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FAR QUEUE
Every other BBC reporter these days seems to be
publishing memoirs. When the Beeb’s Athens
correspondent Malcolm Brabant, a veteran of the
Balkan conflicts, couldn’t find a publisher for his book
he decided on the only sensible course of action. He
started his own publishing company.
I have been rejected more times than J.K.Rowling. And that’s why I am
confident that my new business will be a howling success.
On the day I bought my company website address I got an email
from a friend who is a significant figure in the Athenian book world.
“Welcome to the world of publishing. It’s full of people who pretend
they know what they are doing,” he wrote.
J.K.Rowling embodies that truth. The author of Harry Potter had her
manuscripts rejected more than twenty times before someone
This revolution means that many poncey, self-important literary agents
realized that the pages were encrusted with diamonds. She is now a
are looking at extinction. And if sufficient authors have the confidence
squillionaire and those myopic publishers must be screaming
to operate this way, then publishing houses could also start to sway on
“expelianos” every time they look in the mirror.
their foundations.
I am convinced that my unfinished first book has the potential to be a
As I write, I am preparing to take Andartes Press’ first book to the
bestseller. The title is Loose Cannon and it is a raucous, self-
printers. It is not Loose Cannon, but the English edition of 1015
deprecating romp through my crap career as a foreign
Copenhagen K. The title is the zip code of the Danish Royal Family.
correspondent. I have singularly failed to reach my full potential at the
The author is Trine Villemann, my wife. When the book first appeared in
BBC, not because I am a bad reporter, but because I am a rebel and
Denmark, in October 2007, it caused an international storm because
never tire of giving my bosses free, and generally unasked for,
it exposed the Danish Royal Family as a cabal of dysfunctional
character readings. Every single person outside publishing who has
freeloaders.
read my sample chapters thinks they are hysterically funny.
Controversy raged, not only in Copenhagen but also in Australia, the
One of the people who have read what there is of Loose Cannon and
homeland of Mary Donaldson, an estate agent who is married to
found it amusing is John Humphrys, the take-no-prisoners presenter of
Crown Prince Frederik, and is, therefore, the next Queen of Denmark. In
Today on Radio Four.
its first week, 1015 Copenhagen K went to the top of Denmark’s non-
“The best money of all is far queue money,” he told me the other day.
fiction charts and stayed there for more than a month. Trine’s
At least that’s what I think he said. It was a crackly phone line. It’s
publishers made a mint, as did the bookstores. Despite being the
certainly not an expression I have heard him use in interviews with
intellectual architect, Trine’s cut of the profits amounted to a librarian’s
Gordon Brown.
annual salary.
Such praise notwithstanding, I have yet to find an agent or publisher
We were certain an Australian publisher would identify potential sales
with the confidence to take it on.
among Ozzies keen to learn about Mary’s flawed in-laws. The
Australian wing of Simon and Schuster, a publisher with the ability and
Well, my new company aims to say, “far queue” to all those agents
infrastructure to distribute worldwide, read the book but rejected it.
and publishers who rejected Loose Cannon. It is called Andartes Press.
More corporate myopia.
The Andartes were Greek partisan guerillas during the Second World
War. The word is ripe with overtones of righteous rebellion.
Of course, our enterprise may fall flat on its face. But I have form when
Andartes Press’ business is self-publishing.
it comes to changing career course. I used to be a radio reporter but I
taught myself to shoot and edit video and am now one of the BBC’s
Once upon a time, this practice was known as vanity publishing and
most proficient one-man-band film-makers. Hopefully, the author of
was regarded as the last resort of no-hope authors.
Loose Cannon will soon receive a six-figure advance to complete his
But now, new print-on-demand technology means that authors who
masterpiece.
are convinced they have a viable product and a potential market
can cut out the middlemen – the myopic agents and publishers.
The publishers? Andartes Press.
If an author publishes the conventional way, he or she will be lucky to
Their motto? What part of far queue don’t you understand?
extract 15 percent of the book’s cover price.
Source:
By going direct to a printer, a self-publishing author could take up to 75
Malcolm Brabant
percent of the sale price. Distribution and promotion are going to be
www.andartespress.com
difficult issues to crack, but are not insurmountable.
www.malcolmbrabant.com
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