One Hundred Per Cent behind the Book
Helen read the email again. She had to be careful with correspondence from people she didn’t know. The English language was changing rapidly. Familiar words were being given new meanings. Some were losing their meaning altogether.
This email was from Julia O’Farrell, Publishing Director at Morris and Robinson. The woman she had spoken to on the phone. The woman who had sent Amy.
At first glance the email was an invitation to visit the M&R offices to meet ‘the team’ and to discuss their plans ‘moving forward’. But Julia had been unable to resist repeating much that had been agreed to by Helen over the phone. She seemed to think there was some doubt. To counter that doubt Julia assured Helen again that the team was one hundred per cent behind the book in its current form. And further, she rejected the suggestion that the manuscript required extensive rewrites. Julia wrote this as though Helen had been involved in such discussions. She hadn’t been. It was the first she had heard of extensive rewrites. She assumed Amy had been in contact with Julia. But Amy had said nothing of rewrites to her.
The email was meant to be reassuring but it had the opposite effect on Helen. Julia’s smiling tone was disheartening. To read that Julia had ‘socialised’ very early cover treatments with ‘key stakeholders’ just depressed her.
She didn’t like thinking about an office full of people busily making plans concerning that book. She didn’t want to be shown a range of draft covers, she didn’t want to agree on a title, she didn’t want to read through the copy edits, she didn’t want to have her photo taken for the publicity department. Or want to be paraded around the country, visiting bookshop after bookshop, library after library, festival after festival. She didn’t want to meet her new readers. She didn’t want anyone to say anything pleasant about the book.
She thought with horror of being made to go on The One Show or having to talk about the book on radio. All the extra duties that modern publishing required hadn’t even entered into her deliberations about the book. She had been so focused on whether to publish or not, whether to keep the money or return it, she hadn’t considered what agreeing to publish entailed.
She wrote, Dear Julia, and then paused. She wondered if she should talk to Amy before replying. But couldn’t see what that would change.
The pain she felt when she thought of Malcolm, the man she had relied upon her whole adult life for good advice, was sharp and made her wince. Her eyebrows knitted together and she raised her hand to her brow, rubbing it roughly to ease the pain.
‘Where are you, Malcolm?’ she asked in a whisper.
Then quickly typed: Do what you like with the book. I don’t care anymore.
And pressed ‘Send’.