A few days after the initial Premiere for the [The Promised Queen], the second Premiere was held at the Regency Village Theatre at 961 Broxton Ave in the heart of Westwood.
Niall, as expected, attended the event.
At the same time, the laydown date for [The Token of Fate] had arrived.
A common term in the publishing industry and often confused with the publication date by the general public and sometimes even industry professionals, the laydown date usually referred to the strict, strategic, and synchronized release date on which a newly published book becomes available for sale in all retail channels simultaneously.
Typically, this kind of tactic was usually employed for blockbuster titles to maximize the marketing impact and build hype and anticipation from their usually large readerbase.
At the same time, it also did a good job of leveling the playing field for retailers--especially the larger stores--from gaining an unfair advantage since they usually preordered copies and had them in their inventories earlier than most independent stores.
Retailers too, usually were smart enough to not covertly sell it as a strict embargo was usually in place to prevent them from doing so.
Yet, despite the [Token of Fate] being an unknown title, Feyre Publications had gone all in, employing the very same tactic to market the book.
In fact, alongside having a couple well-known influencers promote the book on their platforms, they had equally contacted the New York Times to pitch the book onto their ’bestselling list’.
Unfortunately, since the struggling publication company wasn’t amongst the much bigger ones, the renowned organization had simply ignored the pitch, leaving Feyre Publications to invest their resources somewhere else.
After all, landing on the bestsellers list wouldn’t exactly increase the book sales in the grand scheme of things.
Rather, it was just a title of sorts that seemed to give the book some metric of critical acclaim whilst equally sounding fancy to the general public.
But for the true reading enthusiasts, they knew better than to trust it.
To that effect, John Sanders, a middle-aged literature professor who worked as a part-time instructor at the University of California, walked into a small bookstore located somewhere on Telegraph Avenue that sold both old and new books.
A regular at the bookshop, the bookstore owner, Larry, greeted him upon entry with a familiar smile;
"Ah, John. Always a pleasure to have you,"
"Haven’t seen you in a hot minute though? You been busy?" he curiously asked whilst leaning on the counter from across him.
"Yeah. Had to travel down to New York for a while," John replied with a warm smile and then added;
"I, uh, ... I now have a grandson. Was named Danny, if you’ll believe me."
To that, Larry burst into a hearty laughter.
Then he spoke a few second after;
"That’s great news! Is he as spunky as our Danny boi though?"
Danny was a teenage delinquent who worked part-time at the store. Although the boy had a good heart, he was frequently known for always getting into trouble in the neighborhood.
He also hated reading novels in general. Called it a waste of time to read something with no pictures. Comic books were more up his forte.
"Very spunky," John on the other hand, nodded in amusement and then asked;
"Speaking of Danny, where is he?"
"Oh, he’s reading a novel in the nook," Larry gestured with a thumb.
This time, it was John who burst into laughter.
However, upon seeing that Larry’s face remained casual--almost as if equally amused by it--John asked, his expression assuming one of genuine surprise;
"You’re serious?"
"Yeah. Check for yourself," Larry gestured, to which John obliged by walking forwards and turning around the corner.
Lo and behold, there the boy sat on the hanging pod chair, engrossed whilst reading a peculiar book in his palms with a faint, yet wondrous sparkle in his eyes.
Staring at him for a while, an amazed expression on his features, John backpedaled, choosing to leave the young chap in the world the book had sucked him into.
Then he asked of Larry, the awe in his tone palpable;
"Which novel is that?"
"It’s a new book that came in earlier today. [The Token of Fate], it’s called. Haven’t gotten around to reading it myself but seeing as Danny boi’s reading it, I reckon it must be a good one."
To that, John simply nodded and requested;
"Any more still in stock?"
"You betcha," Larry gestured to one of the shelves in front.
Moving towards said shelf, he picked a copy of the book amongst the dozen that was displayed.
He had to say, the cover was very eye-catching.
Still, the Professor’s critical mind kicked in;
’A book that got even the novel-loathing Danny to read it...’
’It’s either really good, or really dumb. No offense to the kid.’
’Still, if it could at least get him to read, maybe it’ll serve as a good read and a nice framework for my lazy, attention-deficit, dopamine-chasing students to learn from,’
With that in mind, John moved towards Larry and placed the book on the counter;
"I’ll have a copy,"
With that, the man went around the shop, picking up other books that interested him.
Soon enough, after paying for the books and exchanging small talk for a couple more minutes--still with Danny’s nose in the book--John bade farewell and headed home.
Picking up [The Token of Fate], he donned his reading glasses and reclined into his reading chair.
Before he could have his students read it, he himself needed to review it first.
And just like that, a day later, the professor walked into his creative writing class with a smile on his face, a [The Token of Fate] clutched in his palms.
Walking up to the white board, he wrote two words on the board in all caps;
WORLDBUILDING.
No sooner had the class settled in, John turned back to face the class, lightly tapping the cover of [The Token of Fate] against his palm.
"This..." he began, adjusting his glasses
"...is not, a perfect book."
A few students perked up upon hearing that, some notably curious while others remained half-interested.
"But... it is an excellent one." he continued, pacing slowly across the front of the room whilst nodding in acknowledgement.
"It does all the right parts perfectly. And sometimes, that matters more, especially for what we’re trying to learn here today."
Letting his words settle, probably in an attempt to draw more eyes to him, John then gestured loosely;
"Most of you struggle with scale,"
"You either write stories that are too small, where nothing feels like it matters, or too big, where everything feels important and therefore... nothing actually does."
A couple of students shifted uncomfortably in their seats in response, feeling like the words were surgically and precisely aimed at them.
"This novel, does something extremely interesting though," he said, raising the book slightly.
"It starts small. Painfully small. On a farm, with a boy, and a simple choice."
He tapped the cover once.
"And then it builds outward. Slowly. Deliberately. Before you know it, you’re sucked into a world with such scale, it baffles you how well you’re able to keep up with everything."
"That..." he turned around as he said.
"...is what I want you to pay attention to as you read [The Token of Fate]." he underlined the words on the board.
And just like that, a class that had been mostly half-interested in the lecture, sat properly to give their full attention to their professor.
John had loved every minute of reading [The Token of Fate].
In fact, by the time he was done reading the book, some part of him had being so ticked off that the sequel wouldn’t be coming anytime soon, he just had to search up if it would.
But alas, it was a new book, penned by a new author.
So, albeit there were quite a bunch of posts about it, information regarding the specifics of what he was actually after remained incredibly scarce.
That said, whereas others on the internet seemed to have loved the story’s characters, or the plot, or even the subverted twist--though he’d admit it was bar none one of the best he’d experienced--what had really struck him the most, was how fantastic the worldbuilding of the story had been.
The fact that the novel’s big twist also tied in so well with said worldbuilding, functioned to make him all that more enthused for the sequel as soon as possible.
But for now, he’d have to settle for getting his class to read the book so they could have a discussion about and reference it during their lectures from time to time.
Thankfully, the effort he had put in into preparing for today’s lecture, seemed to have done a good job of getting them totally invested in wanting to know what had equally gotten him so excited over it.
However, one thing John had failed to pick up on, was how maddening it was that a book that had only been released in a little over a day, already had quite a lot of posts about it on the internet.
For a fact, it showed that Feyre Publications had hit the homerun with their marketing strategy.
Though, they’d been initially worried that they’d only gotten a pre-order of roughly 5000+ copies across all their retail channels, by the time the next couple days came, that worry had been effectively put to rest.
Within the third day of release, the book had sold over 8,000 copies.
By the fifth day, it had sold 13,000+ copies.
By the end of the week, it had accrued to a little over a total of 20,000 copies.
And this was only counting paperbacks and hardcovers, not even the e-book copies which had equally sold over 20,000+ copies.
Sure, it paled in comparison to the sales of what a highly anticipated book would sell in its first week, the total copies sold were still well above 90% of the sales most traditional books within the same vein in the industry would ever make in their first week.
Given this was just the first week too, and they had three more weeks to go, Feyre Publications were sitting pretty confident that they could crack over 250,000 copies in total by the end of the month.
That, would’ve been more than enough to cover all the production costs that went into publishing the book.
Afterall, most total lifetime sales for a book tended to happen withing its first month of release.
However, one thing Feyre Publications had remained flippantly ignorant of was the fact that [The Promised Queen] was bound to hit theatres in three weeks’ time.
A fact that would very well redefine their expectations for [The Token of Fate] and, equally their approach to utilizing Niall’s fame as an actor.
Yet, completely removed from it all at the moment was Niall himself.
Head dangling off the side of his bed with a lost look in his eyes, he let out an irritated groan.
Surrounding him were multiple lyric sheets, each one adding to the disheveled nature of the entire room.
Having tried and failed to write a song that could encompass the throes of working under a shitty boss and the defiant resilience that came with it, one that would ultimately play into a scene in his newly-written script, [Silver Comets], embers of frustration were beginning to gnaw at him.
’Come on Niall,’
’I’m sure you don’t want to work under Callow forever, right?
’So, get your shit together. You have to make this work--’
Niall hadn’t finished that sentence when the realization suddenly hit him!
Slowly, a shit-eating grin spread across his face, one that would’ve otherwise looked amusing and not horrifying if his head wasn’t literally dangling off the side of the bed.
If he needed to write a defiant anthem, wasn’t his utter disdain for Callow and the relationship they had a perfect framework?!
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