Getting a Book Out There: Piece of Cake….Not!

There’s a saying: “Everyone has a book in him or her.” I don’t know how true this is but I can now say with justification that there is a book in me. My novel, “Truth to Power,” was published as an e-book last week. The experience from start to finish is like starting at the top of a high slide and finishing at the very bottom. Let me explain.

About four years ago, I completed my doctorate in American political history. There were suggestions that I should expand my thesis into a book, a work of non-fiction, but I’d had enough of academic writing. I thought, why not turn the research into a novel? After all, I had found out how corrupt US city government had become during the 1920s and 30s, and how journalists had reacted. There was ample material for a work of fiction.

On holiday in Miami Beach, I spent almost two weeks sitting on the veranda of our hotel during the day, writing a story. Every night, before I went to sleep, I would work out the next steps in the plot in my mind and the following day I would type on my laptop for hours on end. I loved it. I was having fun inventing characters and events. As for the troubling matter of finding evidence to support elements of the story, I could just make it up. By the time I returned to London, I had more than 60,000 words written. I never knew how enjoyable writing a book could be. Over the next weeks and months, I finished the story and polished it. The big question was, what to do next? After all, the experience so far had been nothing but positive and I hoped it would continue.

The real learning curve was about publishing. A writer may but submit a book to a publisher but what the writer really needs is to find a literary agent who will promote the work. I didn’t know any agents so I floundered. Suddenly, I wasn’t having fun. An accountant friend of mine told me he acted for a well-known literary agency. He suggested I send him my manuscript and he’d pass it on. A few weeks later, I received an e-mail from him. It recounted how the agent had not expected to get very far with my book but was now half way through it and enjoying the read.

Subsequently, I met the agent. She wanted to take me on as a client. The first step would be revising the novel. She sent a detailed list of suggestions. Anyone who writes knows that revising is the hardest part and I struggled but did as she asked. All seemed to be proceeding well when the agency dropped me. Their reason was that the book needed to be marketed in the US market and their current experience of American publishing was it was in dire straits. I believed the agent but felt very badly let down. It was back to square one.

It didn’t help when many friends kept asking, “When is your book going to be published?” Some months later, the literary agent contacted me. She suggested I get in touch with Acorn Publishing, who specialise in e-book publication. Thus began my relationship with Leila and Ali Dewji, a sister and brother who own Acorn. Leila is my editor. Boy, did she put me through my paces. Over several months, the novel changed, as characters were dropped, plot lines altered as confusing American city politics was clarified. I liked Leila in inverse proportion to what she had me do.

Once Leila was satisfied, the book was sent to be “close edited.” Here, I had to deal with more than 350 comments by another editor. I almost lost the will to live as I tried to cope not only with the comments but the Word software for reviewing documents. It did not help that in the middle of this exercise, my computer died. I bought a new one with updated software with which I am still coming to grips.

By the time the close edit was completed, I had lost count of the hours and hours spent by me on the novel. Any sense of fun and enjoyment which I got from writing had sunk without trace. Instead, the sale of Truth to Power has become serious business. But for Leila and Ali, publishing is what they do and I respect and appreciate their efforts.

A few days ago, Truth to Power was published as an e-book, available on Amazon, Google and all other e-book sellers. I now have publicists in America working for me and my first interview with an American magazine is scheduled for this week. Maybe my initial excitement about writing might be recaptured.

I do not want to be the next J. K. Rowling, a suggestion made to me more than once by friends and family. What I would like is that the novel finds readers who like a page turner and a story of the struggle for supremacy between two men against a political background.