Another part of the publishing process is to try and garner some useful pre-publication quotes for a book. This involves trying to work out which writers would be right to give an endorsement, and then pursuing them politely in the hope that they can spare you a couple of hours to read (and hopefully enjoy) the book. As you might imagine, there are some writers who are simply overwhelmed by the number of such requests: Nick Hornby, for example, has been asked so many times, he simply turns down the lot for fairness (and, I suspect, sanity); I wrote to Michael Palin last year for a quote, and got a polite letter back declining to give a quote for a completely different book.
For The Bromley Boys, the two people I thought would be perfect were the two I managed to hunt down. I commissioned a book by Match of the Day 2 presenter Adrian Chiles in a previous job (the extremely wonderful ‘We Don’t Know What We’re Doing’) and although he is fantastically busy, managed to squeeze out of him a quote. Harry Pearson, meanwhile, is the author of what I think is the greatest football book of all time, 'The Far Corner', and as I was in touch with him about another project, took the opportunity and asked if he’d be kind enough to read Dave’s book. Which he was.
The result are the following, extremely well deserved quotes:
‘Will strike a chord with football fans everywhere’ Adrian Chiles
"Agonisingly funny - perfectly captures the sad, futile, yet glorious world of the adolescent male football fan" Harry Pearson
If I saw those quotes on a football book in a bookshop, I’d pick it up.
For The Bromley Boys, the two people I thought would be perfect were the two I managed to hunt down. I commissioned a book by Match of the Day 2 presenter Adrian Chiles in a previous job (the extremely wonderful ‘We Don’t Know What We’re Doing’) and although he is fantastically busy, managed to squeeze out of him a quote. Harry Pearson, meanwhile, is the author of what I think is the greatest football book of all time, 'The Far Corner', and as I was in touch with him about another project, took the opportunity and asked if he’d be kind enough to read Dave’s book. Which he was.
The result are the following, extremely well deserved quotes:
‘Will strike a chord with football fans everywhere’ Adrian Chiles
"Agonisingly funny - perfectly captures the sad, futile, yet glorious world of the adolescent male football fan" Harry Pearson
If I saw those quotes on a football book in a bookshop, I’d pick it up.
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