The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Author tries to market latest book in pandemic
Saturday was supposed to be a big day for Allia Zobel Nolan. A fun day. The kind of day authors look forward to.
Instead, May 30 will be like every other day in the past 60 or so. At noon Allia will be home, not at the Norwalk Public Library for an “AuthorSpeak” lunch on her latest children’s book, “What I Like About You,” about embracing diversity.
The coronavirus pandemic has put so much on hold. Though disappointed, Allia keeps perspective. It’s not a graduation canceled, not a wedding postponed.
Everyone has been affected in sometimes profound, sometimes basic ways by the rogue virus.
A prolific author who published her latest book in February — right before the nation shut down — has been stymied at traditional marketing methods to get the book into the hands of readers.
“OK, so this was a huge disappointment for sure,” she said of the pandemic timing, “a financial fiasco, and two years of work hopefully not gone down the drain.
“Still, when I listen to the news every night and the numbers of people dying alone, on ventilators, out of work, going insane trying to teach their kids new math — the seniors in convalescent homes who don’t know what’s going on ... and the ones who do, the mothers of disabled kids who have lost their respite help, the essential workers’ frozen in fear every time they leave the house and the relief when they come back, people who’ve lost jobs (including someone close to me), the mail lady who has to wear a mask in the sweltering weather, the kids trying to learn on a computer when they’re used to a live teacher, everyone who is dealing with the uncertainty, pain, depression and sense of hopelessness, I feel guilty even mentioning my loss.
“It’s a droplet of water in a sea of sorry.”
I’ve sort of known Allia, a Norwalk resident, for a few years. Which is to say she has submitted op-eds, usually humorous, that I have published on Opinion pages. I like her writing and sometimes quirky way of seeing things. But we have never met. I prefer to interview people in person; obviously that’s not happening right now so we talked on the phone for an hour this week.
Aside from wondering how the pandemic is affecting writers, I was curious about how she got her start in publishing, back more than 150 books ago.
Turns out, a newspaper opinion piece launched her career. “Why must I have a nice day?” ran in the Connecticut section of The New York Times on Oct. 24, 1982. Her first byline was Allia Zobel.
She started stringing as a freelancer for the Stamford Advocate, covering subjects such as camp times, and then working at a weekly newspaper before getting hired at Waldenbooks to write newsletters.
Her breakthrough — again, thanks to newspapers — was an opinion piece she wrote for the Hartford Courant. She was tired of well-meaning people asking when she was going to get married so she wrote “The joy of being single.” And it took off.
Newspapers, in the days before ubiquitous social media, shared stories through services such as the Associated Press and that’s how the piece ended up in France. Ms. magazine took notice and reprinted it.
Allia had no training in writing, but sensed an opportunity in the moment. She wrote a page-and-ahalf query letter to Workman Publishing suggesting “The joy of being single” would make a great book. Only three weeks later, the call came — yes.
“I’m a risk-taker,” she said. “I figured I had nothing to lose.”
It’s incredible for someone to land at a reputable publishing house without an agent, on the first try. Equally incredible was that Workman hired Roz Chast, a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker and a Ridgefield resident, to illustrate the book.
I love her cartoons and naturally wanted to ask Allia all about working with Roz (dare I call her Roz?) on the book, which was published in 1992. But that would end up a different column.
The cover Roz drew features a woman reading “Gone with the Wind” in a bed shared with chocolates and a cat. It’s delightful.
Talk about marketing — Brentano’s book store in New York City put the author in the window for two days in a scene recreating the book’s cover. She got marriage proposals.
The book was translated in German, Japanese and Portuguese; it sold more than 135,000 copies.
“I’m blessed,” Allia told me on the phone. “This is what I was meant to do.”
Next came “The Joy of Being 50-plus,” and then on to cats with titles such as “Women Who Love Cats Too Much.”
It sounds like fun, but writing can also be a “tough grind,” she admitted.
“What’s more there’s always something unexpected, something goes wrong, or doesn’t turn out the way you imagined. The artist’s gerbil dies, so she’s late with the sketches. The publisher gets bought out by another bigger publisher and decides to cancel your book. The warehouse where your book is being printed gets flooded, or your editor’s baby comes prematurely and everything goes to someone who needs time to get up to speed. You get your proof copy and a whole 16 pages are upside-down.
“Yes, these things have happened to me. And yes, there’s a lot of nail-biting until you hold that first finished copy in your hands. And once you do, you’re hooked. You can’t even imagine doing anything else.”
It’s a heady feeling to write books that people want to read, but writers also have bills to pay so Allia took a part-time job as a senior editor for Reader’s Digest writing religious books for children. That was quite a switch.
“It was the best job I ever had in my life,” she said. “I loved seeing the art come in and the work that goes into making a book.”
Though that was a while ago, the experience likely prepared her for self-publishing “What I Like About You.”
It’s a sequel to “What I Like About Me!” published in 2005 by Reader’s Digest Association. It did well, with lots of publicity from the publisher.
She turned to self-publishing because the company changed hands and she wanted control of every element. She worked with Mary pat Design of Westport to develop the colorful, playful format. The book “encourages youngsters to form their own opinions of others based on their actions, not their appearance.”
It’s available in softcover for $10.99 and hardcover for $14.99; she’s working on an e-edition. For every book sold, $1 goes to the Catherine Violet Hubbard Animal Sanctuary in Newtown, named for an animalloving child who perished in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in 2012.
Left to market the book herself in these challenging times, Allia is learning new technologies. She can’t be at Norwalk Library Saturday, but she did a video of reading the book which the library emailed in its newsletter.
And, a glimmer of sunshine — “What I Like About You: A Book About Acceptance” just won a 2020 Indie Book Award for Children’s Picture Books.
That’s a plot twist even a pandemic couldn’t ruin.