Publishing a Book Is Hard on Your Mental Health

I’ve been a tiny bit self-congratulatory lately. For taking deep breaths, savoring each good thing on the path to my debut novel’s publication, and staying centered and healthy.

Maybe that mistaken confidence is why my career feels like it’s falling apart right now, just weeks before my book comes out. Despite my decade of experience as a small-press publisher, coaching more than twenty authors through this perilous prepublication tunnel, it turns out I’m as easily ruffled as anyone else.

Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary, a nineteenth-century historical fantasy, took fifteen years to write. Around this time last year, I signed a contract with Lanternfish Press of Philadelphia with one goal in mind: to enjoy each step of the publishing process.

On April 19—pub date!—my dreams will come true, and yet I know it’s just one more day, just one more step in the life of this book. I can hold both of those things at once: the idea of the dream and the list of potential disappointments that could puncture my buoyant spirits.

Or, rather, I thought I could. Up until a few days ago. But it turns out that just because I’ve helped others get through this stretch of time doesn’t mean I’m any less vulnerable to the pitfalls of throwing my private art into a public, commercial space to be judged. Or, arguably worse, to be ignored. To disappear quietly.

A book’s pending publication, despite all the to-dos and excitement, can be a really hard time. Juhea Kim’s debut novel, Beasts of a Little Land, was named a best book of 2021 by Harper’s Bazaar, Real Simple, Ms., and Portland Monthly, as well as being an indie-bookstore best seller and selling numerous foreign rights before (and after) publication. Praise also came in from The Today Show, The Washington Post, USA Today, Literary Hub, Chicago Review of Books, and many other outlets.

Even as the prepublication buzz rolled in, Juhea still worried.

“Publishing a book is so hard on your mental and physical health,” she said. “I couldn’t eat or sleep normally, and I lost a lot of weight. The sense of not having any control over your life is what makes publication so difficult. So I enjoyed what aspects I could control: I drank hot chocolate and took long walks every day. I lit candles (even in the morning) because it feels like nothing terrible could happen while a candle is burning! Then I found solidarity, understanding, and comfort from my fellow authors. Without their honesty and friendship, I wouldn’t have survived.”

Juhea’s insights match conversations I’ve had with my Forest Avenue authors as they inch along this precariously narrow chute of time: between before and after. It’s a difficult stretch because waiting takes patience and there’s so much we can’t control.

Before I became a publisher, I thought writing a good book would lead to success—an amorphous term that I imagined as a swirl of readers, autographs, and New York lunches. After starting Forest Avenue, I banished that hazy dream in favor of concrete metrics: reviews, face-out placements in bookstores, author interviews, articles, awards, lists, and sales. I swapped the idea of the power lunch in Manhattan with my editor for cozy brunches in Portland and Berkeley with my authors.

With the exception of excellent conversations over fancy pancakes and coffee, though, publishers can’t predict or control these external markers of success. We can tell people about our titles and coach our authors. We can try to place books in strategic spots. And we can build relationships with the media and booksellers. But there’s no guarantee those efforts will lead to dynamic sales, which means authors go from puzzling over every word, being wholly committed to the private worlds they’re building on the page, to having their emotional well-being hinge on outside attention that their publicity team can’t promise—if there even is a team. I’m it, for Forest Avenue: the in-house publicist in addition to my other roles. (Some small houses don’t even have one part-time person, though, let alone a dedicated group of full-time professionals like the bigger presses. Author Wendy J. Fox covers what that might mean for your book here.)

I’ve been trying to remember all this as I brace for consumer reviews, lists my novel isn’t on, and my first-week BookScan numbers. To anchor myself, I’ve been focusing on five concepts:

• Keep writing, especially on the hard days. When anxiety spins through your brain, try to anchor yourself by leaning into the work. That’s what you love, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here in the prepublication tunnel.

• Be creative in other aspects of your life. Take the time to cook a special meal. Pull out some old art supplies and play. Repaint the living room. Make gifts for friends. Creating in ways that are playful—and unrelated to commerce—can really lift your spirits.

• Talk with your writer friends. Especially those who have been there. They’ll offer words of encouragement and share stories so you don’t feel so alone.

• Honor what you have. Gratitude can be slippery in these days of waiting for the next review. When we get one piece of coverage, it’s easy to obsess over what might come next and then feel the letdown wave when your hopes are dashed. Instead of worrying about the next one when Publishers Weekly popped early, I told myself, Hurray! Publishers Weekly!

• Keep a healthy perspective. If your friends’ books are showing up on listicles and yours isn’t, remember that publicity is dictated by access to the list writers. If you get a bad consumer review, remember this shows your publisher is getting your book out there—not just to your friends and family, but to readers who aren’t connected to you. If you get one trade review but not the others, remember to say Hurray! instead of perseverating over what’s not there.

I thought I was doing okay with all of these techniques and plenty of encouragement from my amazing community of writer friends. The first few months of this year didn’t feel like bracing for pub date; they were part of the adventure leading toward my debut. But then a rejection came in—just another one out of many I’ve amassed over the years, no big deal—and it threw my seemingly solid attitude into free fall.

Maybe I shouldn’t be a writer, I decided. Maybe Singing Lessons for the Stylish Canary is my one chance, and then I should go back to nurturing other authors’ dreams. Put mine in the past. After all, having a novel in the world is something I can check off my list in April. Maybe this isn’t the beginning of my novelist career; maybe this is it, just one book.

This sudden storm of negativity made me realize, despite my best attempt to even-keel it through these precarious prelaunch weeks, that I’m not feeling that steady. Fear is coursing below the surface of everything. Despite knowing what this prelaunch time can be like, and guarding my happiness, I’m still feeling the churning froth of panic around what putting my words into the world will actually mean.

Liz Prato, author of the forthcoming Kids in America: A Gen X Reckoning (Santa Fe Writers Project), put it this way: “We can talk all we want about separating the art from the artist, and commerce from art, and blah blah blah . . . but art is from our soul. It is a part of us. And our art is commodified in a capitalist world, so of course we tie whether or not we sell a book into whether or not we’re loved.”

She nailed it. It took one rejection to make me feel unloved. To topple the careful structure I had built around my heart to keep it safe at a time of scary, public exposure. I went from feeling loved to feeling lost. And then it was a short hop from this one no—a no that was no bigger or smaller than any other rejection over the decades—to overreacting.

It shook me how quickly I shifted from savoring each moment to feeling that irrational flash flood of wanting to give up. But then I remembered something Forest Avenue author Ari Honarvar told me. Her debut novel, A Girl Called Rumi, was named a best book of 2021 by Kirkus Reviews, Locus Reviews, Undomesticated, and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Not only did Ari’s insights and perspective help me through my early stages of pandemic grief, but she’s also the first author I’ve worked with while being on the debut journey myself. Ever since I signed with Lanternfish, I’ve been following in Ari’s wake, seven months behind. I’ve talked strategy with her as a publisher and as a novelist. In response to one of my “how the book is doing” emails, Ari wrote:

It rings true that I don’t judge my success as a human/artist in accordance with the number of copies of the book sold, awards won or not won, or the number of people I’m helping or not helping. Receiving all the praise and notes from readers is absolutely beautiful and life-art-affirming. People’s response to my work with refugees and individuals is also incredible. But it occurs to me that I don’t measure myself with the accolades, admiration, and reader response either. My self-worth corresponds to whether I’m doing right by my relationships, with myself, others, nature, and the unknown—am I a worthy lover of life? I’m the only one who can answer this and if I’m not holding back love and effort as I proceed in life, the answer is a resounding yes.

So there it is: How to measure a life? Not by one rejection or by a trade review that doesn’t come through, but by how we spend our time. Singing Lessons took me fifteen years to write, and I finished three books before that, and in between I’ve had essays and poems published, plus I built an award-winning publishing house and I’ve kept it going through a global pandemic.

All those dreamy hours of creation matter. How I spend my time matters. These are within my control.

My breath slows as I honor Ari’s perspective and the hours I’ve put into writing and revising. The latest rejection folds itself small inside my heart. I’m going to walk the dog, then make myself a hot chocolate. Maybe light a candle, even though it’s morning. I want the light, because it will make me think of Juhea and all the other writers who have launched their debuts before me. And then I’m going to spend some time on my new novel. Open the file. See what’s there. Write a new paragraph. Then another. That’s how I want to live. Who I want to be. Candle burning, words bubbling through my fingers, hot chocolate on my lips.

I wish the same for you on your writing journey.

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