Publish This Book is the debut work of Stephen Markley, published by SourceBooks (1). Just published in March.
Markley, 24 and frustrated at not getting his books published, decides his next project will be a book about its own publication (2).
It’s half memoir, half self evaluation, half this is how I did it, but good luck to you.
While the main premise is the process of the book going from conception to publication, it also follows his life for that year and a half, offering something much more honest and real than a lot of memoirs. What Markley really did, was take a journal and edit it right after/while writing it (3).
The actual synopsis.
Markley has been out of college for a few years, on the rocks with his girlfriend, and sleeping on a mattress in a Chicago apartment, with a job that can be described as nothing else besides ‘its a job.’ And his girlfriend lives in Boston.
Throughout the book there are convos/emails with professors from college. During these exchanges Markley gets to stretch his creativity. Taking otherwise boring blocks of monologue and fictionalizing them, he puts himself and the professor in different settings, cafes or offices, and setting it up as a dialogue (4).
Hilarity and chaos come from his Id and Ego. They push him to write the book to begin with and create a lot of conflict.
His writing groups help to both bounce ideas of off, and to see a comparison of where they go with their writing, and where he’s going.
After he gets his agent there are more like quick updates on how the book is going. And once he gets a publisher, there really isn’t much after, he just needs to write the end.
But along side this, is his life. There is the (unexpected) birth of his friends son, and another friends wedding. About him trying to connect with people, and fighting his restlessness. There is a lot about his girlfriend.
Childhood stories round out the book, working to ground the story, we see how he grew as a writer, while meeting him and his friends. Even as a kid he made himself write an hour a day (5).
There is just so much going on, its hard for me to give you something more than the backbones. But Markley’s voice is honest, sarcastic, intelligent and dirty. He’s 24-25 during the course of the writing, living with other 24 year old guys. The book is littered (6) with toilet humor, not just from the guys, insults and swears. If whats left can still make their parents cringe, I really want to know what had to be edited out.
To non-writers (7) its a look into the world, to writers its both inspirational and cautionary.
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1. Chicago based independant company
2. How long to get your head around that?
3. For all the teenagers out there with a real diary and not just facebook, twitter, or myspace, try thinking if you could or would publish that.
4. He’ll also put regular convos in outer space, or different universes.
5. That is nuts, what kid has that sort of focus?
6. It’s a pun, get it?
7. The ones always asking us if we’re going to teach. After staring blankly.
Get the book to get the footnotes.
