Thursday, October 02, 2008

Going by the book


It is an exciting day for me. Well it's not actually much different from most other days to be honest, but I'm trying to build this up in my own mind a little. The reason is that this book is (I believe) officially published today. It's a cracking read, a real unputdownable, page-turning potboiler, and it it ought to be on everyone's christmas stocking wishlist. It's perhaps not going to win the Booker Prize, though it would be nice to be nominated.

I haven't actually seen a copy of it, and have no idea when I will (I'm supposed to be getting some, sometime), but it is out today. I think when a title of this magnitude and of this universal interest comes out, the authors are expected to do the breakfast TV shows, appear at book signings around the country and just generally lap up their celebrity status. Strangely I haven't yet been asked to do all that media-whoring. No idea why.

Seriously though, I think with every copy sold I make something massive like 70p. So go crazy, buy three or four, and with my vast royalty cheques I'll buy you a bottle of Ciuc one day.

Writing for CUP was something of a long drawn out experience with a drafting process taking in 4 different stages (ie I was sent the pages to review 4 different times) a dedicated editor, someone looking up references to check that we really did quote properly, etc etc. We started writing the bloody thing two years ago. Contrast with the process when I wrote the book pictured to the left, which was published by Polirom - a very well respected Romanian publishing company - the process of which was basically signing a contract and then letting them get on with it - someone did go through it and proof read it, I know because there were a few typos in my document that were dealt with before it emerged, but I certainly wasn't involved, and it only took them a month between getting the book for the first time and it appearing in a genuine bound-and-all copy

Anyway, I might permit myself a small glass of something to celebrate later.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've been looking it up every week. It is finally released in UK. Doesn't appear to be available in US yet. The funny thing I found last week is that while it wasn't released yet there were several sellers at Amazon marketplace that claimed to have not only new copies available, but one actually had a "USED" copy available...of a book that wasn't officially released until today!! How bizarre! LOL!!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations, man.

I'm always slightly awestruck by anyone who can write a whole book - I think I took that whole "brevity...wit" thing too much to heart and I lack either the ability or patience or intellectual rigour to explore an idea what it takes to write anything longer than about 400 words without feeling that I've said all there is to say.

Which is, of course, a striking counterpoint to my pub-ular persona where you'll never get me to shut up.

Anyway, a bottle of Lidl's finest CreditCrunchBrau lager is being raised in your general direction as I type this, NOW (I even went to the trouble of typing that 'NOW' left-handed, simultaneously with toasting you).

When you gonna be in Wimbledon next?