#wherewatersmeet

Having a book published has proved to be an emotional rollercoaster. The first moment of excitement was when APP told me they believed in Where Waters Meet and wanted to publish it. After some years submitting manuscripts to agents without success, I had inevitably become rather down in the mouth, so when the novel was accepted, I didn’t believe it at first but then rapidly built up to a feeling expressed quite well by the simple exclamation, ‘Yes!’

Then came the editing. This was the most intense and emotionally difficult phase. The necessary probing, structural criticism cuts deep. There’s no getting away from the fact that sometimes it hurts. But as draft followed draft I became aware of a growing satisfaction that what I had always believed was a good story was becoming a crisply crafted novel.

I found the day I first saw copies of my book a strange experience: I looked at the lovely jacket with my name on it and thought, ‘Who’s this John Franks person?’ I opened it, read a few lines and found it surprisingly fresh, very different from reading the manuscript I’d spent months staring at on a computer screen.

Where Waters Meet had become “real”: a book to be read.

Getting the book to market was a very different experience. APP, publicists and myself, producing promo videos, distributing proof copies, contacting the media; daily posting on social media. Where Waters Meet became a product at this point, and at the crudest level we were trying to convince the Market that this was different to the other thousands of novels published. A crowded market; hard to get your book noticed and despite not getting the national review coverage we’d hoped for, we were collectively pretty successful at spreading the word, and received an extraordinary level of enthusiastic feedback from a diverse readership; once someone opened the book and began to read they found it compelling. All this culminated in a well attended launch at Foyles Charing Cross Road. After that, somewhat exhausted, I ‘sat back’ waiting for the first sales reports. An uncomfortable phase for me because I had lost sight of wanting to write a good novel and switched to thinking about commercial success and money.

Sales have in fact been good for a first novel, and pulling back from the unrealistic hope for five figures and national press excitement, this is very pleasing to reflect on. What is even better is achieving results relative to my original intentions: write and publish a good novel; receive feedback that endorses the book’s quality; see that it has entertained and perhaps provoked those who read it. On this level Where Waters Meet has been a huge success: five star reviews on Amazon; numerous highly complementary emails and social media posts from booksellers, authors, regular and more casual readers; adoption by the vast reading community of the Marine Society as a Christmas recommended title; selected for the Peoples’ Book Prize 2014. And with APP publishing the book in E format as well as paperback, you can find Where Waters Meet on global bookselling websites. It’s out there doing what it was always meant to do: intrigue, impress, entertain, and sell!

John Franks

Author of 'Where Waters Meet'