If Andy Warhol was right about everyone being famous for 15 minutes in the future, I think I’ve just about used up my allotment.
Yesterday my new novel, The Mother Daughter Show, was featured in The Washington Post‘s gossip column, The Reliable Source. There was even a nice photo of me, along with a larger photo of one of the buildings at Sidwell Friends, the school whose real-life Mother-Daughter Show inspired the novel.
People in DC may skip the business section of the Post, they may briefly skitter their eyes across the depressing national and international news, they may shy away from the Metro section, but a lot of them, it seems, make a bee-line for page two of the Style section, where The Reliable Source appears five days a week. The first congratulatory phone call came at 7 a.m., followed by a steady stream of emails from friends and acquaintances, some of whom I hadn’t heard from in many months.
I more or less expected that. After all, I rarely miss a day of The Reliable Source myself. Undoubtedly there are those who consider it little more than fluff. My husband, for instance. While he was thrilled with the item about me and the book, he allowed as how some people reading it might conclude that today was a slow news day. Obviously he hasn’t been paying much attention to the kinds of news items that ring The Reliable Source’s chimes.
For instance, I shared page C2 with items about who Alex Ovechkin is dating; what Michelle Obama ordered at a local restaurant the other night; and the filing of a legal separation petition by Kim Kardashian’s fleeting husband. Anyone who makes the Reliable Source their bread and butter is aware that there was nothing particularly slow about this news day. But my husband is the type of person who would have to ask who Kim Kardashian is (he has actually done this, on more than one occasion).
I’m well aware of the pull of gossip–or whatever you want to call it–on the human imagination. (Right now I’m working on a novel that is partly about that, and it’s set in 1807.) And frankly, at 7:30 in the morning I often find it a lot easier to absorb information about Michelle Obama’s restaurant order (swordfish sliders, sounds good!) than about the latest development in the European debt crisis, although I always promise myself I’ll get to that eventually.
Still, I was brought up a little short yesterday when I was signing my mother out of her assisted living facility and the receptionist greeted me with a broad smile and the words, “I read about you in the paper today!” Then, when I got to my mother’s dentist’s office–which also happens to be my dentist’s office–the staff greeted me by waving the torn-out page from the Post, which they apparently were considering affixing to the wall. (I believe the page has actually been posted on the wall of an organization where I’m a regular volunteer.) Now that’s fame!
It would have been nice, of course, if all this attention could have been translated into book sales before the next edition of Reliable Source appeared and relegated me to my usual state of obscurity. But late yesterday afternoon–on the very day The Mother Daughter Show was supposed to be released–I discovered that Amazon in its wisdom had declared the book to be “out of print” and “unavailable.” You can download the Kindle version, but you can’t even order the print version!
Amazon, I’ve discovered, moves in mysterious–and no doubt robotic, non-malicious–ways. But if someone actually wanted to sabotage my book sales, this would be an excellent way to do it. My publisher is working on correcting this glitch–which, of course, involves emailing someone in India and waiting for a reply, which so far has not arrived. (Apparently, as of the morning of December 2, we’ve made some progress: Amazon now says that the book will “ship in 1-2 months” and warns that it will arrive after the holidays. Not true: plenty of books on hand!)
In the meantime, anyone who would like to buy a print version of the book can easily do so at the website of my publisher, fuzepublishing.com. Or you can buy one of the e-versions: Kindle, Nook, and possibly others as well.
Or, if you’re feeling particularly hostile to technology at the moment–as I confess I am–you could just walk into an actual bookstore and buy a book off the shelf. If you live in Northwest DC, that is. Because as far as I know, the only actual bookstore that’s stocking The Mother Daughter Show is the excellent one in my own neighborhood, Politics & Prose. By all means, patronize it!