Publication dates for most writers usually don’t mean anything. If your book isn’t fixed with a specific “lay-down” date, before which retailers are barred from selling the book and competing with the publisher’s promotional program, finished books are often available weeks ahead of the date selected by the publisher. They are often in stores before that date, have been noticed by bloggers, and they are usually in distribution online. This takes the sting or joy out of the actual event.

In most cases, prepublication reviews in the half-dozen or so trade journals that review books for young people have, or ideally should have, prepared the breathless community for the great coming.

This coming Tuesday, July 19, is the pub date for a book I’ve been involved in, although I’ve had advance copies for a few weeks. Of the half-dozen prepub journals, only three have weighed in. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of advance reading copies have been distributed for over eight months , but there have been only one or two blogger notices (out of how large a universe?), and no full online reviews. Hmm. All of which reminds me of a lesson I learned with my last book: that what is coming might not just be great. It might be a great silence.

It’s good simply to take note of such a silence when you hear it; and you do hear it. It’s that sudden moment in the bubbling conversation when for different reasons, perhaps, everyone pauses simultaneously to take a breath. In that moment, something falls off the edge and vanishes.

Sure, I know, the grapes that are sour. You’re right. But because the number of books being published is so large, the power of community-wide silence about one of them can be shockingly final. In the era of opening weekend receipts, it’s hard even for the writer not to be swept up in the instant reaction, good or bad, now let’s please move on. In any case, whether or not we pop a cork on Tuesday, I suppose I’ll pause for an instant and listen.