Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "publishing"

Recently I have been having meetings with some large publishers about a book I am co-authoring the subject is quite commercial (can't say what it is here) and the thing that's been most illuminating is the insight into what these publishers, and therefore, by extrapolation all big publishers think and feel about the art of writing.

In short, the answer is not a lot. They don't care a jot about the quality of writing, which is convenient for most of the books they produce are dreadful. There's a shedload of ghostwriting going on, probably in sheds.

Any moron on a reality show can release their "autobiography" at the age of 23, I mean really - have some fucking dignity. You want a book of cat wisdom from the internet...you got it. They have no self esteem they will publish anything that will make them money. There is an almost shameless disregard for the written word.

The process has been interesting thus far and no doubt will continue to be so. I will blog about it on here in a forthright fashion until they set the lawyers on me, or the dogs, or fire me, or something !

So, I have a book and I am not a celebrity. This is a problem, according to my publisher, you can't get an audience in this inattentive and noisy internet age unless you have celebrity status of some kind - or at least celebrity endorsements.

"Go and get some celebrities to read the book and say nice things about it."

"Er, I don't really know any celebrities. I mean I am on nodding terms with some and acquainted with some people that work for celebrities from time to time. But to ask them to read a 200 page book is pushing it some."

"Hmmm, well you know ------- ask him to read it he's a very well known author."

"He will be busy authoring and not have time to read books by people he is related to, let alone weirdo's like me."

Nevertheless I sent famous author a copy. It's probably still on a table with 1278 other books for his attention. It's not that I think he won't want to read it, but that he can't, there's not enough hours in his lifetime to get to it.

So, what to do? I believe that I have written a book that deals with some important and difficult issues. It is a very different take on the subject and the voice is unique. Well, of course I think that....I nearly died in order to write it, what else would I think?

Anyway, the celeb route isn't really working out. Funny because I am currently co-writing a celebrity biography for a large publishing house in London. Turns out there are lots of types of celeb and all these are the wrong type for my work. I need to try and create an audience so I am going to publish extracts from the book on this blog - and keep doing so until you all pay attention or I run out of book, whichever comes first. I will not publish the extracts in order and I'll keep the really good bits back.

I'll do another giveaway (I don't know how Goodreads selects the winners of these?) and I'll also offer review copies to people for free after I have published a few extracts, if anyone expresses an interest - I think that's allowed by the site but I'm not entirely sure.

So that's it. My answer to not being a celebrity.... Not much but well, it'll have to do for now.

Oh, I'm on twitter at @PavementNovel