Fifteen Eighty Four

As my book neared completion, I thought, ‘how great would it be to organize a book launch, something small?”  I’m the editor of the Cambridge Companion to Martin Amis, featuring 14 contributors from five different countries.

I imagined a roundtable discussion, a few hours max, at one of our universities. Easy, quick, small.

‘Probably won’t happen’, I concluded.

Then I emailed London-based journalist Jack Aldane, host of the My Martin Amis podcast. In my subject line I stated I was ‘scheming’.

That was late April. It’s now three months later, and four of us are co-organizing a full-day, August 25th gathering at Birkbeck, University of London, as well as 21 Soho.

Advertisements have been made. Cambridge itself has worked up some assets. Nine of my fourteen contributors will be traveling to London. A variety of professional writers will attend. Renowned author Will Self will deliver the keynote. This was not, suffice to say, what I expected. Planning this event has taught me a lot about the importance of forcing yourself into uncertainty and discomfort.

I’ve been proud, throughout my life, to have avoided most social media. I’ve only even been on LinkedIn.

No longer: I am now checked-out in blue on X.

I post, reply, repost, and tag. I understand best practices.

I have a Linktree.

Inspired by all this novelty, I’ve even begun resurrecting the Martin Amis Web, which I oversaw from 2006 onward. I’m learning python and, when necessary, working with Claude Code. This middle-aged English professor now has GitHub and Cloudflare accounts.

Most of what Martin Amis wrote, or said publicly, ended up blown out of proportion. It’s no surprise our event has similarly ballooned. It’s fitting, actually.

For decades, writers have lamented that it’s become insufficient solely to publish. Everyone now has to serve as their own public relations and marketing specialists. In the early Oughts blogs and webpages were avant garde. Now it’s Substack and multiple apps. Videos are expected.

I created my first videos this week. Pro-tip: use natural lighting, outdoors. The classic ‘4 P’s of Marketing’, widely known as the ‘marketing mix’, were established long ago by E. Jerome McCarthy (1960). He emphasized the necessity of ‘Product, Price, Place, and Promotion’ to any marketing strategy’s success. The four P’s closely resemble the AIDA Model for consumer buying: ‘Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action’.

One of Amis’s best essays from the 1990s is entitled ‘Buy My Book, Please’. In it, he describes how different generations have idiosyncratic ‘thought-rhythms’, cadences of expression that often complicate intergenerational communication. ‘Meet the Author ‘is becoming Meet the Reader’, he concludes. ‘And I find it to be emotionally necessary … writers may come to need such displays or enactments of solidarity and affection. I think this is the way it is going’.

That is indeed the way it has gone. I look forward to meeting many of my contributors this summer. I look forward to meeting other writers and anyone from Amis’s family who attends.

My boutique idea for a university book launch has expanded into a full-day, peripatetic, multi-media event.  It’s been quite something for this middle-aged man to experience.

The lesson is this: don’t shy away from the unknown or the new. Don’t slacken into comfort. Don’t decompress.

Sometimes the smallest ideas can become big things. If that’s not what you want, that’s fine. But then, whatever you do, don’t email Jack Aldane.

The Cambridge Companion to
Martin Amis by Gavin Keulks