I signed a book contract today with Mariner Media for GANNET 6.
Check out their bookstore.
I m indebted to Kent, who maintains Audrey’s Armada of small boats, for bringing the book to Mariner Media’s attention. Thank you, Kent.
This is an important day in my life. Few sign book contracts often. Or ever. And even fewer at age 84.
The day is not remotely as exciting as when I signed my first book contract fifty years ago. That was so important. Confirmation that perhaps I was what I thought I was. I can still feel the exaltation I felt when I opened the letter from my agent. Suzanne and I were living in my grandparent’s house in Mission Beach after the completion of what would become the first of many circumnavigations. My grandmother and the man I think of as my grandfather were visiting relatives in Cincinnati. I had only two thousand dollars left. Living rent free that would have lasted a while, but the way forward was uncertain. Suddenly it was less so, and when not long later I sold EGREGIOUS, there was space to breathe, and in a year to began to plan what would become the open boat voyage. We splurged that night and dressed up and went to dinner at the Hotel del Coronado. Signing the contract today electronically online causes quiet pleasure and proof that I am not retired.
Doing so relinguishes my control of the published book. I will not set the price. I do not know when it will be published. As I have written here, because of the photos, it will only be published as an ebook, something not even imagined when I signed the contract for STORM PASSAGE in December of 1976. In the contract the title is still GANNET 6.
I know that the publisher wants to cut the manuscript by about a third. It is almost twice as long as my other books. I have seldom been edited by book or magazine editors. I am good at what I do as a sailor, a writer, a lover of women, and as a writer provide a finished product, but I welcome this judgement by others of what they think will be of least interest to readers. I am curious to see what they delete. There are parts I will fight for.
So an old sailor and writer has had a good day.
I am out of Laphroaig, so I will pour a glass of Calvados.
To life.
7 comments:
Congratulations Webb, that is indeed something special. Even though I followed your journey at the time and read all your passage posts, I will probably buy your new publication as I have for all the others. Enjoy the moment. Best regards, Mark Bradley, Batemans
Bay NSW, AU
Congratulations! Well-deserved validation, as there’s little in the world as indifferent and uncaring than book publishers and the sea.
Congratulations Webb! Having avidly followed your sixth loop I look forward to reading the book. Best, Sean K.
I thank all of you for your kind words.
Congratulations! I am glad to recognition for your efforts. I look forward to your comments on how the publication process goes. Cheers,
Ants Uiga
Ants, as you know I have had books published before. I have never had just an ebook published by an established publisher before and the publisher has not ever published just an ebook alone before. Ebooks are usually only an afterthought, not the ‘whole enchilada’ as it is called by Andy Wolfe, the head of Mariner Media. So we will see how this goes.
That GANNET 6 could only be an ebook I have understood from the beginning because of the prohibitive expensive in publishing in print the color photographs.
In my early books because of cost color photos were printed in black and white much to their detriment.
I am a writer, not a photographer, though I like to believe that I have imagination and an aesthetic sense that before I went blind in my right eye enabled me to take some good photographs.
However I believe that the reader’s experience of GANNET 6 will be much enhanced by the photographs included. Those who have seen the manuscript, including Andy, agree.
Go Webb! I can't wait to read GANNET 6!
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