Louise Woodward and the Babyshakers

Any celebrity I once possessed at Harper Collins has long since dissipated and the receptionist has fallen back to asking for my name when I approach her desk. It is just an act. Often I only mumble and she still states it clearly over the phone to whoever I am visiting. Perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to maintain the company hierarchy, but if so, how does anyone remember the receptionist’s name?

Pauline and Mavis have broken out their summer dresses and when I see their cotton hems fluttering in the breeze of an electric fan and threatening to billow upwards and reveal their legs I pretend I’m cold and ask for it to be switched off. The PR girls are looking happy today and they comply without comment.

“Here’s the autumn catalogue,” Mavis says, handing me an A4-sized colour magazine.

James Hardy stares out at me with his book The Art of Life and Death. “He beat me to the cover, then?” I ask, smirking to mask my stabbing jealousy.

“Only just,” Pauline says. “But he’d be the lead title of the year. Perhaps of the decade.” She looks away, smiling.

“You’re in love with him!” I say this accusingly but she only shrugs. I flick through page after page of gurning authors and their pretentious books. My pretentious book is not there. My smirk slowly fades until, near the back of the catalogue I see it sandwiched into a sci-fi/fantasy round-up section, and my face is merely a blank.

There is a heavy silence in the room, and finally I am able to look up and face them. “Is it going to be in WH Smith?” I finally ask in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Mavis tells me. She smiles again.

“Why are you two so happy, anyway?”

“We’re naturally this way,” Mavis says. “We know you’re never happy, and we’ve simply decided not to let you bring us down.”

“We feel that’s the best way of dealing with you,” Pauline adds.

Even though I know this is just a technique to stop me getting upset, it still robs me of the energy to raise any anger. “There isn’t even a blurb or a synopsis,” I whine. “It just shows the book. That’s not an advert. That’s just saying the name of a book. I mean, if I said to you, ‘The Wire,’ would you rush out and buy the DVD?”

“Maybe if I saw the cover,” Mavis tries.

“Couldn’t you just move it up the order a little? Maybe give it a quarter page rather than the… I can’t even tell what fraction of a page this is.”

“It’s finished, Christopher. It’s printed and distributed and in our sales reps’ bags. Besides, it’s in the appropriate section. It’s a popular genre and that’s where the relevant people will look first.”

“What about this bloke? He’s not in the fantasy section and he’s got dragons on his cover.”

“That’s an historical study of the Chinese Qing dynasty.”

“Oh. What about this one? This has got half a page.”

“She’s written more than twenty books. She’ll sell at least fifty thousand copies.”

“That’s nothing. Is it?”

“It’s pretty good going,” Pauline assures me. “This is fine for a first time, believe me. The trouble is we have no idea if there’s an audience out there for you. It’s a lottery. You’ve had no previous publishing experience.”

“I had two letters printed in the NME.”

There is a long silence. Eventually, Mavis humours me. “What about?”

“I was trying to stoke up publicity for my band at school.”

“What were you called?”

“Louise Woodward and the Babyshakers.”

“A publicist’s dream.”

“And I got my friend in as the Cretinous Useless Negligible Tosser of the week in the Melody Maker.”

“We’re talking about published fiction that garnered feedback.”

“Someone said something nice about me on Write Words.”

“Yes, for something completely different. You’re an unknown quantity. The best thing we can do is try to book you in for more readings at conventions.”

I gasp in horror and shout “No” before I can stop myself. They stare at me. “The truth is…” I begin, trying to act casual but merely appearing childish. “Well, things didn’t go that well up in Doncaster. I don’t think that public appearances are my forte.”

“On the contrary,” Pauline says, a peppering of sweat budding on her bosom in the hot room. “We’ve heard nothing but good things about your little moment on stage.”

“Who was your spy? Helen Keller?”

“We publicists do speak to one another and we heard a couple of…interesting reports.”

“I don’t think they were that impressed,” I say, confused.

“Maybe not. But you see, at the moment you are completely unknown. Almost. Say the people in the audience heard a dozen speakers that day. They all tend to blend in to one another. But most of that audience will remember you. And by the time they hear about you or the book again, preferably face-to-face with the cover in Borders, a bell will ring. Most of them will say, ‘Oh, he’s that twat who gave that abysmal reading at that convention and then insulted us.’”

“Right.”

“But some of them will be thick enough to have forgotten how they remember you and will simply buy the book because a connection has been made.”

“Hmm.”

“But better than that, some of the audience will tell other people who weren’t there about your performance, and some of them will remember your name, and some of them won’t remember why and will buy the book in Borders.”

“Or WH Smith.”

“Possibly. The more people we trick into remembering you, the wider we cast the net, the more sales. And if those people that buy the book actually like it, then that leads to good word-of-mouth and everyone’s forgotten the spectacle that kicked it off.”

“In fact,” Mavis takes over, “You can even take the performances much further. Have a few drinks before. Kick a few tables over. Let’s get some drama going.”

“So basically, you want to exploit me as a freak show.”

“You’ve got to use what you’ve got,” Pauline says, and I numbly flip open my diary as she starts reading out a list of dates and cities.