On being an author by Richard Charkin
Thursday, 14th March 2024
This week sees (more or less) the first anniversary of the publication of My Back Pages by Marble Hill London. I have been at the other end of the book industry, a publisher, for more than fifty years, never more than a midwife or a salesman for books.
And now I am an AUTHOR. Or to be perfectly honest I am half an author as I was helped enormously by Tom Campbell who painlessly extracted stories from me and helped make them palatable to a reader. Newington Green will forever be remembered (by Tom and me at least) as the nursery ground of the book.
I am sure we all know authors who are unhappy with their publishers. The ones who are happy tend to be those with enormous sales. My book was never going to compete with these megastars but I could not be happier with my publisher, Francis Bennett.
Firstly, he approached me thus obviating the need for me to go round friendly publishers begging for a contract. Could he publish the book? I was amazed and delighted. Of course. There was a fierce struggle over royalty rates and other terms which took all of three minutes and the contract was signed within a day.
I delivered the manuscript in February 2023 thinking we might publish the book in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair that year (the hoped-for market being people in the book trade worldwide). After another three-minute discussion we decided to publish instantly to catch the Spring London Book Fair. Somehow we managed it, albeit with a few snafus on the way.
Publication made me an author. We sold serial rights to Publishing Perspectives. The ideal shop window. Bloomsbury kindly and generously allowed us to launch the book officially on their book fair stand. The Publishers Association lent us their offices for a family and friends launch party.
All this was normal. Sales were fine set against my rather low expectations. We have sold some 3000 copies to date. More surprising was the interest from foreign-language publishers. There are right now four translations in process – Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Turkish – with more to come.
Francis came up with the brilliant idea of offering a Q&A session about the book to various publishing companies. So far we have performed at Kogan Page, Oxford University Press, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, Liverpool University Press. And at the Publishers Association, City University, and the Academic Publishers of Europe in Berlin - plus zoom sessions for the Society of Authors, Bibliographic Data Services, and University of Witwatersrand. There are plenty more of these to come.
More surprisingly I was invited to address Broteria in Lisbon. All this and more would have been impossible without the support of a diligent, responsive, and empathic publisher.
Becoming an author has been a thoroughly enjoyable and life-enhancing experience. I still find it hard to see myself as an author or to use the phrase ‘my publisher’ and it has been hard work. I am still a publisher at heart but have learned so much more by being an author as well.
A huge thank you to all those who bought the book and written to me saying they enjoyed it or pointing out the errors; to all those who gave me plaudits at the outset; to all those who might buy the book or even translate it; to all those who might like to host a Q&A session; to all those mentioned here and in particular to Dan Franklin in the Literary Review for making me understand the impact of a negative or unfair review.