Disclosure: I received an advanced copy of this book to review for free. I also have the same literary agent as the author, whose name I will guard with the ferocity of a mother lioness. ROAR! So don’t ask. I ain’t telling.

I related a lot to author Kim Brittingham as I read her new book, Read My Hips: How I Learned to Love My Body, Ditch Dieting, and Live Large. We both moved a lot as kids. We both had frizzy unmanageable hair that I have only recently learned how to tame. We both thought we might be having a heart attack at 23. We both have old “fat” photos from our teen years in which we don’t appear fat at all. And after weight loss and weight gain we’re both at places where we’re basically cool with our bodies. (Well, cool with the weight thing, anyway. I have numerous complaints about the chronic headache, crooked teeth, bad vision, flat fleet, five wisdom teeth, etc., etc.)

You might have heard of Kim after she got some media attention for riding the New York transit system while reading a book with a fake cover called “Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat.” (View a Today Show video interview here.) Each chapter in Kim’s book could probably stand on its own as an essay or narrative short story, but they’re linked together with the common theme of the book. That theme is Kim’s shifting attitude about her weight throughout life, detailing the sadly all too common stories of body self-loathing in her younger years to how she came to a place of self-acceptance in her 30′s and 40′s.

The most fascinating chapter describes her experience working as a weight-loss counselor for a company called Edie JeJeune. (I think this is a pseudonym to protect the innocent and the guilty since Google couldn’t turn up anything on it.) The company sold people diet plans that required pre-packaged foods and encouraged clients to buy motivational audio tapes. Most people know that the weight-loss industry exists to make money, but it was eye-opening to see how sales-oriented Kim’s managers were. The cutthroat atmosphere and pressure to meet sales goals at the price of compromising your morals sounds eerily similar to stories I’ve heard from friends with other sales jobs. This is frightening to contemplate since selling someone a new bathtub doesn’t affect their health like selling a diet plan could (unless they slip, fall and break a hip, I guess). The emphasis wasn’t on helping people either, just meeting sales goals. The counselors weren’t required to have any kind of certifications or degrees, and some were secretly binging on the foods in the warehouse, making the whole debacle seem like a case of the blind leading the blind.

On the positive side, Kim gives a speech during a work seminar that urges people to go for what they want now instead of waiting for something else first (like losing weight) that was so inspirational two of her co-workers decided to quit that day. Sounds like she could have a career as a motivational speaker if the writing thing doesn’t pan out.

The other chapters cover topics such as the fat prejudice she was subjected to from a PR company that represented a line of plus-sized clothes, the fat-person stereotypes she had to fight while filming a video with a major media corporation, and enough stories about the New York public transportation system to make me never want to ride the subway again.

Kim was kind enough to take the time to answer a few questions I had after finishing her book.

One idea you stress in the book is that you shouldn’t wait until you’re thin to do things, that you should “Be. Do. Have.” instead of “Do. Have. Be.” That’s a philosophy I believe in too, but sometimes I find myself slipping into old thought patterns, like recently thinking that I should wait to take a martial arts class until I’ve lost some weight. Do you ever find yourself slipping into old patterns like this and if so what do you do about it?

Sure, I notice it happening all the time. I think it’s like anything else, it takes practice to change. The more you stop and recognize your old patterns and interrupt them, the easier it gets. For myself, I find I notice those patterns more readily now than I ever did before. It’s not as easy for negative self-talk to worm its way in and take hold. At one point I was frustrated and asking myself, “Well how the heck do I remember to remember to not have these thoughts?” I think it takes more than a single decision sometimes, and more effort than reading one good self-help book. You need to seek out multiple resources. Several books. Podcasts and videos, workshops. Reinforce those lessons for yourself in a variety of ways, then it becomes more second-nature.

Early in the book you talk about Glory Davis, a girl at school who lost weight over the summer. You try to get her to reveal the secret of her transformation, but she doesn’t seem to understand what you want and acts nonchalant about the change. It was at this point in the book that I thought you were going to reveal that you later discovered Glory Davis had an eating disorder. That doesn’t happen though, and it made me do some uncomfortable self-reflection on why I would assume that. Did you ever wonder if Glory had an eating disorder? Whether you did or not, do you have any thoughts on what it means about our culture that my mind immediately jumped to that conclusion?

You know, that’s an interesting point. No, it never occurred to me that Glory had an eating disorder. When she returned to school thinner, she had also blossomed in other ways. She had a self-assurance about her that transcended mere weight loss. It was like she’d discovered who she was. And I never saw any signs that her relationship with food itself had changed. She was always very much at ease with food, which is never the case with an eating disordered person. There’s always a tension. Guilt, resistance, desperation, uneasiness. All kinds of thinking about the food. Glory just seemed more interested in…well, boys than food, to be frank! And before she lost the weight, I never saw her overeat. So maybe for Glory, her chubbiness was a classic case of baby fat that sheds itself in good time. I remember a lot of kids like that, which is one reason I’m really disturbed by this growing trend of casting a floodlight on fat kids and stigmatizing them. From Michelle Obama framing her Let’s Move campaign as a fight against childhood obesity instead of a campaign in favor or healthy habits for children of ALL sizes, to billboards in Georgia making fat kids out to be freaks and their parents in denial. It’s going to cause a lot of damage to kids who would otherwise be fine without this holier-than-thou societal “intervention,” and we certainly won’t embarrass or shame any child into eating better and exercising more. If anything, we’ll accomplish the opposite. We’ll isolate fat children even more from their peers, and they’ll likely seek comfort in the one friend who’s always there: food. That is, if they don’t discover drugs first.

But I’m getting way off topic here, aren’t I? The fact that your mind jumped to that conclusion about Glory might say something about our cultural beliefs, I don’t know. We do cherish our preconceived notions about people and weight in this country, don’t we? Fat people are portrayed as unlovable, antisocial gluttons, whose greed must be condemned. Women who are rail-thin are assumed to be anorexics or purgers. Weight loss itself is always assumed to have been orchestrated on purpose and is uniformly praised. I remember seeing Tyra Banks’ show one day in the laundromat, and a guest mentioned she’d recently lost X number of pounds. The audience immediately took that as a cue to applaud. And I remember thinking, what if she fucking has CANCER, for God’s sake?

You recount a story about Marilyn Monroe in the book and how she could change from being almost invisible in a crowd to being the subject of attention simply by changing her body language and attitude. You have similar success attracting people to you by exuding an aura of confidence, though you admit it is hard to keep up all the time because it’s not 100% natural. Do you have any advice for other women on how they can try to access their inner Marilyn?

Well, it might be that we all have to be clumsy about it in the beginning. Like learning to ride a bike; like me when I first learned to carry myself with confidence. I could only sustain it for so long before it felt exhausting to me. Because it was unfamiliar. It felt like an effort, almost like an act. But after a while, if your experience mirrors mine, you’ll start to recognize who you really are, and you’ll fall into your own natural “strut,” so to speak. You won’t have to live every day of your life like you’re portraying a woman with better self-esteem than your own. You’ll simply have found your stronger self. Also, it’s not your job to put on an air of fabulousness if you’re feeling angry, frustrated, or otherwise unhappy. But giving yourself a chance to find your own inner Marilyn will help you find more presence when you’re in a shitty place, too. You and your feelings have every right to their space. You’re just as entitled as anyone else to every last inch you need.

You got a lot of attention for reading a book on public transportation with a fake book cover called “Fat is Contagious: How Sitting Next to a Fat Person Can Make YOU Fat.” Did you ever considering using that title for you book instead of “Read My Hips” to see if it’d generate more sales, since as you say body-loathing seems to be more popular than body-acceptance?

I did. Not from a sales-generating perspective, but I did shop my book to publishers as “Fat is Contagious.” But Random House suggested “Read My Hips,” which was the title of an essay I’d written for iVillage, and which wound up being a big part of the book’s introduction. It really seemed to fit — no pun intended. Much more so than “Fat is Contagious.” Because with “Read My Hips,” you really are reading my hips — everything that went into the creation of my hips. Everything I did to try and fight my hips and eventually accept them, along with every other part of me.

In the bio sent with the book it says you dream of “finding an affordable fencing school.” Have you taken up fencing like Inigo Montoya like you mentioned thinking of doing in the book? My brother started fencing in the past year and says they never have enough girls. He’d be happy to recruit you!

No, I haven’t taken up fencing and I’m heartbroken about it! The cruel truth is, there’s an excellent fencing school just fifteen minutes from my home, and they even have female instructors over 40, which I think is so cool. But their fees are well out of my league. Someone told me I shouldn’t be surprised, that fencing is one of those sports of the wealthy, like polo. Gee, I didn’t know! I did get a Wii gaming system, though, and my friend Peter gave me a Wii light saber for Christmas. It’s not quite the same thing, of course. You don’t get to perfect all that crisp footwork, and you don’t develop the same defensive instincts you would in working with a real person. But it’ll have to do for this pauper, for now. My pen will be my sword!

You can catch up with Kim on her site KimWrites.com and read her blog here. She can also watch her video series, Kim Weighs In. Watch the book trailer for Read My Hips below.

Anyone who said “the pastry case in the coffeeshop,” please leave now (and pick up a cinnamon roll for me while you’re at it). I am of course referring to this:

Chocolate & Vicodin is featured on the “New in Paperback” table of Barnes & Noble, right at the front of the store. This pretty much made my year.

I’ll be updating this list with links to the specific posts as we go along. I hope you’ll check them out! Big thanks to everyone who’s hosting me on this tour.

Feb 17: A Chronic Dose
Feb 18: This Mama Cooks

Feb 21: Roni Noone
Feb 22: Manic Mommy
Feb 23: Somebody Heal Me
Feb 24: Stephanie O’Dea
Feb 25: Kyle Hepp

Feb 28: Princess Nebraska
Mar 1: Shauna’s Life in Pain
Mar 2: Drummer Heather
Mar 3: Emergiblog
Mar 4: Jenny Ryan

Mar 7: Two Fit Chicks and a Microphone
Mar 8: Blog, Sheesh

Yes, books are now required to have video trailers. When I say “required,” they are not actually required, you are just highly pressured into making one, like babies are for couples in their 30′s. When my first book, Half-Assed came out in April of 2008, video book trailers were just starting to become the norm, but no one told me that until after the book came out! So, I threw something together using my weight-loss progress photos that came out fairly well. (48,000 views can’t be wrong, right?)

This time around I decided to seek advice from actual publishing professionals before making my trailer. I also viewed some trailers to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Research. (Yes, spending hours on YouTube can be considered research)
Rachel Kramer Bussel is an author friend who’s done lots of (Not Safe For Work) book trailers, and she said to keep it under two minutes and to make it match the tone of your book. It also shouldn’t be an ad, since no one wants to watch an ad (unless it’s one of those creme de la creme Superbowl ads). She said, “The main point is to catch people’s attention and get them to watch the video, rather than a hard sell on the book.”

I searched YouTube for “book trailers” and came up with some very good and very bad trailers. There are a lot of awful gothic/supernatural/romance trailers that feature lots of moody establishing shots, interspersed with titles, and a melodramatic soundtracks. Thankfully there are also some good trailers. Here are some of the best I found, all of which made me want to learn more about the books they advertised:

Night of the Living Trekkies
Quark Books is a publisher most famous for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. They also clearly spend mad cash on their trailers. This looks like a trailer for an actual film, not just a book. Honestly, I think the book would be a letdown after seeing this trailer.

Leviathan
This one has great animation and gives you a good taste of the storyline without giving it all away. But like the previous trailer, it’s way outside my budget and realm of expertise.

The Happiness Project
This one looks like something I could make, the animation coordinates well with the music, it gets the point across and overall seems to express the tone of the book.

Harlot’s Sauce: A Memoir of Food, Family, Love, Loss, and Greece
This one makes hilarious use of YouTube’s captioning feature, which makes me think the book is probably pretty funny, too. The production values also seemed within my reach.

Planning (to do awful things to teddy bears)
I wrote up five script treatments for trailers, which are just short summaries of what the trailer would be. I picked the one I thought would play best visually. (You can’t really film a headache). It featured a stuffed animal undergoing various treatments that didn’t cure my headache. I had considered showing myself undergoing treatments, but that would be harder to film since I didn’t want someone sticking needles in me unless they were professionally accredited to do so. I also thought abusing a teddy bear and making it smoke pot would be wonderfully ridiculous (but I might just be twisted). I liked this approach because it didn’t require me to appear in the trailer, which would have made me feel self-conscious. I prefer not to be the center of attention.

I wrote out a full script describing what titles would flash on screen and what visuals I needed to film. Then I made a list of all the props I’d need. I purged a lot of my possessions before I moved in last July, so any stuffed animals I had left were ones that I didn’t want to maim. Instead I had to go to Toys R’ Us for the first time in I don’t know how many years. I felt like a truly depraved individual as I shuffled up and down the aisles amongst parents and their innocent lil’ children while I was thinking, “Who shall I cast in my teddy bear porno?”

Let the camera roll (and shake)

Once I had my props and a script, I set up my filming area. I taped some dark contact paper against a wall so the light-colored teddy bear would show up against the background. Then I used masking tape to bind the bear’s legs in place and to stick his butt to the table. I positioned a directional desk lamp on top of the box to give me better lighting. I set my Flip camera on top of a stack of books and taped it to the top one so it wouldn’t bounce that much when I was filming.

I went through my shot list and crossed off shots as I got them, usually doing several takes to make sure I got something usable. I ran into a few issues during filming.

• When I dropped my big mixture of expired painkillers in front of the camera they moved so quickly that you couldn’t tell the resulting blur was made of pills. I found that tossing the pills at the bear read better on camera.
• When I filmed the bear smoking a joint, it took me about five takes before I was able to start the lighter in one try. I’m not a smoker, so I’m unpracticed in that skill. I was also so focused on the lighter that I was mildly concerned I might set the bear on fire and burn down the apartment complex. Then when the firefighters asked me what I had been doing, my only explanation would be, “Oh, I was just shooting a book trailer.”
• I was happy that I had a hypodermic needle for the Botox shot, but I only had it because it was in the anaphylaxis kit that came with my IV treatment kit a few years ago. It seemed appropriate that everything came full circle that way.

Post production (aka OH MY FUCKING GOD I HATE DIGITAL VIDEO!!!)
Now I had to edit the trailer, so I downloaded the videos to my computer. Well, I tried to. The FlipShare program kept crapping out on me, and then when I finally had transferred the MP4 files to my hard drive, Vista kept freaking out whenever it tried to read a file, causing an error box to appear and the Explorer window to refresh. Then, in a moment of pure stupid-a-tude, I saved one of the video files to the desktop, which caused the computer to loop in an endless cycle of error windows that kept popping up as soon as I closed them, locking me out of my computer.

It was at this point that I said, “Fuck this shit. I’m getting a new computer.” And I did.

Yes, it was my video book trailer that finally sent me over the edge to make a $1000 purchase I had been planning on making for a few months. I was going to wait until I knew how much money I had left after taxes to replace my 3-year-old laptop, but I decided to just get the damn computer now so I could finish the trailer.

Several days later, the UPS man delivered my computer and I was able to install the 30-day trial version of Adobe Premiere to do my video editing. I couldn’t use this on the old laptop because it required a 64-bit operating system. Premiere was the program I learned to use in a college video editing class, so I was familiar enough with it to get my editing done surprisingly quickly. It only took 2-3 hours.

I needed to have copyright approval to use any music in the trailer because I’d like to get my publisher to place it on my Amazon page. I didn’t want to get sued for violating someone’s copyright. I thought about using some royalty-free music which you can find via Google, but then I remembered that my friend Jenny plays bass in the band The Odyssey Favor, so they let me use one of their songs. I then exported the video in a web-friendly format. After a few friends viewed it and promised me it didn’t suck (and I hope they didn’t lie), I uploaded it for all the world to see.

I hope you guys like it! At the very least I hope it makes you want to learn more about the book (or start a coalition to protect teddy bears). Feel free to post it on your own sites, tweet the link, scream the web address from the rooftops or what have you. I assure you that no teddy bears were permanently harmed in the making of this video.

If you live in the US or Canada
Go to the order page for Chocolate & Vicodin on their site, add the book to your cart, and then checkout. At the bottom of the checkout screen, right below the credit card info fields, there is an “Order Comments” box. Include the name you want the book signed to here as well as any other relevant info.

If you live outside the United States
Just send an email to info [at] flyleafbooks (dot) com with your name, address, signing information and ask how much it would cost to ship Chocolate & Vicodin to your country. (That’s the book, not actual chocolate and Vicodin, which would be illegal.) They’ll be in touch and can instruct you how to pay for the order, etc.

I am willing to customize the signing to an extent if there’s something specific you’d like me to say. So, something like, “To my biggest fan,” is cool. However, something like, “I will never forget our crazy night in Vegas with the goat and the circus clowns,” will not work. (Unless that actually happened.)

Flyleaf Books has been exclusively authorized by my publisher to start selling books on the day of my book release party, Thursday, February 17th. This applies to online orders as well, so if you order from Flyleaf it’s possible you’ll receive your book before the official release date of Tuesday, February 22. WE CANNOT GUARANTEE THAT, but you have a good chance, assuming there isn’t a postal strike or a truck fire or something. You’ll also get an email with the package’s shipping info, so you can refresh it compulsively and see how close it is to your front door.

Thanks to everyone for supporting the book! I really appreciate it, and I’m happy to cramp my hand up signing all of your books :)

I’m happy to announce that the book release party for Chocolate & Vicodin will take place at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 7pm. That’s the third anniversary of my headache! No, I didn’t plan it way. Sometimes the universe just likes to mess with you like that, or the people who schedule the UNC sports games do. (No game that night!) Stop by and you can meet me, get a signed book before the official release date, munch on some chocolate (no Vicodin, sorry) and ride a unicorn! Ok, all of that is true except for one thing.

I’m also excited to announce that I’m going to do a virtual book signing with Flyleaf Books, the local independent book store. If you want a signed copy of the book, but aren’t local to North Carolina, you’ll be able to order a personally signed copy through Flyleaf Books. You get to support an independent bookstore and I don’t have to mail signed copies out from my bedroom, so we all win! “But, Jennette, I already ordered by book elsewhere!” you say. That’s ok. Most online retailers don’t actually charge you for a pre-ordered book until it ships, so if you want to get a signed copy you can cancel your other order. Or you could buy two copies! (Don’t you want a spare in case you drop one in the bath tub?) We haven’t worked out all the details yet for the virtual signing, so I’d recommend you not cancel your pre-orders until it’s all sorted out and I have a link to give you.

I hope to see some of you in February!

I don’t want the blog to become all “Chocolate & Vicodin” all the time (though that sounds like a hell of a party!). So if you want to keep up with the latest news about the book or anything I’m up to, go to news.jennettefulda.com and/or subscribe to my RSS feed there. Those announcements are also blasted onto my Facebook fan page and I’ll try to remember to Twitter about them too. You can also sign up for my email newsletter at the bottom of JennetteFulda.com which will summarize any important or upcoming news and events. Whew! Publicity is hard work. So many media streams to swim in while trying not to drown.

Also, if you see the book mentioned in the media, feel free to tell me about it. I only learned about the two press items above because people contacted me about them. I don’t automatically get notices whenever something is printed about the book. I’m looking forward to all the activity around the book release and I hope you guys enjoy reading what I spent so much time writing!

I may not blog again before the holidays, so if not, have a Happy Whatever!

Although copyediting is my least favorite part of the publication process, soliciting blurbs is the part that makes me the most uncomfortable. Blurbs are the short, positive endorsements from other authors, experts and people-more-famous-than-you which are printed on the back of the book. They’re part of the overall strategy to convince the average book buyer to purchase your book.

This is how it goes: First, I have to lure you in with a clever title and/or an intriguing cover. That gets you to pick up the book and read the back, which contains a snappy synopsis that tells you enough about the book to pique your interest, but doesn’t give away the whole thing. Then you read the blurbs, which are meant to give you a final push toward the cash register, reassuring you that well-respected, accomplished people who know what they’re talking about think you should definitely buy this book.

The part that makes me feel awkward is that I have to contact well-respected, accomplished people who know what they’re talking about and ask them to read my book and say nice things about it. It’s sort of the publishing equivalent of asking someone out on a date. There’s always the chance that they’ll reject you outright, and even if they do say yes they might not like you once they take you out. It also makes me uncomfortable because it breaks the unspoken rule of networking, which is that you should give before you take. Leave a penny before you take a penny!

One thing you have going in your favor is that you are usually asking other authors for blurbs, authors who have been in the same position as you. So, another unspoken rule is that if you expect to get blurbs, you should be willing to give blurbs, too. Many authors are very kind about this, no matter how many best-selling books they have or more powerful and famous than you they are. Sometimes people are just busy, though, and don’t have the time or interest, particularly if they’re not really getting anything out of the arrangement, which is completely understandable.

It feels wrong to ask a favor of someone before I’ve done a favor for them, but that’s what you have to do unless you have friends who would make good blurb candidates. I’m fortunate that I have made friends with many published authors due to my experiences with my first book, Half-Assed. Unfortunately, none of the authors I know have written books relevant to headaches or pain. So, as much as I love my published friends and think they’re awesome, asking them for blurbs didn’t make much sense. Instead, I mainly had to contact people I didn’t already know.

Blurbs need to be collected before the book goes to press, but after the author has turned in an accepted manuscript and/or the galleys have been printed. So there’s a window of 2-3 months when you’re soliciting blurbs. My editor and I put together a big list of potential blurb-ers at the beginning of September. I divided the list into sections:

• Total dream people that will never happen. (Hello, Oprah!)
• Slim but not totally non-existent chance
• Maybe blurb
• Likely to blurb

We sent out emails and letters to these people, and the ones who were interested received galleys. Then you just cross your fingers, wait, and occasionally nag in the nicest way possible.

So, here we are, about two and a half months away from the publication date, and we’ve collected four fantastic blurbs from authors I admire. I thank them for the praise they gave the book and for taking the time out of their lives to read it. I got blurbs from:

• Lisa Genova, New York Times bestselling author of Still Alice and Left Neglected. Still Alice is an enthralling novel told from the perspective of a woman with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. I don’t have any friends or family with the disease, but the book pulled me in regardless and kept me turning pages.
• Paula Kamen, author of All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache. Paula’s memoir has been such a great help to me, particularly in learning what treatments not to try. It’s been reassuring to know someone else has gone through the same thing, and it helped my mom understand my condition better, too. Plus, it’s funny!
• Emily C. Deans, M.D., author of Feeling Better: A 6-Week Mind-Body Program to Ease Your Chronic Symptoms. Emily is a blog reader (Hi, Emily! *waves*), who was kind enough to send me a copy of her book last year which is filled with good information about managing chronic illness.
• Laurie Edwards, author of Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illness in Your Twenties and Thirties and blogger at A Chronic Dose. Laurie’s book is filled with great advice on how to live with chronic illness, interwoven with her experiences managing a chronic lung disease. I particularly liked that it was targeted toward younger people, like me.

You can read the blurbs for Chocolate & Vicodin here on the book site (which is still in progress). I’ve integrated my book sites with my identity site, JennetteFulda.com, which got a slight makeover last weekend. Be sure to subscribe the newsletter in the page footer if you’re interested in receiving news and event information about the book. If you were subscribed to my old mailing list, you should be subscribed to this one too, but you can check by trying to subscribe again. If you’re already on the list, the form will tell you. Thanks!

After he’d gone and I’d secured the deadbolt, I opened the box to discover this:

It’s the galleys for Chocolate & Vicodin: My Quest for Relief from the Headache that Wouldn’t Go Away! A galley is a bound edition of an uncorrected proof of the book. That means that not all the typographical or formatting errors have been fixed as they will be in the final edition. The galleys are published with the actual cover on the front and a promotional pitch on the back that features a summary, favorable blurbs, author information, and contact information for the publicity department of the publisher. They’re sent to magazines, libraries, and booksellers in advance of the publication date to stir up publicity and give reviewers enough lead time to review the book. Right now is the time when most magazines are planning their February/March editions, so sending them a galley now allows them to include it in the edition of the magazine that will be out when the book is released.

Now, I want to preface this next bit by saying that I’m a supporter of digital books. I love that they’re lightweight, easily searchable, annotatable, and less clunky than a big, heavy box of books that make your knees hurt when you carry them up the stairs during your interstate move. I’m not upset that printed books will most likely become less common as more and more people adopt the digital format (assuming that the author’s royalty remains a fair percentage). All that said, I really, really, really, loved opening the box and catching the distinct scent of books inside. When I picked up a galley, I could smell the freshly cut paper and ink. I even started sniffing the spine, I was so infatuated with the sweet publisher’s perfume. And when I held the book in my hands, I loved sliding my fingers across the glossy coating of the cover. It’s a real live dead book! So, yes, I still think digital books are the wave of the future and I’m not upset about it, but even a tech girl like me is not immune to the seduction of a printed book, particularly when it’s my own.