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Friday.
Halleluyah. Am beginning to worry about health and sleep deprivation as this week has been particularly busy/social one. Dinner last night with workmates. Talked authors, books we’re reading (new William Boyd, Hilary Mantel), joys of publishing. Chewed the fat and put the world to rights: if we ran the country/who would play you in a film of your life… sort of thing. Today a day of catching up – wrestling email, implementing strategy from strategy report, the odd (i.e. sporadic) meeting, phone calls, reading, and big decision-making, as in: should I cook Janelle Bloom’s Balti Lamb Curry for party on Saturday, or Curtis Stone’s Chilli Crab? Susan Duncan’s Paella, or ‘Fast Ed’s’ meatballs? Suggestions gratefully received.
Thursday.
Public image of publishers: dinners, launches, celebrities, a certain cosmopolitan high glamour. Reality: a day sitting round a corporate board table like ten thousand others in this town, discussing my strategy report, for which I was complimented on having knocked up in a single afternoon. Stale air, numbers and more numbers, all this the low but necessary business that allows a company to turn the dreams of writers into books people will read. Briefly out for phone call from disgruntled author, phone call from happy author, phone call from fellow publisher about imminent demise of global publishing and death of novel etc etc, phone call from son to say he’s run out of phone credit. Dinner tonight with workmates at a seafood restaurant. Hopefully a quickly opened bottle and no strategy. Story of my life.
Wednesday.
Dinner and drinks with author Richard Flanagan last night. Books, industry, Seamus Heaney, Philip Roth, high literature, and low gossip. He makes me laugh.
A blog for Tuesday.
An absolute write-off! No time in the office, no time near a computer, no time to write anything. Am chaining myself to the desk tomorrow…
A day in the life of a publisher… Today I’ve hopped from an early morning publishing pitch for a major nonfiction book, to a design meeting for MasterChef Julie Goodwin’s cookbook, to dinner tonight with a literary editor. Exhausted already and it’s only Monday. How will I survive the week? Continue reading
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