Video Interview with John Wiley

So what happened at my meeting with John Wiley? Well it was all very exciting. The team seemed to have nothing but good news about the book.

I was met in Reception by Colleen who has been my staff and guide for the past year and taken through to the technical division’s annexe where I was introduced to Louise, my senior marketing manager; James, who is the IT guru of the whole project; Chloe, in charge of the video project and Shaun, the associate marketing director. We were later joined by Katy whose job it is to persuade the printed media to sit up and take notice.

First of all there have been a current total of 2500 orders for the book and that does not include Amazon or WH Smith who have yet to place their orders. They all seemed pretty impressed by this figure but I had no idea how good this result was until they explained that this was the type of figure they aimed for when marketing a really popular “for Dummies” title!

The next bit of great news is that the book is going to appear in the Daily Telegraph list of Christmas books and that there is a chance that it might feature in the WH Smith Christmas catalogue!

I actually got my hands on the first copy of the final print pages, stapled together in chapters, and it looks very good. They also gave me a copy of the cover of the book which is very stylish.

They are all so excited by the prospects of the book that they are using it to try out some innovative marketing ideas such as the associated website – www.pcwisdom.co.uk – and the video interview which will be edited to include images of the published book, photos of me teaching at Age Concern and a regular “instant messaging” session once a week for the next six months.

They are also looking into the possibility of a series of books for “the Older and Wiser” – something like the ‘for Dummies’ series but aimed at the more mature market. This is going to take about 3 months before they decide whether it is a viable project. Nevertheless it is all very exciting and could provide writing work for me for some time to come. There was even some light-hearted discussion about the possible translation of the book into other languages – but perhaps that is a bit of wishful thinking on my part. There was further talk about signing sessions, newspaper and radio interviews

It was fascinating to be part of a publishing process and looking at things from the other side of the desk. For instance, although the publication date is 17th October, it will take a couple of weeks following the publication before the book starts to appear in the High Street bookshops. The online book sites will get them within a day or two of the publication date. They wanted to know how many postcards I needed. To me postcards are things you send on holiday which arrive three weeks after you get back so they had to explain that ‘postcards’ to the publishing industry mean small flyers to be handed out like confetti to all and sundry. I though 30 would be enough but we finally agreed on a figure of 200!

The came the video session. I had rehearsed my monologue for several days and again on the train journey. This proved to be a mistake because it turned out like an oration rather than coming over naturally. Basically I had over-rehearsed the words.

The video was filmed in a rotunda-like room with me holding a copy of the book in front of the microphone clipped to my shirt.

“Don’t look at the camera.”
“If you need to pause then hold your posture for a couple of seconds to allow for the later editing.”
“We are getting glare off the cover so could you hold it further to the right. No, now your fingers covering up the title. That’s it.”
“Can you move round the sofa? We can get a better light from that position.”

The instructions came thick and fast. There had to be a number of different takes to allow the editors to make their choice of the best angles. The whole process – which I gather will result in a 3 minute video – took about one hour 45 minutes but this was considered to be a shorter than average time because everything had gone well. Personally, I thought I had been rubbish – fluffing my lines, forgetting to look in the right direction and, on one occasion, managing to drop the mike receiver box on the floor with a resounding crash. In spite of this they all thought it had been a successful session so I bowed to the experts and kept my trap shut.

One interesting result of all this is that I watch television interviews in a completely different light as a result of my experiences. My free advance copies should arrive in 13 days time.

I can’t wait.