Getting published? Easy!

You have an agent!

Your agent is fizzing with mad energy over the possibilities of your book. You are invited to lunch and tell everyone that you are  ’lunching with your agent’, probably at ‘The Ivy’.  It turns out to be a lesser establishment, called the The Old Goose Handler’s Arms’ or something.

‘Not exactly a gastropub darling but handy, just over the road from the office.’

At the bar she asks to borrow money, as she hasn’t had time to get  to a cash machine. By the time the food arrives,you are both several gins down and your agent has launched into a mad fantasy involving publishers’ auctions and  appearances on chat shows.This makes you overlook the fact that, so far, you have bought all the drinks. Please note; this is not a good sign.

When you have recovered financially and gastronomically from this lunch, you begin to feel giddy with anticipation. Now, you are allowed to get very, very excited for exactly one year.

Feel free to inform all your friends and every member of your family, including those who have so far lived in sublime ignorance of your existence, that you are about to be PUBLISHED. Get in there first with door to door evangelists, by telling them your GOOD NEWS!

Your novel is submitted  to every editor that your agent feels will  ’get’  your writing. You overhear her telling one of these editors that your novel exactly resembles a fabulous collision between two current best sellers.

‘It’s Girl with a Dragon Tattoo meets Julian Barnes but with…you know; what are those South American blowey things?’ (see previous post)’

Half way through this year, your novel become officially ‘ under consideration’ with a well-known publisher. Now, you tell shop assistants, traffic wardens and random people in the street, that you are about to be PUBLISHED. No one can contain their excitement. You think about buying a few outfits for the inevitable launch and the subsequent book tour. Thought turns to action when you find yourself buying something with a ludicrous price tag on your maxed-out credit card. It doesn’t matter, you lie to yourself, soon the publisher’s advance will be swelling your bank account.

Meanwhile, your book goes from the editorial department to the marketing department; editorial, marketing, editorial and then, nothing. The phone stops ringing. You notice tumbleweed blowing through your inbox. The feeling of excitement has been replaced by a generalised queasy uneasiness. Has your agent apprenticed herself to the Dalai Llama, or gone in for sexual re-alignment surgery?  Perhaps she is ill? After three gin and tonics, so strong that you can actually feel the gin shriveling your ovaries, you decide that the very best thing to do is, to call her.

When she finally answers the phone, you think you can hear merry, tinkling laughter in the background, almost as if people were having a little celebration in her office. Was that a champagne cork? She has to ask for your name three times.

‘Sorry, we are celebrating a little publishing success,’  she explains.

Then she tells you, to the sound of people having a food fight with a tray of canapes, that the well-known publisher has finally turned down your  ’Cormac McCarthy meets Barbara Cartland’ epic. You almost find yourself mouthing,

‘So, no chat shows then, none?’

She has come to the conclusion that perhaps you should think of writing something else. This is code for; everyone who has read your novel  has declined it. Her best agent friend read the first five pages and declared it ‘Total shit’, then berated her for taking it on in the first place.

Your agent will go on to glory, her brush with your execrable prose fortunately hardly dinting her career at all. You, on the other hand will slink into your bed, curl up in a foetal position, and wonder how you will face all those dozens of friends and relations and their bright-eyed inquiries after your publishing career.