In the last week, I’ve been asked to write
some text for a book about stately homes and another one retelling Shakespeare
plays for children. The publishers will use the texts I’ve written to create
sample spreads, which they’ll take to book fairs to try to drum up interest
from foreign publishers. I sincerely hope both will turn into books one day,
but I’m not holding my breath. I know from experience that many of these ‘trial
balloons’ float off into the Bologna sunset never to be seen again.
©The Salariya Book Co Publishers selling foreign rights using sample material. But what happens to the sample material? |
Over the years I’ve probably written a
couple of dozen sample spreads, and in my editing days I’ve commissioned a good
deal more. A LOT of work goes into the writing, the artwork and the design.
They’ve got to be representative of the proposed book, but also a bit more than
that. Like a Facebook profile, the sample spread has got to show off its
product in the best possible light – it’s got to be more colourful, more lively,
more eye-catching than the book it’s selling could ever hope to be.
Some are quite gorgeous to look at and
read. Yet their readership is tiny, and the ultimate destiny of many, if not
most, will be the dusty corner of an editor’s hard drive. If I ever looked back
at all the many books and series that didn’t make it past that stage, I could
end up feeling quite depressed – so I try hard not to. The same cannot be said
for my fiction, however…
The world of fiction has its equivalent of
the sample spread: the synopsis and sample chapter. Of course it’s the author
who’s usually the initiator here, and the ‘customer’ is an agent or publisher,
but the same principles apply. Of the many fiction projects I’ve pitched, some
were rejected and others were accepted but changed beyond recognition.
A few, luckily, ended up as published books
– but, funnily enough, I find I think less about them than the ones that didn’t
make it. They’re my unborn children, frozen at an early stage of development.
They’re the flowers in my garden whose buds got broken off – little packages of
potential that will never be anything more.
Maybe that’s why they’re interesting. As
pure potential, they exist in a place unsullied by the compromises and
ineptitudes that are part and parcel of the publishing business. They’re still
perfect. And I’m free to wonder how the world might have taken to those
characters, those stories, had they ever seen the light of day.
© Hodder & Stoughton In Fforde's novel, 'Dark Reading Matter' is an alternative dimension where unrealised fictional characters enjoy a kind of existence. Is this every author's dream – or nightmare? |
In his novel The Woman Who Died A Lot, Jasper Fforde introduced the concept of
Dark Reading Matter, a place where all these unrealised imagined worlds
congregate: characters from works long out of print co-mingle with those from as-yet-unpublished
works. It’s an exotic idea. And it’s exciting to think that it exists – sort of
– in the dusty corners of editors’ hard drives the world over.