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Greenlight to Freedom arrived in South Korea almost two weeks ago. After getting examined by customs, the book was set free to Freedom Speakers International on June 8th.
Two days later, Songmi came to the FSI office to finally hold the published version of Greenlight to Freedom. I would have preferred another month to catch every typo, but our fans, as well as Songmi, wanted the book ASAP. I made the unpopular decision to unpublish the book, re-edit it, then publish it again. Authors and people in publishing completely understood the decision to fix errors, but readers, newbies and others who have never published a book were asking and chatting with each other about when the book would be finished.
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Has an author ever loved his or her book this much? When she was in North Korea she went 10 years without even seeing a book. Now after a decade in South Korea, she is an author! As she has said, her friends and family in North Korea could have never imagined that she would publish a book. She calls me her hero for making it happen.
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1) Their pre-orders of the book gave us funds to cover costs along the way.
2) Their support encouraged Songmi. She had not believed that anyone would want to hear her story.
Songmi had never autographed a book so I taught her some of the basics. It took more time than she had expected so she will return next week to finish signing the rest of the copies.
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Here's a column I wrote eight years ago about my first book signing (and I had expected that to be my last): http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2014/01/137_150595.html