Publishers

Hmm. So the clock is ticking and suddenly the rush to get the manuscript off into the whirlwind of bookmaking is getting in the way of making it something that people might want to buy. The title is not what we agreed and there's no time to change it. The endorsements I've lined up from influential chefs are now an irritating obstacle on the home run to the printer and I'm in danger of becoming one of those people who publishers hate; the writer who cares.

An art director once told me that authors are barely mentioned in publishing meetings, and if they are, they are referred to as such rather than given a name - unless they are one of the hallowed few.

So what can I do? The sales team think they know best and perhaps they do. But if writing is about gut instinct, as it mostly is, do I hand over the feeling in my gut to someone else's stats and groupthink? I know that a book about Jamie O which looks anything like a biography will have the food magazines shunning it because they don't want to upset their hero and cover star, while an observation about his effect on British food culture would be timely as his new series comes out, and an interesting angle on the local, seasonal, sustainable food agenda.

But maybe I'm being too harsh. It's Monday morning and the world hasn't yet begun at Publshing Central. Maybe my "firm" email of Friday afternoon will fall on open minds on this gorgeous May day.

I shall open mine too and start the first page of my next book, believing that publishers want to sell books too, that the machinery can't operate without clever sales people.

How to Sell A Book: Part 2

I've been working in a business for the last 15 years without a clue how it works. Like those drones in Marx's theory of alienation, I've no idea what the right hand is doing while my left hand gets on with its commission. I've simply written my books , loads of them, without any idea of how they were going to get onto the bookshelves. In the early days, I even handed in a manuscript on paper, printed off an early Amstrad, and imagined a printing press of little elves magicking it into a real life book. I didn't talk to the publicist, the UK or foreign rights people about making it into a best-seller. I didn't even know their names.

Always a sucker for a party, I organised the launch myself, borrowing favours from some of the chefs I'd written about who, also suckers for parties, were happy to wow my mates and a few journalists with their canapes, and I thrilled the bookshop into supplying the drink. Everyone went home happy and with a book in their bag from that launch - and every one I've organised since.

But publishing is about more than a party, and if I want my books bought by people who like them and pass the word on rather than cynical journalists or bored netheads, I need to think again.

It was at a Society of Author's seminar last month that I decided that I should finally wise up. Sitting around the table with 10 other authors who had had a similar experience, we concluded that if publishing was about pushing top 20 authors, the rest of us would have to do it ourselves. And no, it doesn't make sense as an industry, but are we going to sit around and moan, or are we going to use our nouse and contacts and get our work out for people to see?

So I asked the publisher of my Jamie Oliver update if I could meet their entire sales team, along with editorial before this year's London Book Fair and guess what? They want to sell it too. They haven't got time to read the thing of course, so they were more than happy for me to tell them about it. A new title, a new jacket and a new pitch, shedding the biography that it never was and repositioning it as the book about the Jamie effect on a food revolution, and we're finally singing from the same dust cover.

As I sat there with the Head of Uk Sales, I wondered why this isn't part of the signing process as it is for Hay House UK, surely a truly enlightened publisher. But, more importantly, I wondered where on earth my head has been for the past 15 years...