A Whirlwind Romance

A Whirlwind Romance (Published in InPrint magazine)

I have just come out of a whirlwind relationship. We met about three months ago and it was love at first sight. At first, everything was fantastic. I was flattered, complimented at every turn and generally made to feel like a queen. I told all my friends about this new relationship and they agreed that I was on to a good thing. In my heart, I knew that it would work out; it just had to.

The courtship I am describing took place between me and a few major publishers and I can honestly say it was one of the most exciting periods of my life. So how did I end up with the attentions from such sophisticated suitors?

Six months ago, I got a call from LA from a well-spoken chap wondering if I could give him a hand writing his autobiography. At first, I was a bit suspicious as, in my experience, calls from abroad are mostly made by members of the nutter brigade. Only the other day I took a call from Thailand from a man in his seventies claiming he had a bestseller on his hands – he was an expert in S&M and witchery apparently. However, this guy from LA seemed perfectly genuine. When I googled him, I found 1,420,000 entries on this man; news articles, clips of interviews, documentary footage, the works. With my excellent powers of deduction, I gathered he was quite a well known media figure; I had just never heard of him before. In short, this was no nutter I was dealing with.

Over the course of a few weeks, I interviewed him on the phone and when he happened to be in the UK. I know, on some level, everyone thinks they have led a fascinating life, but this man had stories that made my jaw drop. I was confident there was nothing like this on the market and I just knew it would sell. But first, I had to find us an agent.

Thanks to the internet, the Bookseller and various SYP talks, I managed to put a half-decent proposal together (Why the book will sell, three sample chapters and a chapter breakdown) and, tentatively, sent it off to three agents. Within a week, all three came back; they all wanted to take the book on. I couldn’t believe it. We were now in the fortunate position of actually choosing an agent rather than the other way around. Eventually, we made our choice and we never had any doubt that it was the right one.

I spent last Christmas refining the book proposal; it had to be just right. Our agent sent it off to 12 publishers; a mixture of major and independents. They had three weeks to respond. It was a nervous time. Within 48 hours, my worst fears were realised when four publishers turned it down. However, we had eight more responses to go and everything to play for.

A week later, we heard back from two more publishers; it wasn’t good news. During that period, I finally understood the expression ‘tearing your hair out’; the waiting was unbearable. In the final week, we heard that four major publishers were interested and wanted to meet us. This was where the courtship began: ‘We love the book’, they told us. ‘It’s fabulous’, they said. ‘The writing is excellent’ and the most important words of all: ‘We know it will sell’.

We left each interview ecstatic, just about daring to whisper those magic words to each other: ‘bidding war’. We really believed that they would all be scrambling to publish the book, physically shoving each other out of the way to beat the competition.

As for me, I was in love with the whole process. Already, I could visualise the cover, see it on the bookshelves in Waterstone’s and sense how it would feel in my hands. Now all we had to do was to wait for the verdict.

A few days later, it was all over. Not one of them bid for the book. In short, we were dumped. I don’t think words can describe the shock and devastation of it. For a few days, a giant tub of ice cream and mountains of chocolate were my only sources of comfort.

However, as I emerged from the black fog, I did see a bright side. My agent is great and we are working on a number of projects together. I also met some lovely people in the publishing world, who, although didn’t commit to this book, might just say yes to the next one.

Relationships are hard, but I am confident that I will find the right one, fall in love with the publishing process all over again and, hopefully, next time, I won’t get my heart broken.