My Book
“Cheap Cabernet: A Friendship” came to be a “Hyperion Books” book the way many a book comes to hit shelves: after years of its author being bitter-pissed and unpublished.
There. I said it.
“Cheap Cabernet” was first drafted — all 90 pages of it — back in 1999. Those 90 pages were enough fodder to expand and build and in a year or so I had 250 pages. A couple of editors and a few years later, I ran to New York, got some agents to let me interview them for a magazine article I was writing — and also got them to agree to read my manuscript.
One of those agents worked hard to sell “Cheap Cabernet.” There were a few rewrites, another round of submissions, and then next thing you know, it’s the mid-2000′s or something — and no one’s bought the book.
I threw it on a closet shelf, disgusted, disappointed and defeated.
Then I learned of another author who’d written several books, books that won regional awards — and I read how she’d gone through several literary agents — yet none of her books had sold either.
She, too, was fed up and so decided to an online book launch party for her most recent novel. From that party she scored a top-shelf agent and a book deal. She generously let me interview her for a story I was writing.
I went to the 2009 New Orleans Jazz Fest, then, and mulled over all that.
Head-cleared and back from the Jazz Fest, I decided to take the summer and fall of 2009 and launch the biggest, most expansive, online “Cheap Cabernet Vino for Every Vixen ParTAY” — with the goal of selling a bunch of books and getting an agent and a book deal.
If it didn’t work, I was going to shelve “Cheap Cabernet” for good.
On October 6, 2009, “Cheap Cabernet” reached Amazon.com’s No. 1 “Movers & Shakers” spot. I scored a dream agent — and that’s no exaggeration — and a wonderful publisher — perfect for “Cheap Cabernet” — a publisher I’d always imagined an ideal fit for the book.
I’d type “The End” here, but I don’t think it is.
I think it is Just The Beginning.
Thanks so very much for sharing it with me.
Cathie
