First Steps in Publishing

Some thoughts on the publishing business... As you will have discovered from Peter, publishing is not as arcane (or as expensive) as publishers would have us believe. His timely reminder that a book once cost the same as a pair of breeches (of necessity hand-made) made me realise how the world of publishers and agents had got us all in their thrall - making us think that we did not dare to dabble in anything so expensive on our own. In my experience, publishers and agents suck their teeth and disapprove: they won't let you say this, or do that; and as for political correctness! I finally lost my cool when the copy editor for LAZY LEARNING deleted 'mankind' and substituted 'humans'. 'Okay', I said, 'we can have "humans" as long as we add "and huwomans"'. At that moment, the commissioning editor finally saw sense. (More about copy editors later). To be fair, I have friends who love their publishers - and what you read about here is just my experience. My outcome for writing these pages is to give you a glimpse of the possibilities that exist, and maybe contribute to a world where authors can take charge of their own work, and produce the books they want to produce - rather than what publishers think the world should have. After all, without authors, there would be no publishers anyway! The old arrangement was - and publishers and agents would still, apparently, like it to be - that you sent your manuscript to one publishing house, they sat on it for about six months and then returned it. Then you started all over again. At this rate, you could submit your manuscript to about two publishers a year. For LAZY LEARNING, I simply couldn't be bothered with all that, so I asked the Marketing Expert of W H Smith out to lunch, told her about the book, and invited her suggestions. She recommended four publishers who specialised in that sort of book. When I asked which to approach first, she answered: 'All of them.' So I rang them all; they all asked to see the ms and two of them wanted to buy it. So much for tradition! Not only is the old order is changing, it is changing incredibly fast. We now have wonderful technology at our disposal, and - if we cannot reproduce a particular piece of wizardry ourselves - there is always someone who can. The new world of publishing is available to you - if you want it!