10. Getting a book publisher
BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
1. By some miracle, you first get an agent.
2. The agent then submits your manuscript to editors at various publishing houses.
3. If an editor is interested, she/he takes the proposal to a “Pub Board” meeting where sales, marketing, rights, and manufacturing staffs discuss the project’s likely costs and income.
4. A P&L is then built for the book and the publisher either passes or gives the green light.
I luckily had an agent. He submitted the wiener manuscript and quickly got interest from an editor at Simon & Schuster. She was taking The Hot Dog Cookbook to a Pub Board meeting. This was critical! Simon & Schuster was a great house with terrific authors. Just imagine: Stephen King, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bob Woodward, and Jess Brallier (even though it was really Senator John Heinz, but hey, that was the deal).
I was excited. Fingers crossed. Tuesday at 11 a.m. in a conference room at the Simon & Schuster offices in Rockefeller Center a publishing team would consider my (our) manuscript and decide the future of hot dogs and me. (I re-typed Heinz’s manuscript to make it look like something I’d do. See photo.)
If there was only something I could do to help it along….
Which is when my colleague and friend, David Goehring, suggested I have hot dogs delivered to the Pub Board meeting. That would shake things up. Brilliant!
I phoned a hot dog joint and ordered 30 hot dogs to be delivered.
Just imagine, a mysterious delivery of hot dogs arrives to a pub board meeting at a prestigious New York publishing house.
Surely this was a first!
And probably a last.
They loved the hot dogs, but not my book. Simon & Schuster passed.
My agent ended up selling my (our) book to Globe Pequot.
Nine months later, in May, I’m in Chicago, working for Addison-Wesley at the annual ABA convention (in those days, the book industry’s BIG meeting). All the publishers had booths to promote the books they’d publish in the Fall. I walked over to the Globe Pequot booth which featured my (our) hot dog cookbook.
As I neared, I spotted two guys off to the side checking out the booth. Their name tags said they were with Simon & Schuster. I edged closer to them, so I could overhear.
One nodded at my book, “Remember that pub board meeting?”
The other laughed, “Yep. Best ever.”
I had to smile.
Tomorrow: Death and book publishing
