Last week I was among the unlucky handful of British novelists whose hardbacks were still scheduled for publication. Too late for our publishers to pull the plug – as they now have on many forthcoming May and June titles – we had to press on, not knowing if anyone would even be able to buy our books.

The bookshops are shut, our book tours are cancelled – and for a while it looked as if you wouldn’t even be able to buy our book online: a couple of days before publication, Gardners, the UK’s leading book wholesaler, along with the website Hive, where independent booksellers sell books, both had to stop, plunging independent booksellers (and authors) into despair. They’ve now opened again, thank goodness. But for how long? Two days go Amazon was saying it couldn’t sell my book. Yesterday, it could.  What will tomorrow bring?  

But – thank goodness – there is a demand for books! People are actively seeking lockdown reading (Nigella Lawson has confessed to ‘abibliophobia’ – the fear of running out of books – and is busy stockpiling them). Online fiction sales have risen by a third; e-books and audiobooks are booming, but it’s no good if people don’t know your book exists. And so writers – not generally known for our extrovert personalities or tech skills – are getting in front of the camera.

Some are more successful at this than others. Polly Samson, with her husband, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and their children, threw an atmospheric Facebook Book Launch party for her novel’s publication. Maggie O’Farrell, who has never set foot on social media before, had to grit her teeth and hijack her husband William Sutcliffe’s Twitter account for the night to launch her Hamnet. Meanwhile, I joined Sarah Vaughan, whose novel Little Disasters was published on the same day as Magpie Lane, for an utterly chaotic Twitter book launch party, hosted by the valiant but, as the hour wore on, despairing Blackwell’s Bookshop (the only participant who had a clue what they were doing). Beforehand, we had to film ourselves giving readings, as we would at a real event – I felt like a total fool doing this. On the bright side, Jane Austen came to our party.

Since publication, the (mercifully positive) reviews have been appearing in newspapers and magazines and on book blogger websites; I’ve been at online book festivals, done Instagram Live interviews, run two book giveaways, and my first Live creative writing class with Psychologies magazine. I’d be delighted never to appear on camera again, but I probably will, because right now, it has never felt better to connect with people who love books.