I’m going to be honest with you now. The days I choose to work at BK are generally dictated by the days when a free lunch is on offer. This is the sad, but very real truth about the thought process of an unpaid intern.
The upside of this for my fledgling publishing career, however, is that the free lunches generally coincide with Author Days. So, as a result of my free lunch scheduling habits, I've had some great opportunities to closely observe/interact with various authors.
This experience has led me to understand what it means to be a BK author today. This differs greatly from the author I had pictured in my head: shy, reclusive, happiest tucked away writing in a darkened room (maybe with one little window high up on the ceiling), and generally preferring to avoid human contact at all cost. With this in mind I did wonder why on earth BK made the author present his book to the entire company? (Pretty cruel, I thought).
It didn't take me long to realize how mistaken I'd been however. All BK authors I've met so far (over a lovely free lunch, of course), have been self-confident, charismatic, successful, interesting, and friendly individuals. Also, they love to talk about their books (in fact, I have heard many requests to go on Oprah).
This taught me that today reclusive authors just don't cut it. This may seem harsh, but publishers must be able to guarantee book sales (especially with today's economy). Hence authors generally need to have followers in place already, people who are going to buy the book. I guess this explains why there are so many celebrity novels/autobiographies published today.
So there you go, my quest for free lunches has helped increase my knowledge of the publishing world. Lovely.
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