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COVID-19

Launching in the time of COVID

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Launching a book into the world can be a strange and surreal experience at the best of times, but launching a book into a pandemic just got a whole lot stranger. Authors have been forced to adjust to new technologies and ways of engaging with readers, and reconcile themselves to the fact that events are now all via a screen. So I asked three authors how their recent book releases compare with their previous books — back when we were all naïve and thought pandemics belonged only in novels. Laura Elvery, Elizabeth Tan and Mirandi Riwoe share the best and the worst of their book babies going out during the time of COVID.

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Laura Elvery
In the week after Ordinary Matter came out, my sister and I drove to Brisbane bookshops following an itinerary my publicist had organised. I don’t remember doing this for my first book. It was new to head into a shop and try to non-awkwardly introduce myself. It was new to sign piles of books and try to note all the locations of stacks around the shop. And the whole time sanitising, sanitising, sanitising. (Also new was somebody at one of the shops saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you had COVID because then you would have taken down all the bookstores in town?’ INDEED! A good joke!)

Strangely, I felt both a little more armoured than I did with my first book (a thicker skin, no newborn baby strapped to my chest, less time on my hands now to fret) but also less armoured (turns out some people actually knew I’d written a book and were waiting for it). In late February 2018 I was about 38 weeks pregnant. The launch for Trick of the Light was this incredibly fun party with 100 people, and it was, for me, all about making it to the event in one piece. A week or so either side and I’d have to reschedule. Look at photos of me that night and I’m just beaming — I’d made it. One week later my son made it into the world too. I sat up in the hospital bed with a stack of copies that Avid Reader had sent along for signing, my baby asleep beside me.

On zooming: disconnected connection

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In the crazy COVID land of 2020, Zoom has emerged as king. I now have online editorial meetings with publishers and authors, and attend book launches, book clubs, writerly drinks, literary festivals and events, all via Zoom. In some ways it’s connected me with the literary community more than ever before, allowing me to flit all around Australia. I can cram in a book launch over dinner, or an in-conversation event while waiting in the car during my son’s basketball practice (restrictions are fun, hey?). But I miss being in the room with people — seeing their faces (in 3D instead of on a flat screen!), drinking a glass of wine, and generally soaking up the good vibes from being among bookish folk.

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Listening to Tegan Bennett Daylight in my car while my son played basketball

The same goes for workshops. I recently ran an online course on The Art of Self-Editing Fiction over three weekends and it was an interesting experience. I’m used to reading the room through people’s body language, eye contact and the general level of energy. With Zoom that’s all gone. Yes, people appear on screen in Brady Bunch-like rectangles, but as the host you only get to see a few of them. What’s more, in order for participants to feel like you’re engaging and looking directly at them, you need to look at the camera. This means that the gallery of participants is not actually in your sightline. And then there’s your slide show and the chat function to manage.

On the up side, because the sessions were spread out over three weeks, the participants were able to exchange emails with me during the week which meant that I got to know a little about them and their writing. It can’t replace chatting with participants in the room, but it was something. And the breakout rooms are a great feature. They enabled me to split all the participants up into pairs so that they could give feedback on the first three pages of each other’s novels face to face. So there have been pluses and minuses, but the feedback on the workshops has been wonderful, which is heartening.