Musings on the Book Trade
I don’t why anyone would like to be a writer. Without a publishing contract, your primary concern is getting published. Against all expectations you receive a publishing contract and you wonder if you’ll ever make the contract deadline. In the midst of this, the editor emails you the book’s front cover. Do you like it? She asks. Like? Why is your editor doing this? Isn’t your book meant to be published in a year’s time? You decide it’s a test, grit your teeth and determine to finish the !?*%& book. You make the contract deadline and you convince yourself the editor will hate the book and demand the advance back. Then the editor gets back. Surprise! She loves the book. She has just a few editing suggestions on making it better. By the 5th or 6th edit you hate the book with as much passion as you wanted to get any publishing contract barely a year ago. My God, surely it wasn’t a year ago that I was so desperate to get published I flung myself at the foot of any publisher willing to take me on? You ask yourself.
The editing is finally sorted, you think. Then your publishers send you the proofs. More toing and froing. Of course, by this time you no longer care about the book. You just want to crawl under the duvet and never see it again. In fact, you wish the book will just disappear off the face of the earth. It doesn’t. It goes into production and three months later, seven-odd copies of the actual book are dropped through your letterbox. You step on the parcel as you open your front door and fling it across the corridor. You still associate the book with pain.
Six weeks later, you pick up the book and smiled foolishly to yourself; I’m a published writer. Somewhere along the line it dawns on you that books have to be sold, so, you start with the soul-destroying promotion endeavours; pestering your local radio station, sending it to every reviewer you can think of far and wide and acquainting yourself with every Christian media house. In the meantime, you bombard your editor with emails; Is my book selling? What do you mean it’s only sold 10 copies? It’s been three months!
Six months after the book is published, your book is finally reviewed by an obscure magazine with a circulation of approximately 1,000. You don’t mind; at this point you’re desperate for any review at all. The reviewer decimates your work. You shrug it off; after all, it’s an obscure magazine with a circulation of approximately 1,000. In the meantime, you beam down some generational curses on the reviewer. You retract it 10 seconds after and ask God to forgive you, which He does. Naturally.
A year after the book comes out, you have an idea for another book, only you haven’t got a contract for it as you only had a one-book contract with your first publisher. You send your publisher the book proposal for the second book. They get back to you; thanks but no thanks. You wonder if you’ll ever publish again. What you wouldn’t do to have those editing days back. You roll up your sleeves, put hands to keyboard and start the nightmare known as the Publishers Round all over again. This time, you know what you’re doing. You’ve been here before. But now, you know better; you’re a writer so you write with or without a contract.
You’ve finally grown up.
|
