An Interesting Month - Andrew Crofts

Well, that was an interesting month.

A wise old agent once said to me, “some projects, Andrew, just seem to travel on oiled wheels”, and that seems a perfect description for the birth of my memoir, “Confessions of a Ghostwriter”, this month.

The project began to show promise when the editors at Friday Project suggested almost no changes to the first draft of the manuscript. It picked up speed when their excellent public relations company, The Light Brigade, told me that Robert McCrum at the Observer had read the proofs and wanted to come to see me, followed shortly afterwards with the news that Nick Higham wanted to interview me on BBC News’s “Meet the Author” spot.

Within days of publication the Observer article was up on the Guardian website, had been picked up by another Guardian journalist, Hadley Freeman, and was being widely tweeted and commented on.

Even before “Meet the Author” had hit the screens favourable reviews had appeared close to home in the Telegraph, the Times and  the New Statesman, and as far afield as the South China Morning Post, not to mention a host of blogs and websites. Requests for radio interviews followed, plus a couple of speaking engagements and an interview for Italy’s La Repubblica. The Sunday Express followed up on one of the stories in the book.

So, the billion dollar questions are;

(a) Will all this exposure make people actually buy the book?
(b) Why did this launch go so smoothly?
(c) How can I replicate the experience with every book I write in the future?


The answer in all cases; not a clue.