The most gratifying thing about the whole process of finding the right publisher for my biography of George, which has been going on since January, has been the enthusiasm so many publishers have shown for George himself and his story. ‘So many’ needs qualifying, of course: actually six out of the thirty-one publishers I approached with a letter and synopsis asked to see chapters or the whole thing. But that is far higher than I expected or than my writer friends predicted, because (forgive the refrain, long-term followers) ‘Nobody knows who George Calderon is’… I am truly amazed, then, that relatively many publishers were that interested; I am hugely relieved that several said they were convinced George needed a biography; and I am rather impressed by their open-mindedness.
I’ve now returned from a week away, to a new and unexpected situation.
First — sensationally! — a commissioning editor emails me that she likes my Introduction ‘very much’. This is possibly the first time anyone has said something positive about it since I wrote Draft 1 in 2013. She had just read Draft 18.
Second, having dropped one and a half offers, I now have two good ones and two academic presses waiting in the wings. I really hope to move things on fast with the first two, as time is passing. If I find myself unable in any circumstances to do the things they request, I will have to take up with the academic presses immediately. But I am not sanguine about the latter publishing the book in less than eighteen months, and the absolute latest date it must come out is 2 December 2018, George’s 150th. So I am simultaneously firming up the budgets for the various self-publishing alternatives.
It looks as though there will be some hard decisions over the next three weeks. I am blessed in having such good literary and business friends who give measured, hard-headed advice from their superior experience. In personal terms, after investing six years of my life in this project, there is much at stake.
Related
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Captain of the 11
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon c.1901
Decisions decisions
The most gratifying thing about the whole process of finding the right publisher for my biography of George, which has been going on since January, has been the enthusiasm so many publishers have shown for George himself and his story. ‘So many’ needs qualifying, of course: actually six out of the thirty-one publishers I approached with a letter and synopsis asked to see chapters or the whole thing. But that is far higher than I expected or than my writer friends predicted, because (forgive the refrain, long-term followers) ‘Nobody knows who George Calderon is’… I am truly amazed, then, that relatively many publishers were that interested; I am hugely relieved that several said they were convinced George needed a biography; and I am rather impressed by their open-mindedness.
I’ve now returned from a week away, to a new and unexpected situation.
First — sensationally! — a commissioning editor emails me that she likes my Introduction ‘very much’. This is possibly the first time anyone has said something positive about it since I wrote Draft 1 in 2013. She had just read Draft 18.
Second, having dropped one and a half offers, I now have two good ones and two academic presses waiting in the wings. I really hope to move things on fast with the first two, as time is passing. If I find myself unable in any circumstances to do the things they request, I will have to take up with the academic presses immediately. But I am not sanguine about the latter publishing the book in less than eighteen months, and the absolute latest date it must come out is 2 December 2018, George’s 150th. So I am simultaneously firming up the budgets for the various self-publishing alternatives.
It looks as though there will be some hard decisions over the next three weeks. I am blessed in having such good literary and business friends who give measured, hard-headed advice from their superior experience. In personal terms, after investing six years of my life in this project, there is much at stake.
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