The publishing industry is packed with bad advice that spreads from author to author like a virus. Bad advice wastes your time, money, and energy. Consider this article a big bottle of hand sanitizer that will keep your publishing career from getting sick.  

Where do publishing superstitions come from?

Superstitions develop when causes and effects get mismatched.

If you walk under a ladder on your way to work and then get fired, you might wrongly assume your missteps under the ladder caused you to get fired. You make a mental note to never walk under a ladder again, and then tell all your friends how they can avoid the same vocational misfortune!

The problem with superstitions is that once we believe we have satisfactorily answered our question, we tend to stop looking for the answer. Instead of evaluating our job performance, we content ourselves with believing it was an unlucky thing that happened because of that blasted ladder.

This kind of thinking is an ancient fallacy called “Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc” translated: “After this therefore because of this.” Or in modern vernacular, “Correlation does not equal causation.” 

In publishing, there are a lot of superstitions that spread from person to person. 

Sometimes superstitions are useful. For example, the ancients believed land masses above and below the equator were equal. So medieval maps included Antarctica even though no one had ever seen Antarctica. 

Over time, scientists discovered land masses were not equal, and did not need to be, but that there really is a continent at the bottom of the globe just like those old maps supposed. 

Myths, on the other hand, often start with a grain of truth but as they are retold, truth mutates into error. Other myths develop when the reason behind a certain custom or practice is forgotten.

Most people cut down an evergreen tree at Christmas time, but they also don’t know why they do it. Do you know why we started putting up Christmas trees? (Keep reading.)

Publishing customs morph into myths in the same way.

Myth #1: The Best Day to Launch a Book is on Tuesday

This is the strangest superstition and one that most publishers still follow in 2020. Even record companies release new CDs and DVDs on Tuesdays. 

One person on Quora claimed it was because the New York Times counted Tuesday as the first day of the week when calculating sales for their bestseller list. I could not confirm this anywhere. According to Vox, the New York Times list is Monday through Sunday. All the other lists (USA Today, Wall Street Journal, etc.) start the week on either Sunday or Monday. 

I suspect there may have been a reason at one time to launch books on Tuesdays, but that reason is long gone. Think of the superstition that spilling salt was bad luck. Back when people were paid in salt, spilling salt was as dreadful as watching your $100 bill blow away in the wind. 

The superstition persists despite the fact that salt is so cheap we dump it on the ground to keep roads and sidewalks from icing over in the winter. 

The Reality

Amazon has done a lot to undermine whatever rationale previously supported this practice.