A Quote by Christina Baker Kline
In my ideal world, my next novel would have a first printing of, say, 2,500 hardcovers for reviewers, libraries, collectors, and autograph hounds. The publisher could print more copies if they get low. And simultaneously, or six weeks later, the book would be available in paperback.
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I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.
This was an age before e-books. We all knew that the only way you can allow a book to survive in print in the long term is in paperback. The hardback has a certain life, and then it stops having that. It stops selling, and if you want the book to just stay around there has to be a paperback edition. So if there were not a paperback edition the book would eventually disappear from the shelves, and we would have lost the battle.
I asked my publisher what would happen if he sold all the copies of my book he'd printed. He said 'I'll just print another ten'.
If you think about it, the printing press allowed everyone to print books - it democratised the printing of information. For the first time, we could all print.
My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they're able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home.
Back in the pre-internet age there were pirate publishers, especially in the third world, who would print physical copies of books, sell them, and never inform the author/their agent/their publisher just trousering the money. I think we can agree that this was piracy?
Having 'The Expats' not be 'wholesale-y' rejected by the world made it possible for me to write the second book and have a publisher buy it before it was entirely written. And it made it easier for me and my publisher to get 'The Accident' out into the world without trying to convince people to pay attention to it the way you do for a first novel.
In an ideal world, the season would end, and the players would have two to three weeks by the beach. You'd have four to five weeks of preparation, and then you'd play the tournament.
What is striking is that from almost from the very beginning of certainly by September and October of 1963, as the book was being constructed, that [Alex] Haley was vetting - asking questions to the publisher and to the publisher's attorney regarding many of the things that Malcolm X was saying. He was worried that he would not have a book that would have the kind of sting that he wanted.
I'd sold the book first. Actually to a paperback publisher. I had nothing. I just had the idea.
When I first moved to LA, no one could understand a thing I said, you would think I was speaking another language. Every time I would order something at Starbucks, they would go, 'Huh? What did you say?' My accent was an issue and my low voice was as well. They thought I should be more girlie. But that's who I am.
In my college years, I would retreat to our summer house for two weeks in June to read a novel a day. How exciting it was, after pouring my coffee and making myself comfortable on the porch, to open the next book on the roster, read the first sentences, and find myself on the platform of a train station.
When I was growing up, my favorite player was Reggie Jackson - and I never got the opportunity to get an autograph from Reggie. I was so frustrated. I mean, he was my idol. And I couldn't get no autograph. I would go through punishment waiting on him (after games) because he was always the last guy to come out. And I would go back home with no autograph.
The expectation was that 'True Confessions' would be my first published book, but that didn't happen. After it was rejected by every publisher in New York and Canada, I shoved it in a closet and went on to write and publish my next three books.
I am a buyer of blank books. Kids find it interesting that I would buy a blank book. They say, Twenty-Six dollars for a blank book! Why would you pay that? The reason I pay twenty-six dollars is to challenge myself to find something worth twenty-six dollars to put in there. All my journals are private, but if you ever got hold of one of them, you wouldn't have to look very far to discover it is worth more than twenty-six dollars
It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.
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