Maria Lewis knows a little bit about staying true to your author vision. Her debut novel, Who’s Afraid?, was released last week to a packed Kinokuniya Sydney and I had the pleasure of attending (and interviewing her late last month; interview tomorrow!) the event. There she spoke candidly about the long road to publication and the endurance required of any author to see the process through.
And, she elaborated on the above quote as well. The main character in Who’s Afraid? is Tommi Grayson, a biracial 22-year-old and as it turns out, new werewolf. While shopping around the manuscript, she was asked by different publishers to make Tommi 16 and white and to insert a love triangle. In essence, they wanted her to make her book YA.
Yeah. Books do not live and die by their 16-year-old white heroines and love triangles. You’d think publishers would realise that by now. As you can see above, she moved on from that particular Australian publisher and found one who understood and respected her story. They also understood her choices were deliberate and important.
This story got me to thinking about the sorts of sacrifices authors must be asked to get their books published. And it saddens me that for some publishers, they’re done paying lip service to diversity and are back to what they’re usually publishing. Can you imagine what readers must have missed out on because publishers prefer the conventional and perhaps something safer to sell a book?
Publishing is the hardest thing — Who’s Afraid? took six years to get published. As Maria says, endurance is important, as is enduring publishers who ask you to make sacrifices to get your book published, even when you shouldn’t have to.
Are you surprised that she was asked to make such a fundamental change to her book?
