Lunch With the Pompous Publisher

Posted on November 22, 2005

Walter Ellis of the Belfast Telegraph longs to be a novelist. With a little help from Maeve Binchy, he managed to score a lunch date with a well-known New York publisher. Did he land the big contract? At least learn some invaluable advice for getting published? Well, not exactly... It started with the publisher (named Jack) arriving 10 minutes late and saying he did not have much time.

He had no advice to offer on what was most saleable these days, other than to say that fiction was almost impossible to crack. Publishers were reluctant to give unknown authors a try, he said. This was because it had become so expensive to promote new talent. "All those piles of books you see when you walk through the front door of Borders or Barnes & Noble - those didn't get there by accident. Publishers paid through the nose for the space and, every couple of months, the price goes up again. I tell you, it's a tough sell."
Some of his books failed because they weren't as good as he hoped, he added, or because the market had moved on. But it could also be because the major chains refused to stock them - "not even if we pay them."
"Does that happen often?" I inquired, using chopsticks to negotiate my dim sum into an unfeasibly dinky container of soy sauce.
"More often than you'd think."

The publisher also said that having the right agent and the right platform were key to selling books. The publisher said, "Platform is key. In New York, people want to know what your platform is before they'll even shake hands with you."

Platform? Is that what they're calling a marketing plan these days? Or is he saying if you're not already famous, with a way to reach millions of readers, just give up? Jack's advice is pure nonsense: that kind of "advice" is only given as a test to see if you have the perseverance and self-confidence never to give up. He also sounds like a self-absorbed, pompous bore. So there.