Arrow has struck again to sign up another self-publishing star in a multi-book deal with Tracy Bloom, author of the best-selling novels Single Woman’s Revenge and No-One Ever Has Sex On A Tuesday.
No-one Ever Has Sex on a Tuesday has sold nearly a quarter of a million ebooks since being published on Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform in April last year.
The publisher has a track record of Arrowing in on self-published successes after submitting an offer to lock up E L James’ Fifty Shades mass-sellers plus science fiction sensation Hugh Howey, the patron saint of self-publishers.
Arrow, which is an imprint within Cornerstone, which is an imprint within Penguin Random House in the UK (I love imprints within imprints within imprints) is going to republish Bloom’s first two books plus a further two in the pipeline.
Bloom has an interesting account on her blog of the meeting to discuss the deal at Random House.
She says: “My agent called to tell me that a publisher was interested in meeting me. And not just any old publisher at that, a biggie. See if you can guess which one from my cryptic clue. Antarctic bird lives in pink igloo! Read on to see if you’re right. My immediate reaction was yippee – at last an excuse to buy something to wear.”
An understandable reaction, although I don’t think penguins live in igloos, unless an igloo’s a random house or I’m missing an anagram.
About the meeting, she says: “An hour or so later I left completely drained. The other members of the meeting bore the brunt of the fact that I spend most of my days in solitary confinement shouting the occasional swear word at my computer. The opportunity for prolonged adult conversation left me with a severe case of verbal diarrhoea as I explained my publishing journey in minute detail.
“However I’m glad to say there must have been some glimmers of intelligence that shone through as not long afterwards they offered me a four-book deal, which I couldn’t be more excited about.”
There’s an interview with Tracey Bloom on The Guardian website in which she recounts her self-publishing journey.