As I write this column, I’m on JetBlue Flight 260 on my way to Boston, where I’m speaking and signing my just-released memoir at Harvard University. Yes, that Harvard. I’ve already been to four other cities on my book tour. As the flight was about to take off, I got the following email from my book publisher:
“Hey Mark and Co., I have great news: We have just ordered reprints of both the paperback and hardcover editions of Mark’s book! Congrats to all of us, but especially Mark!”
“And Then I Danced, Traveling The Road to LGBT Equality” has exceeded any expectation I could have had. A second printing in both hardback and paperback, the nation’s number-one LGBT memoir? This is humbling. It has only been on bookshelves for three weeks. So, why the success?
Note that the email was addressed to “Mark and Co.” You see, it has always been a belief of mine that no major project is done alone; it takes a team and I’ve impressed on my publisher, their staff, my editor and the book’s boosters/supporters that have popped out of almost nowhere, that we are a team. That team effort has had incredible dividends.
But what is more humbling to me is something that was said by Comcast’s David L. Cohen at our launch party in Washington, D.C. He noted how I “made friends along that journey to equality.” That statement caused me to realize how many friends I made and kept to this day. My memoir is a tribute to them because they helped create that road to equality — and we are a team.