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Get Breaking News on your cellMore on Thomas Cahill at Arts & Letters Live: Publishing lessons
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March 2008
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Two lessons for would-be writers in tonight's remarks byThomas Cahill. Lesson one is: Persistence. He says he conceived of his series, which he calls "Hinges of History," in 1970. It took him 10 years of research to determine whether the series was possible. It took him another 10 years to find someone to publish it. "Nobody buys history," he was told. Then he met none other than Nan Talese. He mentioned his project almost offhandedly, he says. She asked to see his work. The rest, you might say, is history -- many thousands of copies of history. Lesson two might be: Chain bookstore operators are sexist slime. OK, he didn't say it quite like that. And your humble books editor has friends who manage chain book stores. So clearly, not all are slime, and none would file a complaint to the books editor's boss. But draw your own conclusions from this: In the hardcover version of "Mysteries of the Middle Ages," the subtitle is: "The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe." In paperback, it is: "And the Beginning of the Modern World." Why the difference? Because, he says, the buyers for an unnamed chain bookstore said that they could never sell a book that had "feminism" on the cover. And when he refused to change the subtitle, he says, the book was given only minimal display space at said chain, and relatively few copies were sold. For the paperback, he acquiesced to suggestions of compromise from his publishing house. But for the record -- at a gathering before the lecture tonight, he did tell the story of how that Nan Talese herself disliked the title of "How the Irish Saved Civilization" and suggested a change. He told her, "I'm not sure if anything is right about this book -- except the title." He stuck by his guns. And "Irish" was saved. |
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