It was officially published a few days ago, in fact, and I got official notification of this from the publishers on Tuesday. That in itself was a bit of a relief as the day before I'd replied to an email asking me for my bank details so that they could PAY me, and a small part of me wondered if it could have been some incredibly niche SCAM, with crimelords targetting unwitting Academic Authors. So far this has not been proven to be the case, but I am on my guard.
Apart from that worry I have been in a slight DAZE about the whole thing, as it doesn't quite seem realy. I guess this will change when I eventually get an actual proper physical COPY of it, but for now I have the above weblink and a PDF, which is very nice but not hugely dissimilar to various versions I've had for the past few months.
In many respects it is thus HUGELY SIMILAR to an old-fashioned ALBUM Release Day, as that is also the culmination of months - YEARS - of effort, including the same sort of struggles with gatekeeprs and especially production companies, only to end with the vague feeling that Something Has Happened. It's also similar to Album Release Day because I've been sending out a SLEW of emails to tell people about it, to which LOVELY replies have been accrued. That bit's been very nice!
On top of that there's also an air of WAITING. When an album or similar comes out there's hopefully a gradual trickle of people playing it on the radio and people buying it online, followed (if the ROCK ADMIN has been carried out properly) by some GIGS. For the BOOK it is kind of the same, with the online book launch next month (register now!) but not so much SALE$ as a) that part is nothing to do with me and b) it's likely to be only libraries actually BUYING it at the moment, and it will take WEEKS if not longer for them to start doing it. Any REVIEWS will also take AGES, as people will need to sit and READ it!
I'm trying to continue this comparison further by trying to get some PUBLICITY going, with facebook posts and trying to get some COVERAGE, and if there's anybody out there reading this who EITHER would like to talk to me about it on their podcast/website/network television spectacular OR knows a contact in same who MIGHT, then do please let me know. It's taken me about seven years to get to this point, and I'd like to have a good old go at getting people to actually READ it now it's finished!
