Yesterday, I posted my first unboxing video to social media. I found the whole process a little weird, but also exciting, obviously, since I was opening my box of author copies that my publisher had sent. I should say, 10 are free author copies and the rest were happily bought at my author discount so I’ll have some to give away and to sell at events where I can’t work with a bookstore.
You’ll notice from the package label, if you can make it out, that the books were shipped from Barclay Press. That’s the parent company of my publisher Fernwood Press, which focuses on poetry. Barclay Press is a Quaker press, and publishes mostly nonfiction, as I understand it. My publisher, Eric Muhr, works with both.
The only thing unnerving about the unboxing was recording video with my phone with one hand while using the box cutter to open the box with the other and also narrating what I was doing. I guess I can walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time, sort of, though I don’t know if I was terribly eloquent while doing so or perfect with my camera work. If raw and unscripted is the vibe you should be going for in an unboxing video, then I guess I got that right.
The exciting part was seeing my books in the flesh for the first time. That is a moment every author savors. All the work of many years, including the multiple revisions — in this book’s case, revisions brought on both by submitting to publishers through multiple rounds and by the events that took place in the intervening years, including the loss of my mother this year — has finally come to fruition.
As exciting as it is to see a book, though, it is even more exciting to hold it in your hand, to feel the heft of its 106 pages, and to feel the texture of the cover and the pages as you flip through them. It’s not like I have to read each page to know what is in the book; I’ve reread it multiple times in recent days when proofreading, and of course I’ve read every poem many, many times while working through revisions.
I have to thank Fernwood Press for the remarkable job they’ve done with the book’s design. They are incredibly thoughtful and creative, and I couldn’t be happier with my choice of publisher and their choice of me as a poet to add to their list. It’s been fabulous working with them so far, and I look forward to working with them throughout the life of this book.
If anyone wants to watch the video, here it is from Instagram. If there is a criticism of my technique, it is probably that the only part of me that gets in the frame are my hands (or left hand, actually). That may be for the best, though. For now, let the the focus be on the book.
Kendall Dunkelberg 