https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/15/your-new-first-name/#that-dagger-tho
'I was on a book tour the day my editor called me and told me, "From now on,
your middle name is 'Cory.'"
"That's weird. Why?"
"Because from now on, your first name is '
New York Times Bestselling
Author.'"
That was how I found out I'd hit the
NYT list for the first time. It was a
huge moment – just as it has been each subsequent time it's happened. First,
because of how it warmed my little ego, but second, and more importantly,
because of how it affected my book and all the books afterwards.
Once your book is a
Times bestseller, every bookseller in America orders
enough copies to fill a front-facing display on a new release shelf or a stack
on a bestseller table. They order more copies of your backlist. Foreign rights
buyers at Frankfurt crowd around your international agents to bid on your book.
Movie studios come calling. It's a huge deal.
My books became
Times bestsellers the old-fashioned way: people bought and
read them and told their friends, who bought and read them. Booksellers who
enjoyed them wrote "shelf-talkers" – short reviews – and displayed them
alongside the book.
That "From now on your first name is '
New York Times Bestselling Author' gag
is a tradition. When Wil Wheaton's memoir
Still Just A Geek hit the
Times
list, I texted the joke to him and he texted back to say John Scalzi had
already sent him the same joke (and of course, Scalzi and I have the same
editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden):
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/still-just-a-geek-wil-wheaton
But not everyone earns that first name the same way. Some people cheat.'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
