By Kevin Duffy • Published 28th August 2011
There was a great piece in The Guardian yesterday by Jane Rogers. Her latest book, The Testament of Jessie Lamb has been longlisted for The Man Booker. She has written many books for established ‘London’ houses , as they like to call themselves but her recent sales have not been heading in the right direction on the sales graph. So they didn’t offer her a new contract. She went to an independent called Sandstone Press based in Inverness. They loved the story and guess what? So did The Man Booker judges and now her sales are going through the proverbial.
I bet there is one keeper of the sales graph at a very famous ‘London’ publishing house who is crying into his spreadsheet. And so he should. As Jane said, people want stories to read. Simple really, just a shame the suits get in the way sometimes.
