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!”
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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