The book is out – now what?

Sunday 28 June 2026: the momentous date when our book, our story launched out into the big wide world! 

Why was it a Sunday? I don’t know, my publishers told me that was the date, generated by an automated timeline I’m sure, and despite a few minor threats of delays all the deadlines were met and out it came, right on schedule.

The build-up was quite exciting. There were pre-orders by lovely friends and family across a range of booksellers – and countries too. There was the website creation and go-live, which I could then send to friends and family, and add to our social media profile. Seeing the ebook manuscript on my own Kindle and phone app was quite a moment too. 

Then the boxes arrived… 

Our book, right here in our hands. It was quite a moment! 

Watching our son pick up a copy, sit back on the sofa and flick through it was nothing short of magical. He was very concerned to make sure people knew that his name had been changed: he asked us to make sure his Grandad knew ‘about Marcus’. We assured him that everybody definitely knew this, and everybody we know who reads it will know that it’s him! 

Once the book was available for instant purchase, we set about sending “book launch announcement” emails to adoption agencies and support organisations. This is one of our core audiences: professionals who work in adoption, who continue their reading and research and staying up to date with adoption narratives in all formats as part of the ongoing professional development. 

Crucially, these individuals and their organisations also curate reading lists for wannabe adopters – the other half of our primary audience. If the agencies and organisations like it, they will recommend it, and this is definitely how we started our search when we wanted to know a bit more or felt we hadn’t read anything like this for a while. 

It was a shot in the dark, sending messages out into the ether, and unlike social media we didn’t get to see or hear any tangible response in the short term. This made us think hard about our next round of communications… 

Then the reviews started to trickle in. Friends and family told us when they’d read it, and that they loved it! I mean, of course they said nice things. They weren’t going to say tell us they thought it was rubbish, were they?! It was heartwarming to receive their comments and compliments, and to get that slow-burn feeling that our story is out in the world now, in all its guts and glory. 

As we’ve written this under pseudonyms, we aren’t having a big publicity-orientated launch campaign with parties and sales pushes. Interest in this kind of book is at best ‘niche’ and at worst very limited, so the usual advice to partner with your local bookshop and library and build a local writer profile don’t really apply. Seeing ‘only 4 copies in stock, more coming soon’ on the Amazon page was amazing. Until it moved to ‘only 5 copies in stock’, where it stayed. 

And then – well, nothing. 

It all just went quiet, only a few weeks – not even a month – after the big publication date.

Writer friends tell us that this is very normal, and their experience too. After all the months of frantic and time-sensitive work, and the joy of the book being printed and prepared and ready for everyone else, it does often all go quiet for a bit. And so we take solace from this at least. In a world where we are often wondering what is ‘normal’, apparently this is. So now we will put our energies into thinking about what’s next… and our next blog post too!