Stop press – author chooses publisher

We had a great meeting with an author yesterday. I hope that he will become the next Red Hill author; we’ve shaken hands, and we’re putting the finishing touches on a contract. That’s pretty thrilling in its own right. But what particularly struck me was the tenor of our meeting. Basically, this author – let’s call him Luke – was grilling us. About why we wanted to publish his book, how successful we thought we could make it, what qualities Red Hill would bring to the process, how far into the future we saw our publisher-author relationship extending.

Last week I gave a talk on books and publishing at one of our excellent local libraries, speaking to members of a writing group as well as other keen readers. Someone asked me the question, ‘how does a writer choose their publisher?’ Another audience member called out, ‘they choose the one that offers them a contract!’ That’s usually how it works: after months and years of submissions and rejections and rewrites and knockbacks, when a writer is offered a publishing deal, the likelihood that they will step back and analyse that publisher’s suitability, or consider whether she feels comfortable with this particular working relationship – well, it’s pretty much nil.

In the traditional publishing setup, the author can easily feel as though they are seeking, begging, or fighting for a spot on a publishing house’s program. They are the supplicant, the publisher is the patron.

With Red Hill Publishing, our authors contribute to the cost of producing their own book. They take on some of the risk that traditionally is the publisher’s domain. We work that way for several reasons, one of which is that we want to shift the author-publisher relationship to a more collaborative footing.

That has been the premise on which we started our business. So now, to see that theory in action and demonstrated by Luke questioning us and testing our mettle is profoundly satisfying to me. This is how it should be: we choose authors who have written great books, or will write great books with our support. We choose authors who already have a strong connection with their future readers. We choose authors with whom we want to work, who appear willing to work collaboratively and actively market and sell their book.

To know that those authors are also consciously choosing us as their publishers is the cherry on the cake.