From the Horse’s Mouth
by Yemisi Aribisala
Once upon a time a Nigerian publisher entered the Twittersphere to point an accusing finger at a rival publisher. She said the horses in her competitor’s stable were deeply traumatised by their experiences there. As one of those horses myself, I knew exactly what she meant.
The stakes are high. This is the problem.That you spend so long and invest so much therefore when an opportunity to be published comes up, you rush headlong into it. There are also usually hidden fires behind you—domestic issues, financial issues…
My colleagues in the stables formed a group called “We Survived”, a hopeful banderole that didn’t represent our reality in the least. One spoke about how, after the successful publication of his first book, he’d been strung along with elaborate deceptions, projections, fairytales about his career. His publisher screamed at him at the first approach of the topic, bringing the discussion to a halt. We learned that this was the typical response of this publisher when things weren’t going her way—a technique that always worked. There were tears, screaming, cursing, meltdowns that degenerated into long disappearances. Periodic broadcasts of ill health issued forth from the cave to her furious authors, who were thus kept at bay until the heat died down, at which time she emerged to do damage control. This was the fundamental MO.
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