Okay, so where are we then? It’s been a bit confusing and a bit exciting on the book front.
Hodder’s offices in London – fortunately there are good lifts!
For example, last week I met Victoria, my editor and a couple of other folks at Hodder for a chat. It’s possible to go through the entire process of writing and publishing a book without doing this (I did it for my first book!) but as I was in London to train clients (Dell Corporation) I figured it was worth the tube.
Besides, I was meeting my daughter and she allowed me to pay for her meal out :)
The confusion lies in the (frankly) labyrinthine administration that a book proposal must navigate before it gets to the Holy Land called “Contract”. Now that I’ve agreed to write the book, there’s a formal proposal to send (done). This then goes to an informal review (done) and a formal review (to come). At each stage, the plan is to look for things that can go wrong.
That means that chapter titles are needed to prove the book has legs; it means sample chapters are needed to prove you can write!; and it means a decent CV is needed to reassure people you’re credible. Let’s face it, publishing houses are businesses and they’re only going to publish something if they are convinced they can make money out of it. In today’s world, that’s not easy. That said
the book has been unanimously approved by the relevant committees so now I’ve got to get on with it.
I’m going to publish next week on what tools, software and so on that I’m using – it’s nothing revolutionary but it might be interesting! As an aside, the image I’m using for these posts at the moment is a screen grab of a piece of note-taking software I use called Evernote. It’s wonderful and it’s free: what’s not to love?!?
