Page 32 of Riding the Waves
“It’s a nice idea in theory,” Lizzie said. “But when it comes to reading, people tend to stick to what they know and love. The safe bet is always the tried and tested genres.”
Emily let out weary sigh. “Except we always said we wouldn’t be like the big publishing houses who only look at profit margins. We agreed that if there was something we thought just deserved to be published, we’d do it. Even if it would be a tough sell.” She glanced at Scarlett. “Besides, if anyone can get it to sell, it’s you.”
“That’s true,” Scarlett agreed.
“Scarlett takes care of the bulk of our marketing and advertising campaigns,” Emily said for Amy’s benefit.
“What kind of cover would we even put on it?” Scarlett said thoughtfully.
Amy clicked on a link in her document. “That’s actually why I was looking for comparative titles. I wanted to see what covers other memoirs had. I pulled up the ones I liked and made a kind of vision board with ideas.” She turned the laptop to show them her ideas, then felt a rush of self-consciousness at the ensuing silence. “Sorry, I might have got a bit carried away.”
“This is great,” Lizzie said. “I like the concept of the bold blocks of colour in the background with maybe a simple serif font. It’s effective.”
Emily flashed Amy a quizzical smile. “How many of the submissions did you read?”
“I managed the first three chapters of all of them. A lot of it was just skim-reading though. I made notes for all of them based on the first chapters. The ones that grabbed me I continued with. It was only four books that I read completely.”
“And you also did this?” Lizzie asked, pointing at the screen.
“Yeah.” She shrank into herself as three pairs of eyes gazed at her.
“I feel as though it’s too late to clarify this,” Emily said. “But we weren’t expecting you to do all that. We only sent you the file so you could get a feel for what we’d be talking about.”
“Sorry if that wasn’t clear.” Lizzie winced. “Did we ruin your week?”
“Not at all,” Amy said quickly. “I really enjoyed it.”
“You must have only sat and read all week,” Emily said with wide eyes. “We give ourselves a couple of months to go through them … even then we sometimes need longer.”
“You have other work to do as well,” Amy pointed out.
Emily nodded. “Even so.”
“I think I’m a speed reader.” Amy wasn’t trying to play down her efforts, just clarify that it hadn’t felt like a lot of effort since it was so enjoyable. “I’ve also spent time with my boys and had some lovely walks on the beach this week.”
“That’s impressive,” Emily said.
“Thank you,” Lizzie said. “It’s actually really helpful.”
“Which other books did you like?” Scarlett asked.
She scrutinised her list again, inwardly cringing at her other top choice. “Don’t judge me, but I absolutely flew through My Millionaire Fiancé – I’m not sold on the title, but the book was a page-turner.”
At the other end of the couch, Scarlett clapped her hands together and grinned widely. “I like your taste in books.”
Emily pressed a hand to her forehead. “We don’t publish erotic titles.”
“We should!” Scarlett said firmly.
“I’m confused,” Amy admitted. “If there are certain genres that you don’t publish, how do those books make it onto the shortlist?”
Lizzie lifted an eyebrow. “The memoir got in because I didn’t read the cover letter carefully enough and thought it was a romantic comedy. When I started reading it I decided it should go to a vote. As for Mr Millionaire, I’m not sure how he slipped through. Any ideas on that one, Scarlett?”
She cracked up laughing. “Okay! I looked through all the submissions to find the best erotic title and added it to the shortlist for consideration.”
“We’re spreading ourselves too thin with such an array of genres,” Lizzie said. “There’s also the issue of possibly alienating our sweet romance readers if they stumble into sexy books by mistake.”
“People shouldn’t be such prudes,” Scarlett grumbled. “What’s wrong with sex in a book?”