What is release week like?

I don't know about you, but hearing "behind the scenes" things about publishing is always interesting to me. Because of that I thought I would share with you what happened during my release week.

My name is Cassandra Carr, and my debut novel, Talk to Me, was released by Loose Id on March 22nd. The night before the release I received an e-mail from The Powers That Be at Loose Id congratulating me and wishing me many sales. The e-mail also had my author copies attached. Another e-mail went out on the Loose Id authors loop announcing all the releases for that week.

Then, around 12:30am on Tuesday I went into Loose Id's website and checked out the page with my book information. It was live! I got a little shot of adrenaline looking at that page and knowing that all my years of hard work were finally paying off. My book was published and hopefully people would be interested enough to buy it!

I went to bed, and when I got up the next day I checked out the various blogs and websites where my release information was located, and then spent the day flitting between Twitter, Facebook, those blogs/websites and trying to do my regular work. Needless to say, I didn't get a lot of writing done! It was so exciting to see people read the excerpts on the blogs and comment that the book looked interesting and they couldn't wait to read it! I responded to each comment (I was practically stalking these blogs and websites so no one had to wait long for a response to their comment, lol) and then finally left to go celebratory shopping with a friend.

On Wednesday things had calmed down a bit but I was appearing on another blog, so I watched that one closely so I could respond to comments. I was able to finish a newsletter that was on deadline for an April 1st publication, and even able to get some revisions done on my work-in-progress. All the while I wondered - is anybody buying my book? When will I see a review? Will it be a good review? When will I hear that someone read it?

On Thursday I checked Goodreads and the book was already tied to my Goodreads account. Someone had already marked it as "to be read" too - how awesome! Other than that Thursday and Friday passed much the same as other, non-release weeks. I revised my manuscript whenever I had time, hung out on Twitter, etc.

So there you have it. I don't know if that was interesting or not, but that's how it happened. I'm still waiting for reviews to come in and fretting. Because that's what an author does, whether they're releasing their first book or their thirtieth.