6/1/10
Today is the official publication date for The Secret Confessions of Anne Shakespeare–hooray! The book has already received several enthusiastic reviews, for which I am most grateful. Please check them out at:
http://genregoroundreviews.blogspot.com/2010/05/secret-confessions-of-anne-shakespeare.html
So, it is a good day, although I don’t have time to uncork a bottle of champagne. That’s because for some weeks now I have been fully occupied with the other half of a writer’s job: marketing. This includes setting up book signings and speaking appearances, writing guest blogs for other websites, prepping for radio interviews, and, in my case, contacting numerous Shakespeare organizations.
And lest anyone think this all sounds too commercial, I invite you to read the introduction to Shakespeare’s own First Folio, published by the efforts of his colleagues John Heminge and Henry Condell in 1623. Their preface includes a plea entitled “Epistle To The Great Variety Of Readers,” and in modern English it reads as follows:
“…the fate of all books depends upon your capacities and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. Well! It is now public, and you will stand for your privileges, we know: to read and censure. Do so, but buy it first…whatever you do, Buy.”
I couldn’t have said it better. The fate of my book is now in your hands.