29 September 2006
Quandary
What often happens with books like these is that the publishing company, which may have the highest reputations, simply gets a book packager to do them. Packagers also dream up such projects and pitch them to big publishers.
Needless to say, inserting such middlemen generally reduces payments to authors yet further, and authors generally get little or no credit in these titles anyway. The pay for these two sections amounts to little more than pocket money, and, of course they have a submission date of merely two weeks from now, when I'll be in the middle of a European trip.
Worse, although I was originally asked to choose from a list of options, which included travel in Japan, Antarctica, Canada, and Hong Kong, too, I've only been assigned two pieces in China. And of these two trips, one is the Yangzi River cruise, which I'm supposed to praise to the (heavily polluted) skies, when I'm fairly well-known, to the point of being quoted in articles published by others, for scathing criticism of the hype surrounding this trip.
Small money; short notice; asked to praise something of which I disapprove. So why get involved?
Well, it's simply the case that there are very few places indeed to write honest and frank accounts of the difficulties with a trip as opposed to its merits. Take it as read that almost all travel writing for periodicals and for gift books of these kind is worthless as a real guide to what is good and what isn't. It's written with stars in the eyes, and saccharine on the tongue (not to mention clichés and vague and often wildly inaccurate generalisations), and with little reference to reality. If I don't do this, someone else will, and there's no shortage of people who neither care about this issue, nor know anything about China, who might well be selected.
The original email I received said I'd been referred by someone whose name I didn't recognise at all. Finally I used Spotlight to do a search of my hard drive and discovered this person in a cc: field on an email from one of my publishers; apparently someone who works in the accounts department.
And this brings us to the point. References for work come from the most surprising places. The publisher whose name will end up on this book is very prestigious. Likely the book packager will have other projects, or herself be asked for recommendations for reliable writers.
Sometimes it just pays to grin and bear it, and when considering what work to take on, a whole basked of actual and potential benefits have to be considered.
Right. I'm off to the airport. Meetings with publishers in London, a couple of stories to do in northern Italy, and little wandering in France, and, I hope time to see some friends in passing.
And I'll be writing these two sections on the plane.
The Monty Python song, "We love you Yangtze/Yangtze Kiang" is playing in my head.
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1 comment:
Very similar.
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