White House, introduced by a friend in the public transit world, we talked about Easter Seals, my book, and our mutual commitment to social justice for people with disabilities. Then I’d had tea with Joseph Shapiro, author of one of the most important books in the disability community, No Pity (see photo). Only after I’d hopped onto the Metro, gotten lost in an underground maze of shops, and made my way to the Marriott Crystal City, had I arrived at my real destination, the American Booksellers Association’s conference, called the Winter Institute. No wonder my hair was rebelling.

I did the quick-fix trick known to all of us with curly hair: I wet a comb, pulled it furiously through my hair, and plumped up the dripping locks with my fingers. Curls reformed. Revival arrived. I snapped a photo of myself, ran out the door – and then, I was on the tour.

The ballroom was large and crowded. Booksellers from all over the country milled about, sipping wine, nibbling finger food, perusing the list of authors taking their seats at the book signing tables. A lovely person from Grand Central found me and led me through the throngs to my own table. As I looked around, I remembered reading the previous day’s Publisher’s Lunch, an online daily that everyone in the industry reads:

“With each passing year the annual ABA Winter Institute has become a showcase for emerging writers and a place to pre-launch what publishers hope will be summer hits – especially in fiction. Some of the 40-odd authors who appeared at Wi5 last year included Adam Ross (MR. PEANUT), Danielle Trussoni (ANGELOLOGY) Justin Cronin (as part of the massive pre-pub blitz for THE PASSAGE), Brady Udall (THE LONELY POLYGAMIST) and Karl Marlantes (MATTERHORN). For Wi6, which starts today in Washington, DC, the number of attending authors is up to 56 and chatter on Facebook and Twitter indicates it’s going to be an even bigger deal. To that end, I’ve scoured the list of attending authors and highlighted titles, and picked out a number that you have either heard about already or can expect to hear more about soon.”

The writer then mentioned The Story of Beautiful Girl – a highlighted book! My heart leapt. Another prominent book was Guilt By Association, a thriller coming out in April by the famous person who’d be sharing my table. The famous person I was walking up to now. A smiling, attractive woman with a face known to billions. Marcia Clark, the prosecutor for the O.J. Simpson trial.

“So great to meet you,” we both said, shaking hands, and, despite all her fame, Marcia (yes, we were suddenly on a first-name basis) immediately came off as cheerful, friendly, and spirited. She was also very attractive, and clearly as happy as I about being featured at this conference – and being with our publisher. I wanted to ask her so many things, though none of them about the trial, which I hadn’t watched. I wondered how she’d felt going from the public world of the courtroom to the private world of the writer. I wondered if she’d liked writing fiction even more than she’d expected. I wondered if the earlier part of her day had been just as uplifting as mine.

But the lines were already forming, so even though we were right beside each other, we barely got to speak except to share pens or catch our breath together during the rare quiet moment. We had to focus on the booksellers.

And what fun that was. I actually stood beside my books rather than sit, a habit I’ve had since my book Riding The Bus With My Sister came out and I realized that some people in my book signing lines were so moved by the book – or so eager to share their own emotional story – that they would be crying. Being only five feet tall, I already felt far away from anyone standing on the other side of a table, so I just decided to do all my signings standing up, making it easier to look someone in the eye, and, when they wanted, to give them a hug.

So I stood, and rather than risk getting into long discussions with each bookseller and holding up the line, I drew half a dozen into a semi-circle at a time. That way I could tell them about the book – but, just as importantly, I could tell them that I’d once been a bookseller too, and could make suggestions for ways they could hand-sell this book to their customers. It was thrilling to be able to share all I’d learned this last year about why The Story of Beautiful Girl is striking such a chord in early readers. It was even more thrilling when some of the booksellers looked at me with huge smiles or tearful eyes and said, “I’ve already read it – and I love it!” And then we hugged.

I signed advanced reader’s copies of the book for two and a half hours before I even looked up. My mewing stomach was now wailing, but I didn’t care. My hair was doing whatever it wanted to do, and I didn’t care. I just cared that my characters had moved into some readers’ lives already, and touched them so deeply.

After the signing wound down, twenty-two booksellers, three sales people from my publisher’s, Marcia, and I walked three brisk blocks to McCormick and Schmick’s, another nice restaurant. We paraded into a private room in the back, where we sat at a table so long, it had to be positioned on a diagonal, with Marcia on one end, me on the other.

And then we ate a delicious dinner, trading seats halfway through the meal so we could talk to every bookseller there. A number of them had already read my book and were brimming with affection. One said to me, “I loved your book so much, I couldn’t breathe until I got to the last line.” Another said, “The only thing I’m concerned about with your book is that it will sell so fast I won’t have enough copies.” Others, who hadn’t yet read the book, said, “I’ll be seeing you on your tour” – in San Francisco, Seattle, Denver – “and I’ll read it by then!” And with all of them, their bonds with the sales force were clear. These weren’t just business people. They were friends who were devoted to books, and reading, and the life of the mind. They were happy to be with me, and happy to be together. They were the circle of support that all people – with or without disabilities, with or without books – deserve to have. And we were clinking glasses together.

It was heady, to be sure. But finally I broke away, went to the ladies room, and looked at myself once again in the mirror.

Could this really be happening? Yes.

Might the story I wrote – a story that I think could make a real difference – find its audience? Well, maybe yes.

Could I keep going for two more weeks of this, when I’ve already eaten more calories in one day than I usually eat in a week? When I’m setting up so many extra meetings with people for lunch and tea that my curls will need a whole lot more than a wet comb? And when, no matter what anyone might think about my book, I’m still the person who sat alone in a room for three years with no one but Beautiful Girl, the love of her life, Homan, her baby Julia, her devoted staff person Kate, and the stranger she trusts, Martha – caring only that I would do well by them?

Yes I can. Yes, I must.

I tell myself I will share the experience through this blog, from my next stop – Portland, OR, to which I fly on Mon, Jan. 24 – to my last, Denver, which I leave on Sat., Feb. 5.

I tell myself that I will have at least as much fun as I had on this glorious night – and maybe even more.

And I tell myself that isn’t, I now know, the big time.

There is no big time.

There is only one hand-shake and conversation and hug after another, in rooms large and small, over meals grand and simple, with people who have, if this first night has been any indication, truly and wonderfully big hearts.

To learn more about The Story of Beautiful Girl, read an excerpt, see a video, and pre-order a copy, please check out my newly updated website, www.rachelsimon.com.