A book is like any item you might have sitting around the house. I’m looking at a chair right now: Someone spends time making the chair. Someone then puts the chair up for sale. You buy the chair, use it, and eventually sell it, give it away, or throw it out.
A book is like a chair in all these ways. Just another household item collecting dust. But there’s something the book has that the chair doesn’t have. It’s an effect.
In the five and a half years since my book was born as an idea, it’s been mostly lodged in the protective casing of my brain. Trusted friends have given feedback, but all geared toward making it better. Now that my book is out, a switch has flipped. It’s out of my control for the first time.
So it has brought something new: People who I did not handpick to read the book have aired their opinions. Friends, acquaintances, journalists, and sources have weighed in with what they think. In a couple cases as I’ve talked with people, I’ve heard in their voices an emotional response to the material. They’re struggling with the culpability of the characters. They’re excited by the plot. They’re enraged by the hypocrisy. Having read the words, they have no choice but to grapple with them.
☝️ The stock at Park Road Books, in Charlotte ☝️
In this way, both parties cede control: I can no longer alter the ideas. The reader can no longer opt out of being exposed to them. Before I read Lonesome Dove, I was free of that world. I didn’t have to reserve brain space for those characters. After I read it, I no longer had that choice. They’ll live with me forever. When you read a book, it enters your bloodstream. This is the effect that the chair doesn’t have.
For an author, observing this phenomenon can be gratifying. You hear people wrestling with the same issues you did, coming to similar conclusions, and changing their minds. One of my favorite newsletter writers, Matt Brown at Extra Points, wrote an edition on my book. To see him take the book’s lessons and develop them in a new and different context, that’s a good feeling.
But the author has to accept that this won’t always be the case. In creating a space for conversation around your ideas, you have to accept some readers will reject them. This morning, INDY Week published a largely critical review of my book as leaving out a critical voice: that of the college athletes themselves.
(As the reviewer notes, this was a choice I made and was explicit about early in the book. In centering university employees as the major characters, I hoped to illustrate what I saw as a somewhat novel and critical angle: how investment in big-time sports compromises the missions and reputations of the colleges themselves. The reviewer argues that this could be done more effectively by centering athletes’ voices. This is a fair criticism.)
Friends, I’m not gonna lie: It stings. But you can’t take the praise without welcoming the criticism.
Book Tour Update!
Walking into a bookstore and seeing your book displayed on the counter is a great feeling. Telling the cashier that you’re the author of that book and you’re there for the event is also a great feeling.
On Monday I had my first event, at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books. It was so cool to see about 20 people come out on a Monday and during a pandemic to listen, ask questions, and talk to me about Discredited.
☝️ The scene Monday at Quail Ridge, in Raleigh. Those heads in the foreground belong to my friends Sueanna and Joe ☝️
Thanks to The Assembly for sponsoring, and to John Drescher for moderating. It was a blast.
Tonight, you have the chance to see me talk! I’ll be appearing virtually in a book-launch event by Park Road Books, in conversation with the fantastic Pam Kelley (who I got to know because she subscribed to this newsletter!). It’s going to be a great conversation; I can just feel it.
I really hope to see you on my computer screen! Register here. Already know a question you want to ask? You can go ahead and email it to events@parkroadbooks.com.
But that’s not all! One lucky attendee will win a special Discredited coffee mug, so I’d say you can’t lose by showing up.
Charlotte readers: I’ll be in the actual Park Road Books store for a meet-and-greet between 3 and 5 pm today! Come out and talk to me. I’ll have stickers to give out and a good attitude.
A final note: I’ve gotten texts and emails from a bunch of you saying your book has been delayed by Amazon. I’m trying to figure out what the issue is. In the meantime, I know that the Kindle version works, if that’s something you can do. And I believe you shouldn’t have any problem ordering from the press’s website, if that’s something you’d like to do. Stay tuned!
— Andy
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