The paperback edition of Tinsel shipped in early October and is in stores now — usually you can find it in the “cultural studies,” “sociology/culture” or “American culture” shelves, with all the books about pot, tattoos, prisons, the real-estate bust, shopaholism, and meatpacking and other biofood nightmares, which is as good a home as any for it.

Maybe, as December slithers closer, some savvy bookstores will put it out on the holiday display table between Glenn Beck’s The Christmas Sweater (ralph), all those Melody Carlson books (hurl), and the perennially best-selling David Sedaris stacks of Holidays on Ice (snore).

As you can see, there’s a new cover, and a new attitoooood:

The marketing this time is more direct: CHRISTMAS BOOK!! CHRISTMAS BOOK!! WOOP-WOOP!!

Cover blurb: “LAUGH-OUT-LOUD FUNNY” claims USA Today.

Well, yes. I think the full sentence in the USA Today thing was something more like “Laugh-out-loud funny, and oddly depressing,” which is a whole lot more true, in’t it?

I’ve enjoyed working with editor Meagan Stacey at Mariner Books (Houghton’s paperback division) as she settled on the new cover and the right “blurbs” from reviews to put on the front, back, and inside front pages. (The back cover of the paperback has what was obviously my favorite blurby blurb: “Cultural anthropology at its most exuberant!” – The New Yorker. If that’s not a stamp of elitist approval, then what is?)

I like the new cover. I think it’s smart and simple and takes advantage of some hard truths about catchy design and what happens to books when they’re on a shelf or a table and the customer’s eye is darting here and there.

I liked the hardcover version, too. I mostly just like getting the chance to do it again.

* * *

As for “laugh-out-loud funny,” I’m glad that people find a lot in Tinsel to laugh at, because I meant for it to be that kind of book. I also meant for it to be a “cry quietly” book.

But while we’re on the subject, let me tell you a not-so-secret secret about book writers. We know when people have read (I mean, finished) our books. It’s always some peculiar cue that we privately register whenever someone’s talking to us about our latest book. With appreciative smiles plastered on our faces, we can nevertheless tell: you didn’t read it. Even our close friends and relatives — we can tell by what they say about the book.

When people tell me how funny Tinsel is, and nothing else, then I know they didn’t get past about page 35. (And that’s okay!)

Here is a picture someone sent me last November or December, when I was in such a dither about the book’s release. The person who sent it to me said that her sister took the picture while waiting for a flight in the Denver airport.

I have no idea who this woman is, but she’s reading Tinsel, and from the way she’s holding it (it acts as a helpful visor from the sunlight), it feels like she’s not very far in yet, perhaps halfway. I hope she kept going.

I want to tell you what this sort of picture means to a not-famous author. It means everything, basically. (And it’s a big reason why I hate the Kindle and iPad revolution, which removes the serendipitous encounters we unknowingly spark when people can see the covers of the books we’re reading.)

I know when people have really read Tinsel, because when they have, they talk about everything besides the humor in it. One of the real joys of the last year has been the stream of e-mail (a lot in January, tapering off lately to five or six a month, sometimes more) that I’ve received from readers who have a lot of thoughts spurred by finishing Tinsel. They write to me about stuff deep in the book, like the “fake” children on the Angel Trees; poor Caroll losing her infant grandson after so much hope and prayer and effort; the American economy unraveling; Tammie’s thoughts about living in a bubble. The final third of Tinsel is not so “laugh-out-loud funny,” but it does have its funny moments, right?

That doesn’t make a lot of sense to marketers and the sales staff — either it’s a funny book or it isn’t. Either it’s about Christmas or it isn’t. Either it’s happy or it’s sad.

But what about life? Isn’t life often hilarious and tragic and always somewhere in between those two extremes? If you’re really getting the book, you’ll also get the melancholy undercurrent. (After all, I worship at the feet of Gene Weingarten.)

Some Christmas books, on the other hand, have no ambivalence whatsoever about what they mean to be. Here’s how I should have gone:

Oh well, hindsight is all.

This is my blog. (Check one-two. Sibilance. Is it on?)

How come? Why now?

I know I’m eight or nine years late starting one. All this time I had the only outlet I ever needed, writing for the Washington Post’s Style section about darn near anything I wanted, for 700,000 or so paying customers who get the print edition and millions of unpaying, deadbeat customers online. When the Post was starting far too many blogs in the mid-‘00s, I carped in an in-house memo that none of the paper’s writers should be blogging at all; we should be writing stories that are blogged about. I also have enormous issues about writing for free.

Well, some things have changed. I still work at the Post (last I checked), but I feel like now I have some reasons to blog. (As for writing for free, well, it’s a fucking renaissance out there, isn’t it? So long, six centuries of the printed word! Hello, crapola!)

The big reason is pretty shameless – I’d like to get people to buy and read my book, Tinsel, which comes out in November.

The other reason is it’s nice to be able to type the word “fucking” and just hit publish. I need the sort of valve so many others have discovered on the great grassy bloglands of the new frontier – a quasi-space of my own to write whatever else I’m not being paid to write.

We’ll see how it goes. I have no idea if my employer even allows me to blog. I think I’m just supposed to take it easy on tales of internecine warfare in the Post newsroom and that I should not, like, endorse candidates for public office and that sort of thing. I can only hope this blog brings trouble, because trouble means it’s being read.

What I’ll do here:

Whack off every other day or so on matters pop-cultural. Stuff I’m reading, stuff I’m crazy for.

1. Talk a lot about the making of Tinsel, which is a nonfiction narrative about Christmas, America, baby Jesus, the economy, three families, and a modern-day exurb outside of Dallas called Frisco. When I was down in the dumps writing Tinsel, I loved to read other authors’ blogs about process – down to things like word counts, what font people type their manuscripts in, how the editing is going, galley proofs, debates over the cover art, how to get inspired, all the highs and lows. Between now and the release date, I’ll slowly recount the story of how I pitched, reported, wrote and edited the book. And when you’re good and bored and Christmas is at our throats again, I’ll file dispatches from the skirt-hitching phase, as I try to attract customers and do readings in bookstores, etc.
2. Muse often about the pitfalls and joys of writing creative nonfiction – working so hard to get everything exactly right, and yet also trying to make art out of journalism.
3. Write about stuff I see and do – other people’s book parties, trips to the mall to watch the shopocalypse, etc.
4. Link to stuff that pertains to #2, especially as the Christmas season approaches and the shopping malls struggle to lure the consumer species back to its natural habitat.
5. Share feedback I’m getting about the book, even if it’s unkind or runs counter to the story I’ve told. Also, answer questions.

If I could be any blogger in the whole world, I would be Nancy Nall. I’ve read her every day for five or six years and you should too. Nancy, who found life beyond newsprint, treats her blog like a morning stretch before her real work begins, but seems always sharp. It will take me a long time to do it with the agility and smarts that she does – but that’s my hope.

Now it’s launched. Have a look around the rest of hankstuever.com and tell me anything you think I should know.