Towards the end of that afternoon, I launched into an earnest presentation of a book on menopause – one of the very first written for lay readers. On and on I went, talking about the authors, their big-time medical credentials, the book’s uniqueness, and finishing up with a tour d’horizon of menopause and its symptoms. Suddenly there was a sharp intake of breath from the audience: the Chicago rep, who was sitting directly across from me, had slumped over in a dead faint. 

Consternation ensued as the rep was carried into the office of the chairman, George P. Brockway, and placed on his sofa while the paramedics were summoned. The conference was suspended. A few minutes later, a fierce-looking GPB (as he was known), a scary figure even to veteran editorial board members, stalked out and said to me ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ The rep had confided to him that he had a long-standing psychological aversion to any discussion of female anatomy and blood. Listening to me had totally undone him. Talk about a killer pitch. There goes the Chicago market, I remember thinking.

Pitching of course has always been integral to the publishing process, although the pitching session where publishers and agents invite in-person or online approaches from prospective authors is a relatively new phenomenon – and, in my view, of dubious merit. Good writers are not necessarily good pitchers. Imagine Virginia Woolf pitching To the Lighthouse. ‘An unusual family-saga cum psychodrama set mostly on the island of Skye. Has film potential.’ Publisher thinks Nope. We did a Highland novel last year and it totally tanked.

But successful publishers and agents, on the other hand, simply have to be good pitchers. The agent has to know how to present a project – let’s say A Brief History of Cupcakes – to publishers with conviction about its merits and marketability, as well as optimistic and/but realistic financial expectations. The next cab off the rank is the publisher (acquisitions editor in the United States) who loves the Cupcakes project (really high-concept and unique) but now needs to pitch it to her acquisitions meeting to get the green light to sign it up. (The author has seven thousand Twitter followers, plus our book on the culture of the vanilla slice last year has moved six thousand p-units and two thousand e-books on BookScan.) 

Bought from a proposal, the ABHOC manuscript is delivered nine months later. More pitching in-house as the publisher works to keep sales and marketing’s enthusiasm high. (Guys, attached are the first six chapters of ABHOC. You’ll love them, especially the one on sex and the cc. And the author has just landed a steady gig on Sunrise!)

Back at the agent ranch, preparations for Frankfurt are underway: ABHOC gets an entire page in the rights guide and subagents are alerted that Rick Stein has provided a blurb (though maybe he thought crab cakes?) Light-bulb moment: We’ll have a plate of cupcakes at our table at the Agents’ Centre! (But can you get them in Frankfurt?)

Sales conference in Sydney: total pitch time as the complete package is presented: fabulous four-color embossed cover, major decision to go hardcover, first-serial to Good Weekend, and an interview looking likely with 7:30 Report (Who knew the EP was a cupcake maven?). Publicity is doing an excellent job pitching the book for reviews too: they’ve picked up on the agent’s Frankfurt brainwave and sent a cupcake out with an advance copy to every literary editor in the country. As for marketing, it’s pitched ABHOC successfully to Woolworths and Kmart for mega, heavily discounted displays (next to the Plus-size aisles in the clothes sections), and they have done a special-sales deal with Krispy Kreme for a customised edition with a KK cc on the cover.

And the icing on the cake? The author will deliver the opening address in the Town Hall at the Sydney Writers’ Festival – ‘The Epigenetics of Nourishment: Cupcakes and Brain Plasticity in the Twenty-First Century’.

And that’s how publishing sausage cupcakes are made.