1
Robert
My favorite editor watches my eyes scan the pages before me. Normally, I don’t read manuscripts much anymore because I’m the CEO of a publishing company. At this level, the number of works I look at each year is limited. Instead, I have an excellent editorial staff to review the work of promising writers.
Still, the buck stops with me, which is why I’ll look over selected pieces when my employees tell me they’re beyond good. I re-read the passage before me:
My eyes take in the scene before me, a shadow of what my town used to be. So much has happened since I came back to this place. The life I used to know has burned to ashes, what’s left of my family miles away from this haunted town. Still, I’m drawn to it. My first love, my last love. It all happened here. No matter how hard I try, I always end up coming back.
I place the last page of the novel down on my desk. The editor, Pattie, stares at me with wide, curious eyes.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” I say frankly. “I felt the joy and the loss in the character. Every event felt like it was happening to me.”
“Exactly!” Pattie says excitedly, practically jumping out of her seat. “I’ve never read such a powerful writer.”
“We’ve never published such a powerful writer,” I say in return. “This book is exactly what I’ve been looking for. Sign the author, immediately.”
Pattie nods eagerly.
“On it, boss. This is going to be amazing!” she sings.
I agree because this new writer, Elisa Morgan, is exactly what my company needs. Cameron Publishing’s doing well, but we’re always looking for that next hit that’ll take us to the stratosphere. We live and die on the next big thing, to be honest. Every publishing house is out there scouring the hills to find the next Harry Potter, but it’s like panning for gold. Most manuscripts are duds, but you’ve just got to keep looking.
It doesn’t bother me because I’m used to hard work. When I first started this publishing firm, it was just me and a couple of guys from my graduating class. It was a madhouse, what with the lot of us crammed into a tiny space breathing down each other’s necks. Seriously, the air could get rancid in the office sometimes because we were always up in each other’s business.
Plus, we got off to a rocky start. Our first couple of acquisitions didn’t do too well, but it was enough to stay afloat, thank god. Fortunately, hard work really does pay off because after a couple rough years, we finally caught our big break when a three-book series under our imprint took off. It was a young adult fantasy series that ended up getting onto a few best seller lists. They even made a movie out of it starring Gunn Hunter, the latest baby-faced boyband hero. It was kind of unreal, to be honest. We went from eating stale sandwiches in our tiny offices to attending glitzy premieres with cheering crowds. That series opened doors and got our little company onto a lot of important radars. Suddenly, we were someone. Authors called us, instead of the other way around.
My partners stayed for a time, but to be honest, their hearts weren’t in it anymore. They’d tasted success and no longer wanted to get their hands dirty in the trenches. So, I bought them out and am now the sole owner of Cameron Publishing.
It hasn’t been easy, let me assure you. Pattie was the first editor I hired after the three original guys left. She’d been out of college a year and was fresh off an internship with a literary agent. Internship, schmintership. Most of those things are just resume padders for spoiled college kids. You need to dive into the trenches and get your hands dirty before you know what life is really like. But Pattie turned out to be tough, and we get along pretty well. It’s been almost five years since she joined the team, and we haven’t strangled each other yet.
Besides, life is different now. Cameron Publishing has grown ten-fold. We occupy an entire floor of our New York City office building, complete with panoramic views of the Hudson River. We have acquiring editors and copy editors. Interns and assistants. A legal team, a publicity team, a production team, and a design team. Everything we outsourced when I first started the company is done in-house now, except for the actual printing of the books. So take that, doubters.
But there’s always the problem of finding talent. This machine isn’t worth anything if you don’t have good material to publish. Day in and day out, we scrutinize work from new authors, old authors, and anyone else who’s even a remote possibility. You have to wade through muck before you find gold, and in our case, that raw muck is words.