Losing Steam: the Pros and Cons of Launching Two Books back-to-back

By Jennifer Lang

Six months after signing a contract for my first book with a small, independent press, I held my breath, crossed all ten fingers, and submitted my second manuscript to them. After an OFFER OF PUBLICATION email arrived in my inbox a few months later, I was overcome by a mixture of joy and panic. Two years and dozens of rejections into the submission process, I signed on the virtual line. 

In the weeks that followed, I floated. When anyone asked about my writing life, I beamed. After obtaining my MFA and growing my creative writing studio, I saw this as next step, a natural progression. For six years, I’d been working hard, publishing personal essays and stand-alone memoir pieces at a clipped pace, marching toward this fictive finish line.

But, as the countdown to publication began and everything I’d been watching my peers do from afar crept closer, a steep learning curve started: blurbs, endorsements, jacket cover, trailer, ARC, galleys, sell sheets, reviews, interviews, podcasts. For each one, I created an Excel spreadsheet, renaming every page for a different purpose: lit pubs, Jewish pubs, virtual events, live links, book groups, book purchase, Israel (where I live), US (where I’m from), New York (where we raised kids), California (where I was raised). 

I assumed the role of publicist from the get-go. Aside from the exorbitant price tag of hiring one, I reasoned that no one knows where I’ve been and who I know better than me. And, because I live abroad and navigate time differences and multi-city itineraries all the time, I felt competent and comfortable managing it. 

A year before my first book’s release, I reached out to MFA peers, camp friends, college friends, childhood friends, former colleagues, friends from our years on the west coast (Oakland), friends from our years on the east coast (White Plains). I composed emails, introducing myself, my book, my bio, my book’s cover, my book’s links, areas of expertise and program options, asking if they could introduce me to any relevant or potentially interested contacts. I zoomed with anyone who requested it and followed every potential lead. From January until September 18, 2023, when I flew from Tel Aviv to San Francisco, I spent Sunday through Thursday at my desk with laser focus and intense purpose. 

But now, only six weeks before my second book release, I feel overwhelmed, possibly akin to what a pregnant woman feels giving birth to a second child soon after the first like Irish Twins. Everything—body and mind—feels exhausted. The effort to keep book #1 afloat and promote the second is extraordinary. The learning curve still kicks and screams. 

Publishing two books within 13 months is an author’s embarrassment of riches. But it’s also too much, too soon. 

If you’ve got more than one book brewing at the same time and wondering how to proceed, check out the pros and cons of birthing two books back-to-back:

Pros

• Awash in the momentum 
• Thriving on the adrenaline rush
• Smarter and savvier about certain aspects of the experience like contests

Cons

• Surpassed the acceptable number of favors of friends and readers
• Learned that many organizations/podcasts/journals do not host/feature the same speaker two years in a row
• Lost sleep due to restless mind and overexcitement and book-related anxiety
• Consumed/dominated my creative writing time  

In hindsight, if I knew then what I know now, I would have asked the publisher to push the publication date of the second book by a year. To recharge my weary bones. To bask in the afterglow of the first book. To flex my atrophied writing muscles in between. To distance myself from one of the more Ego experiences of my life. 

But persistent and resistant and resilient, I am in it now, to the end, and am open to literary love and advice and wisdom from here to eternity.  

—

Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer Lang lives in Tel Aviv, where she runs Israel Writers Studio. Her prize-winning essays appear in Baltimore Review, Under the Sun, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and served as an Assistant Editor at Brevity. Her first book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature, will be followed by Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses (10/15/2024) both with Vine Leaves Press. Places is a Finalist in the Foreword Reviews awards, Wishing Shelf book awards, American Book Annual Best Book Awards, and in the IAN Book of the Year Awards 2023.

LANDED: A YOGI’S MEMOIR IN PIECES AND POSES

“Lyrical. Poignant. Funny. Captures the essence of living as a perpetual outsider in Israel.” Sarah Tuttle-Singer, author of Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered

American-born Jennifer traces her journey-both on and off the yoga mat-reckoning with her adopted country (Israel), midlife hormones (merciless), cross-cultural marriage (to a Frenchman) and their imminent empty nest (a mixed blessing), eventually realizing the words her yoga teachers had been offering for the past twenty-three years: root down into the ground and stay true to yourself. Finally, she understands that home is about who you are, not where you live. Written in experimental chapterettes, Landed spans seven years (and then some), each punctuated with chakra wisdom from nationally-acclaimed Rodney Yee, her first teacher.

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