Remember publishers' lunches? by Jan Needle

Deadlines – as Ann Evans was saying just a blink ago – doncha just love ‘em? Following the principle that there’s more to life than working, or even writing, I found myself this week towing a twenty foot sloop from the north to the south to launch and berth her with my brother-in-law near Portsmouth. The sun was shining, all was delight. Two days later, soaked, frozen, and exhausted, I noticed the date. It’s Friday evening now. I've just got home. You’ll be reading this, sensation seekers, within brief hours of me finishing it. Okay?

I also came to realize that I’d put a day-specific post on my own blog – janneedle.com – last week, and the event I was talking about, and appearing in, had come and gone. One never knows if anyone reads these things, but if they do, I need to apologise. Or at least get rid of it, quickly. As quickly as the June weather put paid to my hopes of nautical bliss (suntan included).

A third thing, now remembered, gnaws at me. I’ve been giving away a free digest of my thriller Kicking Off as a booster before putting it up on Kindle. My guess is that I should have given the whole thing the final go ahead by now. Not done. Good God, I’ve got to pull myself together!

I’ve never been technically minded. I can do old engines, solve mechanical problems reasonably well, get by when the car breaks down, but the world of the computer is a mystery, through and through. Which is why I decided to take the plunge when my ex-agent sent me a letter from a company that wanted to publish my historical naval fictions as ebooks. Cut out the middle man. Me.

I got in touch with them, heard what they said, and checked out with the Society of Authors if it was echt or some sort of snare for a dumbarse author. Me.

A week later I went to lunch with them in London. Lunched by a publisher! Just like the good old days! I’d probably have said yes to anything!

Not true, but I was impressed. They wanted an original, and I told them the William Bentley books were not available. Matti Gardner (son) is in the process of readying them for the ebook world. The first one, A Fine Boy for Killing, is almost ready to be rolled out.

“How about writing us a novella then, same era, same characters if you want?” they said. “That way the books can feed off each other. People will read the novella, then want to read the novels, or vice versa. And yes, of course you can trail your own epublications in ours. You’ll do the same for us. Makes sense, no?”

Sounds like sense to me, I said. What’s the deal?

“Give us a file, or a copy of the book if we’re talking backlist, and we do the rest. All the scanning, proofing, everything. And we do a cover.”

Still sounded good. But I assumed it would cost me. No, they said. It costs you nothing. We do everything, and consult with you as well. Our USP is good professional books. If we turn out rubbish, the business dies.

The nitty gritty, naturally, was the financial nuts and bolts, the “deal.” Which turns out to be thirty per cent of the cover price, gross, paid twice a year. They take thirty, Amazon takes thirty, the author takes thirty, the taxman, the legal niceties, see off the rest.

I later ran the whole thing in front of the Society of Authors. They said fifty per cent would be better, but that was up to me. And it was thirty per cent of the gross, which was unusual, and not in a bad way.

One good reason to forget work

A backlist book sounded the most useful victim for experiment from my point of view. I told them of one I wrote some years ago about the Rudolf Hess flight. A dark and mysterious thriller about a dark and mysterious man. Or even men…

Bingo, they said!

It is now in the process of preparation. Their turnaround time is measured in weeks, not months. And in the meantime, I’m writing a novella about Daniel Swift, the terrible man who is uncle to William Bentley, the fine boy for killing.

I’m not giving up my own ebook venture, that’s the best thing. Kicking Off will be up soon in a revised edition, followed shortly afterwards by The Bonus Boys, which will also feature Rosanna Nixon and Andrew Forbes.

And the Hess book, if I so wish, will contain information about these books, even sample chapters. Cross fertilization, it appears, might turn out to be the name of the game.

The weirdest thing about this unexpected lunch in London was that all three of us, writer and two publishers, had soft drinks.

How times have changed! 

And another!