Scene of the Every Vow You Breakmass market paperback launch party

Every Vow You Break is now available in mass market paperback. Up until now it has only been published as a trade paperback.

Trade paperback is the larger format, shorter run, more expensive paperback – the type that is difficult to fit into normal bookshelves – that many publishers produce several months earlier than mass market. There has also been a Kindle edition of Every Vow You Break, but current practice is to keep the price rather high to match the more expensive trade paperback. Now the mass market paperback is out, the price has gone commensurately right down.

The idea behind the staggered publication is that the trade paperback generates reviews, buzz and is there for people who just can’t wait for the cheaper version. It works, but it is a strange state to be in for an author. The launch party of Every Vow You Break was at the trade paperback publication, which is right and good, because it is the first proper public outing (proper because proof copies – which look very like proper paperbacks – were circulated a couple of months or so previously). And it was a lovely party, at Goldsboro Books.

Not many trade paperbacks make it into high street or supermarket outlets – not in any great quantities. So you have your book out, but (unless you’re a notable exception) you don’t see it very often, and not all that many people have read it. Hopefully, though, the trade paperback is doing its work and generating interest and press, so that when someone sees the mass market paperback in Tesco they’ll have an awareness of it and they’ll put it in the trolley, on top of the weekly shop.

I’m looking forward to getting back from this arduous month of Greek island research for novel #4 (more about that later…) to find my new book on shelves in WH Smith, Waterstones and Tesco – where it will be in store from 16th August at just £3.86 or part of the 2 for £7 deal – as well as in my favourite indie bookshops Kemp Town Bookshop and City Books in Brighton & Hove and, of course Amazon.

So, for the author and most readers, the really important launch is the mass market paperback. But it seems rarely to be celebrated in any way other than another slice of your advance arriving in your bank account – and don’t get me wrong, that’s party enough!

So how did I celebrate the mass market publication of Every Vow You Break? A bottle of Retsina (€1.50) with the Old Man on the terrace of the little house we were renting in Corfu. Then we jumped in the sea.

Admittedly a little private. But no better way, really.