Self promotion?

Confession. I have spent a lot of last week in book promotion. Yes, I want it to sell -- and yes I want people to like it too, which may not be quite as closely connected to sales as one would like to think. There are, sadly, loads of wonderful books, brilliantly reviewed which actually sell in trivial numbers, and other which sell in their thousands but no one ever reads. How many people actually finished even the first chapter of A Brief History of Time?

So I started the week with Start the Week. It gets 2 million listeners so is probably the biggest audience who’ll ever get to hear abut the book. For that reason, it’s also pretty terrifying – and seems more so when you’ve left Cambridge at 6.00 in the morning to make absolutely sure you can get there for 8.30. I thought we were a motley crew of guests honestly, talking on some not entirely sexy subjects. Climate change in China and the role of the Commonwealth can usually be guaranteed to make even a worthy Radio 4 audience glaze over, I fear. The Roman Triumph I suppose seemed quite jolly in comparison. But what is more, everyone had a ghastly cold . . . so it felt a bit as if it was being broadcast from a sanatorium.

Did it sell the book? To judge from Amazon’s rating – yes, a bit.

Then there were the launch parties: one in a really great location in Greek St (perfect place to have a Triumph party…geddit?) and the other in our friendly neighbourhood bookshop in Cambridge. Memory of these is predictably a bit fuzzy. It felt rather like being the birthday girl at a kid’s party: hostess behaviour started off pretty well…but after an hour or so decorum lapsed and the rest is history. The best bit in Cambridge  was that some undergraduates had got to hear of it and just turned up. I don’t think they realised how flattering that felt.

Then of course there were the reviews . . .

More than anyone, I should be pretty calm about this. After all, I spend a big part of my life commissioning, editing and publishing reviews, and I know that they are simultaneously very important and of little significance in the great order of books’ success. 

That said,  I can’t read a new review of my own stuff without the prop of a stiff drink (so this has been a very bad week for “units” as we now call them). And even then, I can’t read them straight through.  I take a look at the start, then at the end—and on that basis I try to work out what has gone on in between. If the last paragraph starts ‘despite’ (as in ‘despite all these faults, not a bad book), my heart goes to my boots.

So far, I’ve done pretty well, and pretty luckily. There was a great piece in the Sunday Times. I was particularly taken by Allan Massie’s review in the Literary Review (sorry not on the internet). I am a great admirer of Massie’s prose, but I honestly don’t much like his novels about the Roman empire, and indeed said so pretty publicly on one occasion. So I was especially taken when he said he liked what I’d written. It’s a generous man who gives the thumbs up to someone who has given him the thumbs down.

But, don’t worry, it hasn’t gone to my head! Partly because of the little torrent of bile poured over me by Freddy Raphael in the Spectator. If you are heartily fed up of this blog, and Beard’s obsession with her book, then I am confident you will enjoy this one. Quite what I did to deserve it, I’m not sure.

Comments

[Tony Francis]

Dearest Foska, The Guardian link concerning the book in question gives the following excerpt: "'I love witty word play,' he purred. Well you're going to hate this book then, Francesca thought."
-- 'nuff said about this "work of art". After reading the dialogue, it seems the main character should consider taking a cold shower, and quit bothering us. Another novel I won't be reading.

[Mary]

Thanks Foska, It is, I am pleased to say, the very same F Raphael, m

[SW Foska]

Is the Frederic Raphael who reviewed your book the same Frederic Raphael whose fictional opus is being mocked in today's Guardian? If so, I thought you might enjoy the link (if you didn't write it yourself, that is):
http://books.guardian.co.uk/digestedread/story/0,,2229228,00.html

[Jackie]

Forget the Raphael review - have you seen the Peter Heather one in The BBC History Magazine? Your book is the 'Pick of the Month' and he calls it an 'arresting and highly readable new book.' The phrase I particularly like is 'As Beard's cheerfully iconoclastic discussion of the evidence convincingly demonstrates, however, this assumption is unwarranted.' It's just the sort of review that would make me want to go out and buy the book - if I hadn't bought it already!

[felicity]

Mary, I thought your bit was the most interesting part of Start the Week!

[paul potts]

Raphael presents himself as a dissenting "tribune". But were not tribunes elected? Even after Augustus? I am just asking, because aristocratic sneering of this kind, sounds more like the "novus homo" Cicero than the tribunes, at least in Shakespeare's Coriolanus.

Raphael does not get my vote, at least on this one.

Paulo

[Helen]

I may just be being perverse but Rapael's review made me decide to add the book to my Christmas list.

[paul potts]

Dear Mary

I'd love to acquire your book.Sounds a snip at the price. The trouble is that Amazon will no longer send consignments to Swaziland, even by courier, which is hardly more expensive than airmail if the order is large, and much easier to deal with here. I did manage, after a great deal of work, to send a complaint, but received an email reply obviously sent from from India, that I must have been ordering from their other shops, some of whom do not send to some countries. The email, of course, did not permit a reply. I think there are other organisations that can do better, but setting that up will take another day and a half.

Paulo

[Irene Hahn]

Mary, I'm happy to report that I found an ad for your book yesterday in the December issue of The Atlantic magazine, with a blurb from Robert Harris' review.

[Alex Welby]

I thought Raphael's comments just embarrassed him. If I understand it, one of the points of the book is how little we can securely reconstruct of the triumph, e.g. the presence of the slave in the chariot, yet Raphael happily quotes the example of the slave (definitely) being in the chariot, which suggests that he might not even have read beyond the first few pages. The Speccie should at least check their reviews.

What is so bad about not citing Veyne's book ? It doesn't have much to do directly with triumphs. Raphael seems to have read Mary's book with Eyes Wide Shut.

[dr venables preller]

It might be thought by some possibly to be an error to associate the book overly with the 'general reader,' rather than those interested by analogy of ancient and modern evolutionary statism and politick, or simply a jolly good read.

Whilst many could fall into the former category, few might wish to be thought so, and for those otherwise attracted by by the possibility of a different, unusual or unique perspective it could carry the unwelcome implication of a shelf full of 'Condensed Books' and coffee-table yardage.

I look forward to reading the book, but I would first like to finish Gibbon, Tacitus and others in the e-book section of the pda to establish my needed perpective, which is currently tinted by memories of pleasurably thoughtful trips to the former Pitt-Rivers museum at Tollard Royal.

[Irene H.]

How dare you, Mary, write in the post-modern style (whatever that is) and have no respect for Roman male achievements! Shame on you! ;-)

Mr. Raphael seems to have a problem with female authors. He must have speed-read the book, merely glancing over your "deconstructionist" arguments.

[Tony Francis]

There is another connection between the Latin of Mary's book, the Latin generally posted on this blog, and the Rykener case. It involves those of us who have been self- taught in Latin. This is a nice case to read where the English and Latin are side-by-side. Hence, it is a kind of Rosetta Stone of Latin to English translation. I enjoyed doing the translating. It is also of interest from the stand point of the common law. This is a rare bird of a case from that time. In jurisdictional terms, it should have been in the Church Court. Therefore, it raises as many questions as it answers. What was it doing in this court to begin with? And finally, there is no answer given about the resolution of the case. It is a "Classic", and a "Classic problem"; albeit one in the study of the common law. If this blog is only going to be about Latinists quoting Latin phrases back and forth, it really won't be all that appealing to most of us.

[Mary]

Anthony. It's a tricky one. The boundary is not between fiction and non-fiction... more between books that (however specialist in theme) can be made interesting to the 'general reader', and those that cant. Obviously that's a judgement call...and sometimes we do carry very specialist things because we see a way to bridge the gap between specialist and non. It can be high risk. But thats what I like about the tls..
Ferdy Mount was the last editor before Peter Stothard.. I guess his judgement call cae down against. And better a firm decision...

[Mary]

Truth be told, I didnt think it was hugely relevant, but...
I usually draw the line at the obviously spam ads, or the obviously defamatory. If it has a tangential link, well.. I'm a generous soul, m

[Tony Francis]

Michael Bulley, I can understand your confusion about the cross-dressing post. In fact, it confuses me, and I'm the one who posted it. Rest assured, the cross dressing reference doesn't refer to you. Nor does it involve my own self promotion, nor the promotion of cross dressing. It is simpler than that. I ran across the 1395 case while researching the Statute Quia Emptores. It was just too good not to post. But the question remained: just where to post it? I chose this entry, because the case was originally written in Latin, and Mary's book is about, inter alia, Latin, and Latin subjects. If this seems a stretch, I plead guilty (but not to cross dressing). In the end, the Cambridge Classics Professor did decide to post it. Sorry for the confusion!

[Michael Bulley]

Maybe I'm being picky or maybe my eyes have gone funny. Just above my couplet of Nov 16, there is a comment from Tony Francis about a cross-dressing London prostitute. Now, I've read through "Self-promotion?" again and all the comments appended to it, and I can't see anything a comment about cross-dressing could follow from or be prompted by. Anyone got an answer or was it just a by-the-by comment?

[Jonah]

Mr Raphael should stick to fiction. His novels are not bad, but he knows much less than he thinks he does about ancient Greece and Rome.
Dont let the bugger get you down, Mary.. I've started your Triumph and am much enjoying it so far!

[Judith Weingarten]

Annette says that the bilious review was 'all about them', not about you. Wasn't it Oscar Wilde who advocated book reviewing as a good way of talking about oneself? (And wasn't this cited recently in the TLS?)

Visit Zenobia's blog Empress of the East

[Tony Francis]

An interesting common law case of a cross-dressing London prostitute in London from 1395 AD/BCE/ADE(Foska?) is found:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1395rykener.html
The case is interesting on several levels. It is the kind of case which is rare in common law from this time. Most cases of this type were found in the Church Courts, and the records from that era have been destroyed. According to the testimony (which is in both English and Latin), the cross dresser was admittedly a switch hitter. There is also some unsavory testimony implicating some Franciscans and a Carmelite. As Aquinas wrote: "The world has no fear of chastity, since so few will follow it." It seems a certain woman named Anna taught the accused all the vice he came to practice.

[Michael Bulley]

ut quadringentae quadraginta octo legantur
chartae lectores undique mille uoco.

[Richard]

Not a torrent, just a dribble...
And if your detractors compare you to Syme, you must be doing ok. I notice that Raphael doesn't actually object to anything very tangible (except omission of Veyne from bibl.: tut tut!).
BMCR is, in my opinion, the one that the most pro. classicists will notice when it comes:
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/
Best wishes,
Richard

[Katharine]

I'm going to have to read it now to find out whether it really is all about feminism as Raphael seems to think, or if Mary's just guilty of Writing a Book Whilst Being a Woman.

[Sean]

Mary,
I think you needn't worry about someone who criticizes you for overwrought prose style and yet can speak of 'thrice-laurelled Pompey' and who manages to overwork a metaphor quite as badly as he does in the last paragraph ('train of amici'???!!!)

I am looking forward to reading the book. Hope it sells really well.

[Annette Laing]

Hi, Mary:
I read Raphael's review with a depressing sense of familiar territory. His railing against you as a post-modernist and feminist who writes in cliches, and his wistful evocation of his old undergraduate mentor, speak volumes, not about your book, but about the critic. As a friend and fellow historian often observes: "It's not about you. It's all about them."
I'm no classicist (That's an understatement: I'm a colonial American historian), but the best advice I have is both in Latin and a cliche: Illegitimi non carborundum. Hope I spelled that right. :-)

[anthony alcock]

What does the "literary" in TLS refer to ? Fiction possibly belongs to the world of "letters". What about non-fiction ? Or has postmodernism simply rendered the difference between the two imaginary ? I once asked the TLS if they might be interested in a review of a book that had been given to me by the author: "Manichaeism in the later Roman Empire and Medieval China", published in Germany. I was told by someone called Mount that it was not suitable material for the TLS. On the other hand, my translation of Giovanni Filoramo's book on Gnosis was reviewed in the TLS (by Keith Hopkins, who was flattering about both the book and my translation). Even if there is no clear line between literary and non-literary, does the TLS have a policy ?