This weekend has seen a milestone that I’ve been watching approach for some while.  We finally made it on Friday night - 100,000 page hits on the Greenhouse website.

Even allowing for the fact that 10,000 of those are probably my own (well, I LIKE looking at the site. I’m proud, OK?), that does suggest that quite a lot of people - from all over the world - have been dropping in to see what’s going on. In fact, I can almost watch the numbers going up as I sit at mission control; we’re currently at 100,969, so that’s a whole lot more who’ve popped in today!

I guess this is therefore a good moment to declare today the end of the beginning (most definitely not the beginning of the end). The end of that sense of being the new kid on the block who was constantly having to say, ‘Hi, pleased to meet you. This is what I have to offer’ time and time again. Yes, the certificate on the wall behind my head that says the Greenhouse became a Virginia corporation on January 24, 2008 now makes me feel positively venerable.

So it’s time to think about making some changes - not least to my submission policy, which is currently under discussion.  One thing I can tell you is that I’ll be saying goodbye to hard-copy submissions in favour of electronic (so if you’re about to submit something, PLEASE, PLEASE send it electronically and, for the moment, according to the existing site guidelines).  With a business called Greenhouse it makes absolute sense to be as paper-free as possible. 

But the magic 100K figure has made me think about other numbers of achievements that have taken place since Greenhouse’s start date.  I share them with you now.  Please note, some of these are highly accurate and some are . . . well, a little more creative. I leave you to guess which are which.  Ladies and gentleman, I give you the Greenhouse’s post-1/24 mathematical blog!

Number of queries received and perused: about 3,000-3,500

Number of authors launched into book deals:  5

Number of blueberry muffins Sarah has consumed in the interests of ‘easing her into reading’: 60

Number of postmen collapsed under the weight of mail and now requiring hip replacements: 3

Number of mind-bendingly slow ‘walkies’ undertaken with the Hound, in which every blade of grass has been sniffed and contemplated:  420

Number of grey hairs Sarah has gained and now has to conceal:  Sorry, that is not information you need to have.

Number of times Blackberry has been peeked at in the middle of the night:  Sssssh, that’s our secret, and if I tell you you may think I’m insane.

Number of times Sarah has said, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t represent picturebooks’: 987

Number of times someone, anyone, has said, ‘Ha ha, Britain and the USA are two nations divided by a common language!’:  23

Number of frappuccinos (mocha, low-cal sugar replacement, skim milk, hold the whip cream) consumed by Sarah in the interests of ‘easing her into reading’ [NB: See muffin item above]): 60 (NB: Greenhouse Husband says, ‘7 billion’)

Number of people who have believed they and I were a ‘match made in heaven’:  16?

Number of times Sarah has fallen on the floor simultaneously laughing and weeping, while punching the air and screeching ‘YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!’:  1

Number of weekends Sarah has not worked in some shape or form:  0

Number of times Sarah has been caught talking earnestly to herself, while considering some thorny plot point:  7 (NB: I’m good at not getting caught.)

Number of times the phrase ‘Squeeze the juice from the fruit’ has been said:  147

Maximum number of Vermont chocolates consumed in any one evening while looking at submissions:  8 (Do not try this at home without help on hand.  Those babies are rich.)

Number of queries received focusing on corpses, brothels, and automatic weaponry in the Chechen War: 1 (it was not for teens. And actually, not really in English.)

Number of MFA courses addressed: 2 (give me time, give me time)

Number of times Sarah has crossed the Atlantic: 4

Number of times a nervous breakdown/heart attack/general collapse has been narrowly avoided following the sighting of a deceased black snake:  2

Number of times Sarah has been locked out and worn plastic bags on her feet to avoid hypothermia: 1

Number of times the phrase ‘Show, don’t tell!’ has been proclaimed:  1,349

Number of friends, old and new, in the industry and book community who have helped and supported Sarah as she found her feet in the USA:  A number.  You know who you are.  x

Number of would-be writers who have brightened Sarah’s day, charmed her with their kindness, raised her spirits, made her smile, come back with such grace after being rejected - and generally made her feel this is a great business to be in:  Too many to count.

Number of Saturday nights spent writing blog posts:  Many.  And this is one!

On which note I wish you a happy weekend, one and all, wherever you may be.

As I write this, the Greenhouse is about to float away on the monsoon known as Tropical Storm Hanna. There are floods on the roads, waterfalls in the yards, and a Hound that smells so bad from his brief outing in the rain that he will thenceforth be known as Stinker (a name he richly deserves at the best of times). So it’s a good afternoon to stay inside and catch up with the welter of things that just don’t get done during the crazy, hectic week:  booking flights, downloading Skype (watch this space, I’m going to be doing a monthly podcast from October for my agent mate Peter Cox’s Litopia After Dark series, which discusses industry issues.  I’ll let you know when I’m on and you can listen to me via the internet!), creating and printing notes on my authors/books for this week’s trip to New York, and finalizing some appointments. Then of course there are the ever-present submissions to unpack from their envelopes and stack in an orderly pile on the floor (the only space left), waiting for the next patch of time when I can concentrate on them.

Yes, I’m off to New York early Monday morning until Wednesday night.  It should be great - I’m meeting three Greenhouse authors there and will be joining two on their first visits to their publishers.  Now, I think you can imagine what an exciting moment that is for any debut author, and I feel like a proud parent on the first day of school (do you have your lunchbox?  Does your uniform fit?). But it’s also a scary moment too for a new author - for the first time they’re out in the real, commercial world of the book industry, under a contract, and feeling a pressure they’ve not felt before.  So it’s great to know that we’re working with some lovely editors who manage to be not only very professional, but also very understanding and supportive.  There’s no doubt about it, this is a great business to be in - people work incredibly hard, but there’s so much fun involved too. And most people are just plain nice!

I’ll also be meeting with lots of editors on my own, seeing a few for the first time, but also getting better acquainted with others.  This process is so important.  A book can stand or fall on the personal passion of one editor who leaps in and champions a novel within their publishing house.  And everyone has different taste.  What I want to know, and keep up to date with, is what individual editors are seeking right now - what they already have and don’t need more of, and what they’d love to find.  So these appointments are often less about me presenting manuscripts than just listening and making notes as editors talk about their lists.  When I submit a novel I usually pick about twelve editors (occasionally more than one within the same house, but different imprints) to send to, so each one represents a very careful decision on my part. 

So that gives you a feel for my week ahead.  But the week just past has been an exciting one.  The biggest thing has been that - hurrah! - I have sold US/Canadian rights in Teresa Harris’s debut middle-grade novel, TREASURE IN THE PAST TENSE, to Dinah Stevenson at Clarion, part of the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt group. I first met Teresa in July when I was a panellist at the alumni conference of the MFA program at Vermont College.  We bumped into each other very early on and seemed to keep being in the same place at the same time - not least down in the local coffee shop where we had a rather good chat about a book we both loved - Donna Tartt’s SECRET HISTORY.  At the cocktail party hosted by Greenhouse, a couple of students also came up and surreptitiously whispered in my ear, ‘Teresa is amazing - you should see her writing!’ So when I got back to my desk and Teresa wrote to me about TREASURE IN THE PAST TENSE, my interest was well and truly piqued. It’s already posted on the ‘Our Authors’ section of the site, but here’s the story in a nutshell:

Treasure Daniels hasn’t had a real home for four years, since her dad left. Ever since then, her mom has been on the run - from herself, and from all the people to whom she owes money.  But tough as life is for Treasure and her little sister, they really don’t want to obey Grandma Celeste and go stay with evil old Great-aunt Grace in Black Lake, Virginia.  Sure enough, Grace is even worse than Treasure had feared, with her endless cigarettes, her depressing house, and her four-hour church services on Sundays. And Black Lake is a town where segregation still lingers.  It doesn’t take long for Treasure to have had enough and to want out.  But then something unexpected happens and Treasure witnesses Grace standing up for her in a way she can hardly believe.  Suddenly Black Lake starts looking a little different, and Treasure realizes that after running for so many years, she’s finally found a home - and a real family - where she’d least expected.

TREASURE IN THE PAST TENSE is really special - insightful, charming, and memorable.  It will be great to see how the novel grows over the next few months as Teresa develops the story still further with such a high-calibre and challenging publisher as Dinah Stevenson.

Oh my goodness, I do believe it has stopped raining.  Perhaps I won’t have to float off to New York in an Ark with Stinker after all.  Enjoy the weekend, wherever you are, and take care if you’ve some bad weather around.  Cheers!

Hi there - and happy Labor Day to anyone reading this in the USA.  Sympathies to you Brits, who are back at work right now - no doubt not having the kind of weather we’re enjoying today in Virginia. 

To any of you affected by Gustav - just to say I’m thinking of you a lot.  Take care.  I’ve only experienced one hurricane - the legendary British one of 1987, which did so much long-term damage to ancient woodland, and which meant that a certain weather forecaster named Mr Fish (yes, really) would never, ever recover from the embarrassment of having got the forecast so fantastically, appallingly wrong!

It’s been a great Labor Day weekend so far for me. I’m still proud of my kayaking achievements - eight miles down the Shenandoah River in faster-moving water than I’ve experienced before, including several Class 2 rapids and a little drop called The Ledge.  I could also show you the egg-shaped lump on my head from a close encounter with a fallen tree, thanks to certain ‘navigational issues’ pertaining to the Greenhouse Husband.  But let’s not go there.  The journey downriver was fabulous - the lofty, silent mountains above, hawks wheeling overhead, great grey herons flapping out in front of me, and hundreds of snapping turtles slipping off their rocks and branches as we paddled past.  What an amazing country this is - I am incredibly lucky to be here and experiencing such things. 

There have been changes out in the yard, with the final erection of the Purple Martin House.  For those of you who, like me, don’t know much about these birds, I’m told they eat the mozzies, which sounds excellent since I seem to be a favourite mozzie target. But the accommodation we are offering the PMs is quite superlative:  a pagoda-like home about 18-feet from the ground, offering stylish modern living for up to twelve birdie families, complete with mini-railing lest they topple off while sunbathing.  If any of you has experience of PMs and their habits, do please post a comment.

HOWEVER.  I am a busy literary agent and you are busy writers, so having softened you up with my Labor Day fun, I shall now move on to more serious issues.  Yes, this is a good-cop, bad-cop blog!

Greetings to any of you who have found this site having seen the Greenhouse listed in Writers Digest recently. That listing appeared the day I left for ‘vacation’ (note quote marks), and I didn’t know it was coming. As a result, several hundred submissions have poured in during the past two or three weeks.  Thanks for these - I’m trying to deal with them as efficiently as possibly, though apologies are due to some of you whose full manuscripts I promised to read a while ago but just haven’t been able to get to yet.  Sometimes the volume is a bit overwhelming, but I know how hard it is to wait when you’ve work out on submission to an agent.

Most of you send me great emails or letters - well constructed, clear, interesting, and often very charming.  However, there are some repeated issues that I want to point out if you are thinking of submitting to me.  In due course I’m going to be making some changes to the submission info on the site, but here are ten tips for now:

1. I don’t represent picturebook texts, which would include very young rhyming stories, counting books - or anything else pre-school. I also don’t seek overtly religious work, writing for adults, or illustrators.  I’m also not looking for short stories. Yes, I am in theory interested in young chapter books, but the truth is it would have to be fantastic and probably a character-based series (the market is so crowded and overpublished). 

2. I am therefore most interested in middle grade or teenage fiction.

3. I know you want to be sure your submission has arrived safely, but PLEASE don’t send a package by a means that requires collection or signature on delivery, or that can only be returned via the Post Office. I may be away, or out, and I won’t drive miles to collect or return your package. Sorry, can’t be done.  And I don’t prioritise work that is sent special delivery - I invariably take submissions in date order (exceptions being if I’ve met someone and already have some relationship with them, or if a submission really leaps out at me).

4. Yes, you can send either by email or snail mail, but I’d actually prefer email because I’m set up to deal with it swiftly.  I am probably the only agent in the nation who currently accepts email attachments.  I am reviewing that, but will let you know if it changes. 

5.  Many of you only send ‘queries’ - ie, an email or letter with no sample writing, despite me offering to look at your material.  If your query is emailed then fine, I can get straight back to you if I like the sound of it.  It it is snail-mailed I’ll almost certainly reject it - I can’t spare the time for back-and-forth hard-copy correspondence.

6. PLEASE BE CAREFUL when you email.  I receive emails that get my name wrong, that are cc’d to other agents, that are clearly bulk-sent, that don’t even make it clear what you are asking me to do.  Can you imagine how badly this comes across? I try to spend time carefully reading your communication.  Why should I if you aren’t careful in addressing me or if I’m very obviously just one of hundreds?  Don’t submit your work before you’ve revised and revised, and then strategise your choices of agent very carefully.  I can tell an enormous amount about you and your attitude to your work from your initial enquiry.

7. PLEASE BE CAREFUL when you snail-mail.  I’ve had packages that contain no letter, or no SASE (and no email as an alternative means of response). In these cases I don’t reply.

8.  Please do not send me multiple submissions (eg, two manuscripts in two packages at the same time).  And please don’t whiz me another story the instant I’ve rejected your first.  I have to presume you’re sending me your very best work first time around.  If I’ve sent you a really encouraging reply than fair enough, send me something else a few months later, but don’t immediately respond ‘Actually the thing I sent you first was rubbish, so now I’m sending you what is REALLY my best writing.’ I try to be fair to everyone and take submissions chronologically, and it isn’t fair to everyone else if one person inundates me.

9. Don’t try to be clever-clever in how you introduce yourself.  I don’t respond any better to sassy, provocative statements (in fact, that really puts me off), so just set out your wares clearly and concisely. I’m reading fast and trying to get rapidly to the kernel of what you have to tell me.

10.  Phew, I’m just about at the end. So here’s my final tip:  Be careful and considered in all the ways you approach your writing. Yes, I know there are examples of people submitting to 250 agents and then being taken on by #251, but those must be incredibly rare.  If you are being rejected constantly then take time out and review your writing - perhaps going back to your critique group or sharing the manuscript with trusted writer friends.  Be prepared to make radical changes or even start again.  Professional writers, and writers who get that fabulous first deal, nearly always have to do extensive revision, so start getting used to that now. Read a lot, write a lot - and only submit a long way down the tracks. 

Have a great Labor Day, Americans.  And happy Monday, Brits.  And to all of you with children, good luck as you get them back to school for the new year.  I know first hand how vital for work those hours can be once you’re back on the school schedule.  New school year, new beginnings - good luck with the writing! 

It was there waiting for me when I got back.  A vast, sprawling, filthy tip of mess, piled in heaps around the pristine spare bedroom of my English home. Exploding trash bags of notes from my schooldays; dust-laden boxes of yellowed books; mouldering suitcases stuffed with ancient cards and letters. The abandoned detritus of the family loft, of my life, dumped with me for sorting and disposal.

I stood there, exhausted and weirdly emotional after the all-night flight from Washington DC.  It’s easy to get overwhelmed in those first surreal moments of readjustment, and dirt and mess always get me down.

A short sleep, a search for elbow-length rubber gloves and grubby apron, and I was back. The task: to sort the heap into three piles - one for the trash, one for the charity shop, one for keeping.  One task, but a thousand surprises, a thousand decisions, and some heart-stabbing reunions.  As I sifted and sorted I found myself making a journey back in time, to the roots of who I am and how I came to be here. These are some of the things that made it into the ‘keeping’ box.

My granny’s vintage black evening gloves that button up to the elbow.  My granny was born in 1889 and through her I saw some of the big events of history.  The sinking of the Titanic, the death of her fiance at Ypres, the Blitz as she took cover on the back steps and down in the air-raid shelter.  Her life in India with my grandfather who grew tobacco and shot big game in an age when it was fine to slay beautiful wild animals; the near-death of both my grandparents in local uprisings. And then - her solo voyage to America where she worked as a governess at a time when women didn’t really do that sort of thing. She was bold and charismatic, she was fanatically parsimonious (hanging her teabags on a little washing line so they could dry out and be reused) - but she was always immaculately dressed and never, ever scrimped on her expensive face cream, even when she was 95 and far beyond the help of L’Oreal.

The books I wrote. Yes, I was an author at the age of six!  I frequently announced that I was off to write another work.  And here they are - THE GRRL, THE MOUS AND THE HORSE. And the highly illustrated SALLY’S RIDING SCHOOL. Piles of notebooks filled with my huge writing and crayoned drawings.

A teddy bear named Benjamin Bernard Saunders. Benjamin belonged to my big sister.  His cousin, George James Robinson, was mine, and a polar bear by ethnicity.  George resides in Virginia where he still sports his natty, knitted school uniform.  Under Big Sister’s instructions we lined up the bears (and their friends) in ‘classrooms’ made from wooden bricks and gave them endless tests.  Poor George James usually had ‘could do better’ against his feeble efforts (Big Sister didn’t mess around). Oh, and here are their tiny school bags and minute work-books which we made.  And in which I see Big Sister wrote the names of all the boys she liked.  (I’ve decided she must have been an early developer.)

The vocational guidance test I was made to take when I was fourteen, when I had already understood, through frequent repetition, that I’d very likely never amount to anything.  In pages of detail I glean that I was deemed to be extrovert, should work in a team, and preferably in the field of literature.  Hah!

Aged copies of BLACK BEAUTY (horses! suffering! triumph!), HEIDI (oh those golden curls! Drinking milk out of a bowl!), TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and CATCHER IN THE RYE.  All awesome! MOCKINGBIRD turning me from a child reader into an adolescent one.

My degree certificate from ‘Universitas Cambrensis’. The University of Wales.  Perched a few feet from the wild Irish Sea, my hall of residence experienced the highest wind speeds ever recorded in Britain.  We would wake to find seaweed stuck to our fourth-floor window, and I would labour up the seaside promenade hefting book bags packed with Beowulf (in the original Anglo Saxon), Chaucer, Melville, Faulkner, Dickens and (my favourite) E.M. Forster.

A Teach-Yourself Welsh book. Unsurprisingly.  My husband calls it ‘the language without vowels’ (or is it more that the vowels are in quite the wrong place?).  Impenetrable and crazily Celtic, it reminds me not only of my friends for whom Welsh is their first language, but also of some of my favourite places in the world: the little towns of Dolgellau and Beddgelert; the wild craggy mountains of Cader Idris and Snowdon. They say that if you spend the night alone on Cader you’ll wake insane in the morning, and I’m not surprised.

A smelly, yellowed copy of James Joyce’s ULYSSES.  I held the English Department’s record for having read this punctuation-less book FOUR times.  If you can beat that madness, I promise to buy you a pint of Guinness, should we ever meet.

And then the motherlode.  Or perhaps I should say fatherlode.  A cassette tape recorded by my father in 1981, outlining his feelings for me.  I haven’t heard his voice for nearly twelve years (he died in 1997) and still dare not play the tape.  A difficult man, a difficult relationship, but as a child I would sit on the floor surrounded by his books which I pulled from the old mahogany bookcase.  A man who created a business from nothing and ended up advising, and taking tea, with the Royal Family. Who died with more than 4000 books crammed into his stone cottage in the far west of England.  Books in the kitchen cupboards (no food), the airing cupboard, under the bath, in the bedroom closets.  Who in the final years of his life wrote Cold-War thrillers, was taken on by a top London literary agent - and yet never got a book deal. Who delighted in the delicious irony that his daughter was a publisher, though he could never understand why on earth I wasted my time on children’s books (’So when are you going to get a job doing PROPER books?’). And I sit and wonder - what would he say if he knew I was to become a literary agent, that I would move to America, that I would start a business.  And I find myself laughing because I know he would have been thrilled and amazed, no doubt boring his friends half to death about it.

So I close the box and prepare to push it under the bed, there to gather dust along with someone’s old sleeping bag, a sun lounger, my guitar amp (which is a story for another day).  But I think about my journey and how I got here - the stories of my family and their journeys that they bequeathed to me. The hard work, the struggles, the surprises, the dreams - the odd heroic failure - that have got me this far and to this place.  And I wonder - what would be in the box of your life?  What has been your journey and the story you have to tell?

I start thinking about packing to go home to the States on Tuesday.  Two homes, two countries, but a box under the bed that marks the milestones. 

Wishing you peace on your journey. 

I don’t know why, but deals always seem to come to fruition just as I’m about to go off travelling.  Take today, for example.  I’m leaving for vacation tomorrow evening (back August 26) and have done virtually nothing to get ready.  The suitcase is still in the basement, the socks are still in the dryer, and I’m trying to get my head round the idea of going somewhere cold and rainy.  You’d think I’d know all about that kind of climate, but it’s amazing how soon you forget that there are parts of the world where people don’t live in shorts all summer.

So anyway, there I am, thinking towards the Big Pack. And slowly but surely, all the weeks and months of planning and strategy come together to mark today as the day when I shall sell my fourth debut author - the very wonderful Valerie Patterson.

I first encountered Valerie several months ago when I moved to Virginia. Ellen Braaf, head of the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI (my local branch), mentioned that she knew a very talented author whom I should probably seek out.  I did so (of course) and Valerie became one of my very first Greenhouse authors.  As soon as I read her elegant, evocative writing I knew I had found someone with a very special talent, and an extraordinary ear for the nuances of character, motivation, and language. Here was someone who I felt so richly deserved to be published, and I was really excited to have the opportunity to help her get there if I could.

Gradually, over several months, Val’s novel developed and changed in small but significant ways.  The title changed - to THE OTHER SIDE OF BLUE - which we felt reflected the evocative style of the story. As I mentioned the title to publishers at Bologna and New York I could see editors respond to it, which was a great sign.  Finally, about three weeks ago I sent the manuscript out - and today have conducted a ‘best offers’ mini-auction between two great houses that have a fine track record for developing the best literary talent.  Both editors who went for it absolutely loved BLUE and it was wonderful to hear their passsion for Valerie’s writing.  But we had to find a winner - and that winner was confirmed today as Jennifer Wingertzahn of Clarion, who will publish THE OTHER SIDE OF BLUE either in Fall 09 or Spring 2010.  Even better, this was a two-book deal, which means that Valerie is really setting off on a professional writing adventure that we hope and believe will carry her forward into increasing success in the future.

THE OTHER SIDE OF BLUE is a beautifully wrought debut.  Han Nolan, winner of the National Book Award, describes Valerie as ‘a born writer.  Her language feels so fresh, clean and spare - just perfect.’ Now that is some endorsement!

The story is about 15-year-old Cyan - named after the colour blue by her artist mother.  And blue, in all its shades, is how it feels for Cyan to be back on the island of Curacao one year after the terrible loss of her father at sea. Expected to play host to a potential new stepsister - as perfectly pink as Cyan knows she can never be - the past and future are coloured by mystery.  Did her mother drive Cyan’s father away? Why were an ice bucket and two glasses found on his overturned sailing boat? And why does local boy Mayur say that he alone can tell Cyan the truth? With a gulf as wide as the Caribbean between her mother and herself, Cyan must explore the depths of the colour blue - the blue of sadness, the sea, the horizon, and ultimately herself - in this exquisitely told story of family love, betrayal, and hope. 

This is a very special story and I am so happy tonight that Valerie is going to be published.  It’s a long journey for most writers and each deserves their time in the sun at a moment like this.  So well done, Valerie, and I can’t wait to see how the future unfolds.

Raise a virtual glass, everyone, to THE OTHER SIDE OF BLUE!

So now I’m off down to the basement to find the suitcase and throw in some clothes.  And a raincoat.  And some large boots.  Take care - I’ll see you when I’m back from vacation.  And don’t forget - enjoy your writing!

What does the word ‘package’ mean to you?  A mysterious box, gift-wrapped with pretty paper and tied with an elegant ribbon?  Today I’m thinking excitedly about packages - and hoping some might appear later.  Sssh, it’s my birthday, and somehow I never get too old to be pleased about that! 

But publishers have something else in mind when they use the word ‘package’ - as they do quite a lot. Because to a publisher the package is everything you see, touch and feel as you hold a finished book.  It’s the culmination of the entire vision that the editor - and all the rest of the team - had for the work.  The package can comprise many things, including (and always most importantly) the jacket. Illustrations, format, dimensions, paper, and typeface (including spacing on the page) will also be considered.  Sometimes much more esoteric and individual specifications come into the mix:  whether to include extras like a ribbon bookmark, coloured edges to the paper, head and tail bands (the funny little coloured bits you see on quality hardbacks where the paper abuts the papercase on top and bottom).  All these bits and pieces go into the costing mix and produce a set of figures that will help to determine the profitability of the book, where it should be printed, how fast reprints can be produced - and often what its retail price should be. The decisions can be very difficult to make.  Add too many bits and pieces and you can radically diminish profitability; add too few and you can lose that ‘standout’ potential on the shelf that could help to achieve higher sales. It’s a balance, and somewhere there will be a senior person muttering, ‘If you DO add ...... [fill in the blank] are we REALLY going to sell 5000 more???’ These are the fraught conversations that happen very frequently in publishing offices around the globe as editors, production executives, sales people and art departments come at issues with different agendas and equally strong feelings!

Sometimes, and in a perfect world, the entire vision for the book will be thought through on acquisition.  That’s a very clever thing to do because then the publisher can offer a very accurate sum for rights in the book - a sum based on projected sales and incorporating all costs and overheads.  But more often the vision appears more gradually, and through many meetings and discussions between departments. Often there are false starts as one aspect doesn’t look quite right and has to be rethought - even at a very late stage.  Chief priority (and often bugbear) is the jacket, which more than anything else creates the image for the book.  There are so many possibilities: jackets with flaps, paperback covers, double covers, different ‘finishes’ (glossy and shiny; matt and smooth; sparkly foil, embossing, fuzzy textures, holographic - even ‘scratch and sniff’!), all of which are used to create different effects, but which come at a high price.

The first step on the jacket journey will be when the editor comes up with a ‘brief’ for the Art Department - usually months before publication.  The brief will give an outline of the book’s content, some thoughts on style, age group, genre.  From this a designer will come up with a range of possibilities, often very different, which will then be spread out on a table and scrutinized, pondered, and discussed (argued over?) at length. One ‘look’ may then be chosen, or the designer may even go away to produce more samples.  But at some point a course will be set and suddenly the book’s ‘personality’ will begin to take shape. More discussions will take place over typography and finishes - and sometimes, even at the last possible moment, the whole thing will be ditched and begun again.  It’s such an important thing that one seriously negative comment from a key buyer can mean a hasty rethink.  The old saying, ‘Never judge a book by its cover’ has got it all wrong.  Books are absolutely judged by their covers!

Lots of knowledge goes into the creation of the ‘package’.  What else is out there in the market.  What your competitors are doing.  Whether you want the book to aim straight at boys or girls - or both genders. Whether it’s an upscale literary work that is all about the text - or whether there’s a particularly marketable ‘hook’ that suggests a strong look. Whatever the range of factors, the decisions will always aim at making the book stand out from the pack, convey a strong sense of content - and yet still be capable of competitive pricing (because if the book is priced too high you’re doomed anyway!).

So that’s a little introduction to packages, though there is much more to be said about the process. Meanwhile, I think I hear the postman at the door.  Maybe there’ll be a package - and maybe it will be for me!  Have a happy day, everyone.