The Bookseller.com

8th January 2009

David Grant worked in corporate publishing until the early nineties, before setting up a sales and marketing agency. In 2004 he set up Infinite Ideas with Richard Burton-who he’d met when they both worked at Kogan Page. Elephant is Grant’s first published novel. May well be his last. He can be contacted at david@infideas.com.

A published publisher

09.07.08

It all started at Frankfurt 06. You know the scenario—you're at a party after a long day talking bollocks, you meet some new people and continue to talk bollocks.

In my case it was Simon Petherick I met, who had just set up Beautiful Books. We got on (it was the Scotch) and when I got back to the UK I sent him a first draft of what became Elephant. It had been languishing on my hard disk for a couple of years whilst I attempted to get on with the day job.

Things became more surreal. Simon seemed to like it and offered me a contract and a five figure advance *. That then meant I had to finish the bloody thing. Rupturing my achilles gave me a bit of help as I ended up virtually immobile for three months. Middle aged fat blokes shouldn't play squash (a fabulous title for a self-help book that I offer for nothing).

During all this time I was treating the whole thing as a just a hobby, one of those things to tick off the list alongside snogging Kylie and getting a hovercraft pilot's license. Having been in the book business seemingly since about 1937, I do know the deal. First time novels will sink without trace—it's the nature of the beast unless you're twenty-something, drop dead gorgeous and fabulously well connected. I claim no such attributes, sadly.

Plus, of course, four years into Infinite Ideas, I was perfectly cognisant of just how difficult it is to gain shelf-space and to generate the right sort of publicity to cause the great British public to queue round the block, desperate to purchase your latest offering.

But there's always that faint hope, that charming but puerile, pathetic but rather (I feel) endearing optimism, that your book will break through-why else would you do it, I guess? Then Spielberg would be on the phone and the toughest decision would be who would he get to play the central character in the movie? But that's no big deal, in reality, if George Clooney's available.

Publication date loomed and despite my innate scepticism, excitement built. Beautiful Books started to get interviews (ok, not The South Bank Show, but North Peterborough FM was pretty good). Borders price promoted it. Books were seen in the WHS Travel outlets.

Oh, the excitement of the first real copies. My picture on the back. My wife and kids read it ("No-it's fiction. Those awful brats and the scheming wife are NOT you lot-honest".)

Then, God bless 'em, The Sun reviewed it, proclaiming it be one of their books of the year (pathetically I can still quote their words verbatim). Ok, not the New York Review of Books, but I'm happy to stoop to populism.

My behaviour changed. I became an Amazon junky, checking my ranking daily (peaked at 8943, I believe). I nearly fainted in my local Waterstone's when Elephant was sitting on the shelf beside Brighton Rock.

But of course, I've not made the Booker shortlist, Steven's not rung from Hollywood and the great returns system of the UK book trade that makes courier companies so successful and publishers so depressed is kicking in. The faint dream is waning.

So, what lessons have I learnt? They can be summarised thus:

-  Book reviewers in the national broadsheets are the exact opposite of music critics. The musos all want to discover the next big indy thing rather than write about Mariah Carey or whoever. The literary boys don't—they all review the same books and these books are all from the same multinational publishers. It's compulsory, apparently
-  The 28 million readers of The Sun (well, it's something like that) won't rush out to buy your novel. Unless it has breasts on the front cover
-  Don't write a book with lots of gratuitous swearing in it and expect your mother to be pleased for you
-  On a quiet day there is much fun to be had in ordering a copy off Amazon and organising an office sweepstake to guess how many sales places it leaps.

So, am I despondent, downhearted and depressed? Of course not. I'm halfway through my second book. Better go now. My mobile's ringing. May be Ridley. Much more his kind of thing.

*£100.58

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