My one and only book came out two years ago. It was a collection of my “Out to Lunch” columns from the Sunday Times and for two weeks it was the number one best-seller at Exclusive Books. To be absolutely honest it hit the top spot during the pre-Christmas buying lull, when people are still deciding what books they really want to buy as presents.
A dubious claim to fame maybe, but as it’s all I have I’m clinging on to it. Readers of the column have asked me whether there is a second book in the offing and the answer is no. My publisher, Jonathan Ball, has shown no interest whatsoever in a follow up, probably because he has a warehouse stacked with unsold copies.
What I wouldn’t mind doing, though, is writing a novel and flogging the movie rights for an obscene sum. I mentioned this to my publisher while we were planning our strategy for the marketing of Out to Lunch. We’d reached the part of the conversation when he was explaining how he wanted a fly-past of fighter jets at the book launch with “Out to Lunch” emblazoned on their fuselages.
I said that I thought it would be a great idea if he published my unwritten novel, and he showed about as much interest as a blind man at a lap dancing club. Having spoken to a few local novelists I now understand why. If—and it’s a big if—you make the South African best-seller list you can expect to sell around 4 500 to 5 000 copies. That means very little potential profit for the publisher and bugger all for the author.
Now there are some people who live to write. I’ve met them at Jenny Cryws Williams’s book weekends and they’re remarkable individuals. They get up every morning, breakfast lightly and settle down to write 3 000 words. After a short break for lunch they revise the morning’s work and write another 2 000 words before going for a long walk and planning the next day’s writing . At lunch I sat next to a woman who told me she was working on her third novel.
I was impressed and asked her how the first two had done. She told me she was still looking for a publisher for them. I was even more impressed.
As someone who only knocks out words on the promise of hard cash I can’t imagine setting aside several months of my life to write a novel nobody wanted to publish. It just doesn’t make sound financial sense. But that’s probably why I’m never going to write a novel. If life was about sound financial sense we wouldn’t have had Harry Potter.
Instead of hanging around tea-rooms in Edinburgh writing about boy wizards, JK Rowling might have chosen to get a nice regular paying job. As it happens she didn’t and she now has squillions in the bank as a result. Is that, I wonder, what the writers of all those unpublished novels are hoping for? Or do they just want to have their story published?
Since South African publishers are so reluctant to take any financial risk it seems a fair bet that some South African novels that deserve to be published will never see the light of day. I doubt whether most of the manuscripts which arrive at publisher’s offices are even read.
Wouldn’t it be great if one of South Africa’s new mega-rich businessmen decided to do a Brett Kebble and offer a large amount of cash for the year’s best unpublished novel. Who knows, it might even tempt the publishing industry to read some of those manuscripts.