Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down.

If you are waiting for a business deal to be greenlit or officially tossed in the bin, summer is not your season. Nothing new gets approved or turned down in summer. Big buying decisions for companies are for the cooler months, not the dog days of summer. I know this because, at the turn of the century, I peddled booze and wine to distribution companies across North America, into Europe and the wild west of Russia. In summer, nothing ever got done because the buyers for small and big distribution companies fucked off on their vacations to their cottages, places on the ocean or rustic camps high up in the mountains. When it is 28 degrees, and you have your standard war horse products for summer, you don’t need to look for new things to buy because purchasing decisions for the hot months were made in winter.

In the publishing business, it is no different. I know this because of my role in getting my dad’s books into print from 2010 to 2017. It’s why; I thought I was ahead of the game when I completed my 5th or 6th draft of I Stood with Harry in January this year. I reasoned that my manuscript had time to make its way to an acquisition's editor. Now, I realise; I was somewhat naïve or perhaps still feeling the elation one gets after completing the writing of a book that they feel has merit. I thought people in the business would be eager to read it. But although some were, the right people weren’t.

My dad’s last agent, who knew about my project and showed some interest when originally pitched, never responded after acknowledging receipt of the manuscript. It’s been six months since he ghosted me like a bad Tinder hook-up never to be repeated. I don’t hold him to blame for that, my dad wasn’t a big earner for him, and I would not have been a big earner for him either. Never forget that publishing like the booze business is about profit. Now if some art or something profound can come from it, all the better.

However, when I worked in the world of wine and spirits, which is as cutthroat as a day with Barbary pirates, I tried my best to be honourable. If a producer reached out to me to see if I would represent his goods to distributors, and I said yes, I tried my best to get their bespoke gin or whisky into the right hands. Sometimes, I won, but many times, I came up empty-handed. Because like books the world of wine and spirits has many players and a finite amount of end consumers.

That’s why I also knew that if my dad’s last agent didn’t want me, it would be a hard slog to find an agent; that did want me. At 58, I don’t tick the right boxes to earn an agent a healthy commission that helps offset school fees or pay for that summer holiday home on the seacoast.

Even one of my dad’s publishers said to me, “Harry’s time is sadly over.”

It’s why I decided that I had a better chance of getting a book deal in a publisher’s slush pile than through spending my time putting my foot in every agent's door from London to Toronto looking for a Broadway Danny Rose to take a chance on me.

And here I am six months later. My manuscript I Stood with Harry, my query letter, my synopsis, and my marketing plan sit in doleful anticipation with 50 small publishers in the UK and Canada.

I've already had a few rejection emails addressed to the wrong name but the right manuscript. But there has also been some interest from a few publishers. So, I wait through these hot days knowing the chances of my book being published are slim to none because as a grizzled booze dealer from New Hampshire once said to me, “If you don’t have a unique selling point, in this business you’re fucked because vodka is just vodka without the magic of marketing.”

However, this is the most important point, the book I wrote is good. It is not a book written by an amateur, a narcissist or someone out to make a name for themselves. It's a book for our times because it deals with politics, fathers and sons, dysfunctional families, cancer, covid and coming to terms with grief. So it has many merits. Yet, merit without wealth, connections, and good luck don’t amount to even a hill of beans when society is run for the benefit of the entitled.

Somehow, this book will find a publisher, as will my next, and my one after that, because I didn’t give my middle years to help create Harry’s Last Stand to see it be all forgotten because we weren’t from the right sort of people.