Ensight – Jeremy Wright

Well, after loads of negotiations, phone calls, conference calls, loads of chats and all kinds of things, I’ve finally decided on a publisher.

Anyone who’s talked to me over the last month has undoubtedly heard at least part of my dilemma. I know I haven’t been blogging it much, though, so I’ll go over it a little bit.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a very different time there were 2 publishers: McGraw-Hill and O’Reilly.

Each were respected and awed in their areas of expertise: McG (McGraw-Hill) was a scholar and a gentleman. O’Reilly was a knight like no other. As such, their paths rarely crossed, and when they did, it was always with respect that they greeted each other.

One day, a young concubine came to the attention of both nobles (yes, I’m the concubine… Longtime friends please don’t spit coffee on your monitors). They both fawned and made advances at the fetching creature (ahem, well you asked for me back to my regular self). The scholar made advances of…

Ah, screw it. This is getting too difficult for me to say what actually happened.

Both McG and Sir Reilly made great offers for my book. McG is a fantastic book publisher, with loads of best sellers in the business book market.

Sir Reilly is trying to enter into that market, and is trying very feverishly.

Decision day was late last week. I spent an hour on the phone with the potential editor at Sir Reilly. It was good. He has lots of experience and is well respected. And I spent two hours on the phone with part of the team from MGH (yes, I don’t feel like typing the full names of either company, how lazy can you get?).

Before these conversations, I was leaning strongly towards O’Reilly. They’re extremely well respected in my circle of peers. They do good books. And, dammit, I want to go to Foo Camp!

Apparently that dream’s going to die an early death though.

Ultimately I chose MGH on the strength of their offer, their massive experience in business publishing and the passion of the team, who’s continued to do everything they could (short of offering me a million dollar advance) to get me to sign with them.

And sign I have.

I’m extremely excited about the team.

Now, for the future, I’ll likely be starting a book blog, as soon as the title is settled on. I’ll post most book-related stuff there. Either way, some groundrules: I won’t say anything about individuals at the publishing company. I won’t say anything about the details of the deal. And I won’t disclose anything revealed in confidentiality.

Yes, blogging’s about being open and honest, but it’s also about making sure the book actually gets published

So, McGraw-Hill wins my affections. O’Reilly and Thomas-Nelson are still looking for authors to do blogging books for them. So feel free to contact them