Once, book parties “were as central to the book-publishing experience as collecting blurbs and freaking out over your book jacket. How else could you get through this self-induced ordeal without imagining the scene: reviewers and critics and editors and writers. . . . The hugging, the raised glasses, the rueful toast by one’s editor about how long the book took, the copies displayed on a mantelpiece. Not so now. In these cost-cutting days, the book party is no longer to be counted on as a well-earned prize.”