Gift for Friend Who Published Their First Book

It changes what people call them, and you knew them before

A first book is a different event from any subsequent one, and the difference is social rather than literary. Before it exists, writing a book is a claim that cannot be verified. Your friend has been spending their evenings on something, has occasionally been unavailable for reasons that sounded thin, and has at some point told a few people what they were doing - and those people, however supportive, were being asked to take it on trust. There is no evidence for an unfinished book. That is an oddly exposed position to be in for two or three years, and it is why so many people writing one stop telling anybody about it. Publication ends that abruptly. The object exists, their name is on it, and the description changes: they become a writer, including to people who knew them for a decade as something else entirely. Nobody who meets them after this week will know there was ever a version of this that was not real. You will. That is the entire material for this gift, and it is worth spending properly. What you can write is the history. The specific period when it was going badly. The draft that got scrapped. The stretch where they stopped mentioning it, which usually means it was at its worst. The fact that they kept going while having no way to prove to anybody, including themselves, that it would ever be a thing. Four sentences of that, written down, will outlast anything in this shop, because everybody else is congratulating a finished object and you are the only one acknowledging the invisible two years. Two practical cautions specific to authors. First, do not give anything book-themed. The bookmark, the literary tote, the mug with a quotation, the jokey bookish candle - authors receive these in quantity because everybody has the same idea at the same time, and a shelf of them accumulates within a month of publication. The book itself is the commemorative object and nothing else needs to do that job. A gift with no connection to books at all will be, statistically, the only one. Second, do not promise to buy it. Almost every congratulation an author receives comes with that promise attached, most of them sincere and a minority completed, and authors learn to hear it as a pleasantry rather than a plan. If you intend to buy it, buy it first and mention it afterwards. That sequence is worth ten of the other. And if you read it, write to them about a specific part months later with a detail only a reader would have noticed - authors get a great deal of congratulation and very little evidence that anybody actually read the thing. One thing not to say: do not ask how it is selling. A first book very often sells modestly, the author is usually braced for that, and the question puts them in the position of having to report a number that is not in their control. Ask what they are working on next, or say nothing about commerce at all. On timing, there is no hurry and the usual rule is doubled. Congratulations arrive in a forty-eight hour burst and then stop dead. The week after publication is famously flat, because the work itself actually finished a year or more earlier - publication is a public event about something that ended some time ago - and there is nothing left to do, since reviews and sales are both out of the author's hands. A gift two or three weeks later lands into silence. A gift a month later is entirely normal and lands better still. Now the objects. A coconut-soy candle at three hundred and seventy-nine rupees is a good and simple choice, and Bookshop - cedarwood, sage and lemon - is the natural one here: dry and quiet, suiting a desk or a reading chair, without being a joke about books. The others are Misty Mornings with Nilgiri orchid and sun-ripened nectarine, Evening Walks with frankincense and tonka, and Cozy Corner with spiced pear and golden honey. All lead-free eco wick, phthalate-free, hand-poured in small batches in Pune, fifteen to eighteen hours. Two at seven hundred and fifty-eight rupees with a written note is a complete gift. Wax melts at four hundred and seventy-four rupees need a ceramic burner at five hundred and sixty-nine, so give both or neither. An alcohol-free attar at three hundred and seventy-nine to three hundred and ninety-nine rupees suits somebody about to do launches, readings and interviews, because it does not project: twelve millilitres of undiluted perfume oil in a glass roll-on with no alcohol carrier, opening quietly and staying within roughly an arm's length. Adaa is three hundred and seventy-nine, Ameeri three hundred and eighty-five, Mastani three hundred and eighty-nine, Nawaab three hundred and ninety-nine - the last a white oud composition built with Mysore sandalwood and Kashmir saffron rather than a dehn al oud distillate. The Attar Trio at one thousand and fifty-five rupees hands the choice over. Choosing something new to them rather than a repeat is worth doing if you want it attached to this period; people very commonly report that a scent used during a particular stretch brings it back later, which is a widely reported experience rather than a mechanism this shop claims. A solid perfume at four hundred and fifty-nine to five hundred and forty-nine rupees is the practical choice for a period of events and travel: fifteen grams of alcohol-free balm in a flat compact, applied with a finger, spill-proof, no cap to lose, six to eight hours, surviving months in a bag. Sway is four hundred and fifty-nine, Sterling four hundred and sixty-nine, Velour four hundred and seventy-nine, Siren four hundred and eighty-nine, Titan five hundred, Beast five hundred and forty-nine. A reed diffuser at seven hundred and forty-nine to eight hundred and forty-nine rupees is the best choice if you know where the book was written - the study, the corner, the desk by the window where those two years happened. Changing what that room is like once the work is finished is a quiet, specific thing to do that nobody else will think of. A minute to set up, then nothing, two to three months, no flame, no socket, no switch. Reeds use their own alcohol-free reed oil drawn up rattan by capillary action; reed oil never goes into a machine, and the water-based Hotel Collection concentrate at two hundred and ninety-nine rupees is ultrasonic-only at three to six drops per tank.

A gift from the years nobody saw

Personal, not bookish, and ideally aimed at the room where the two years happened.

Related: somebody who published a book, somebody who finished writing a book and a major creative project. Also a creator milestone and a completed passion project. The grid is in the complete guide by achievement, recipient and budget. Shop the candles from ₹379, the attars from ₹379 and the solid perfumes from ₹459.

The SOSA return gift ladder

Everything here is handmade in small batches in India, and a portion of every order supports girl-child education through Nanhi Kali. The ladder below runs from the cheapest thing SOSA makes to the tier worth giving close friends. Bulk quantities are quoted on WhatsApp at ₹+91 96192 18531 rather than published, because the right rate depends on quantity, mix and date.

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