7 BOOKS ON MY PUBLISHING DESK. ONLY 3 WILL MAKE IT
Indeed, I sometimes get reactions of surprise at the time frame. My publishing house, specifically, places far more focus on the artistry of each step of the process than is common. For us, publishing a book is not an act of production - taking words and printing it in book format; for us, publishing is an art form - we take ideas, paint them into literary art, develop pieces of writing into superb literature, create covers that could be hung on walls as their own art pieces, print books with collectable finishes.
Pierre-Alexis Dumas, artistic director of Hermes, put it excellently:
"Craft takes time, unlike industrial production. You can't compress time without compressing quality."
Because we are unwavering about doing things with painstaking properness , over doing them quickly, we take on very few clients at a time. These clients have mutual commitment to creating not just a book, but a piece of literary art. It must always mean something to be a KREST House author - and for those who value the same, the alignment of their books under our banner is natural.
In the month of March, I had 7 books pitched to me to be published under The KREST House banner. While all were lovely books, I had to keep bringing myself back to the company brand values when making decisions.
Without sharing anyone's intellectual property, here are the books I had the beautiful privilege of considering last month, and the outcome of each.
1. The Significant Memoir
One of our first authors, when I started this company with a partner years ago, came to us from another publisher. His book with them was a non-fiction memoir about a very formative period in his life.
A biography/autobiography is a telling of one's entire life, with special focus on accomplishments and accolades. A memoir, rather, focuses on a specific time period, or a recollection of memories revolving around a specific theme.
For his new fiction book, he would work with KREST. Over the years of his publishing contract, we had a wonderful time with the book. We traveled for events, strategized for campaigns, garnered media recognition for his writing, lived through all the business administrative changes at the company. Honestly, I grew quite fond of this author.
It's nearly a year after his publishing contract has ended. I was pleased to have the opportunity to chat with him over coffee - something I don't accept from authors new to me, because these conversations are usually pillaging of my expertise for the price of a drink - to catch up and talk about some new plans. Life bodes well for this author, and me too as The KREST House grows. We were both pleased at our how our journeys have unfolded. The author discussed the potential of doing a new edition of his initial memoir, this time under the KREST banner. Next year, 2027, would mark 50 years since the event he had written about, making it a very significant time for books like this and readers who had lived through it too. I appreciate that he came prepared a year in advance - with numbers, spreadsheets, samples of competing books, honest thoughts about where the book would succeed and where we might run into challenges. Preparation like this is a nod of respect to his craft. Emotionally, I wanted to make this an easy yes.
But after much mulling it over, we decided not to proceed with this project. With our focus on art-based publishing and creating unique experiences around each book we release, we would eventually find ourselves limited with this one. We'd get to capitalize on the 50 year anniversary as an entire experience, and then it would pass, and then we'd need to extend the longevity of the book beyond that in ways that wouldn't be organic. So with a sad heart, I passed on this book, due to no fault of the writing - only, simply, because we weren't the right fit for the work.
Yet the journey with this author will continue as a KREST veteran whom we will always involve in our activities, and hopefully work with on new books.
2. The Book Arm of an Empire
This one was particularly riveting. This author brought forward an ambitious vision that our team would kill to be part of.
The author was brought to KREST via a referral from someone close to our professional network. Interestingly, she had come to us after working with the same publisher as the previous author. She had done one book with them, the first in a children's picture book series. What she wanted to do with the series (over 30 planned books so far) was a lot more than what had been achieved already. There was going to be a book arm of the series, animated videos, merchandise of the character, an entire universe centred around it. I wouldn't even dare hint at the premise of the books, because it's a brilliant idea that I can't believe hasn't been done already. The author was looking for a publisher to start the phenomenon with the book arm of her proposed empire, and this is exactly the kind of big, bold, bookish adventure we want to go on. To create and achieve something thoroughly unique.
This is a future thinking author, and I knew it when she said:
"Sometimes I worry this vision won't be achieved in my lifetime, so my stories will be left in my will for my family to continue the journey."
Indeed, the alignment was immediate because this is the kind of thought that keeps me up at night, about my own 400 series.
There was just 1 glitch, however. The second book in the series had already been edited and illustrated by freelancers she'd hired herself after taking things into her own hands post the previous experience with her first book. One of the cardinal rules of our brand is that we will only ever market and sell books our team has created from start to end, to preserve our artistic integrity in the world. This author was offered a publishing contract on several conditions - we would not pick up marketing and distribution of the first book under our brand, we would only print and release the second book if her freelancers made some adjustments under our guidance, and the third book (and anything going forward) would be created from scratch by our in-house artists.
By the end of March, both parties signed, and we are poised to begin production in a few days. We are ready for a large and powerful undertaking together.
3. The Second Edition Fantasy
This author, too, is a small veteran in our portfolio. A few years ago he released his debut fantasy/adventure novel with us. The book is now out of contract, and he'd like to release an updated second edition with a new ending.
This pitch pleased me because there is no greater validation of a company's quality of work than returning clients. Interestingly, this author also has a contract with another publisher for a different book. To be chosen a second time in the face of other choices feels very reaffirming of The KREST House experience our team works hard to maintain.
The book genre itself is one we take great pleasure in. We were one of the first publishers to start taking on fantasy before it became a mainstream genre in South Africa. Fantasy has great artistic potential in the cover, the layout, and the visual marketing assets. There is another, culturally broader reason we want to propagate this book. I will try articulating it without butchering the sentiment behind it. This book has a black South African character who is fully living out a great adventure with self confidence. He has stability, resources, empowerment. For a change, this black South African character is not the centre of a struggle story. And just as struggle stories - just like stories of war, genocide, poverty - have incredible historical and educational value today, so will stories of the new South African normal have in the future.
There is a growing call for stories the South African readers of today can relate to. Without invalidating history, truthfully, the emerging generations have a very different experience of the country currently.
This book was offered a contract. I look forward to a bigger, better second run with this author.
4. The Feminine Self Help
Some time back I heard a surprising statement from a woman on Tik Tok:
"I don't read self help books by men because the advice isn't usually applicable to women."
I'd never particularly considered this before. Some of my favourite self help books have male authors: The Almamack by Naval Ravikant, Atomic Habits by James Clear, The Buddha and the Badass by Vishen Lakhiani, to name a few. (You can also read my blog post on my top 3 non-fiction books for more recommendations.) But after hearing this statement, I started looking at self help books with a more critical lens. Indeed, they don't account for people who have to take care of husbands and children, have greater emotional and mental labour expectations placed on them, don't have the same number of free hours in the day because raising a family is a 24/7 job on top of the 9-5. It's easy for me to wake up at 5 a.m. to do cardio, or re-prioritize tasks so I have dedicated time for self improvement every day, or spend solitary hours strategizing ambitions, because as a single woman who lives independently, I own 100% of my time. Don't vilify me for saying it - in a lot of ways, my current life is not much different from a man's. Which is probably why I'd never noticed this discrepancy in self help books before.
The book that was pitched to me was self help from a distinctly female perspective. The author, a fabulous lady, had nailed down excellent, applicable advice for women while growing two businesses, one of which every human being in the country has heard of, and nurturing her family. This was a book I really wanted to be part of and publish, for its enormous social value. And I have no doubt we would be able to rocket a book like this onto the market with the kind of fanfare it deserves.
The author had come to KREST as a strong referral from one of our existing clients. Despite the strong advocation for our brand, I knew it would be a tough one to clinch because she had already engaged with a different publisher, with whom it was nearly a done deal. We had a positive introductory meeting. But unfortunately the author chose to continue with her initial publisher. This is a book that got away. Sometimes publishing is competitive like this.
5. The Larger Than Life Memoir
This author came to us as a referral from a professional connection (a useful pattern of how clients are finding us is emerging.) The author had recently retired from a multiple decades long tenure as CEO and board member of a JSE-listed company. He has spent his retirement collating memories of a life well lived into a memoir. It is, of course, no easy feat to run a business at a public scale. And much more impressive when you hear about the author's difficult start in life.
I read the Koos Bekker book, Billions, years ago, and while it was fascinating to hear about how he multiplied greatness, it felt like there were no real stakes involved. It always feels much more inspiring to read success stories of ordinary people, just like me, reaching great heights.
This author came to us with a challenge. He was determined to have this book out by matric trial exams in September. The 6 months he was hoping for is half of our average - and his manuscript was twice as long as standard for the memoir genre. But it was exceptionally well written. And we're feeling particularly vociferous for a meaty challenge. Not on a whim, we granted a publishing contract for this magnificent memoir. We've planned timeliness strictly to ensure we can meet this request. But with that being said, both parties have agreed that if we need to move slower in the name of quality, we will do so without question.
6. A Detective Fiction
My favourite genre of book to read is actually contemporary fiction, despite being a logical person who has learnt much of what I know from non-fiction books. I am also the author of 2 fiction books - The Four Hundred Club and Splitting an Empire - and while I genuinely enjoy writing my factual escapades on my blog, it is my novels that give me my greatest pleasure to pen. It was a treat to recieve this submission about a detective solving a mysterious crime.
Not surprisingly, this author was referred from a freelance editor in our professional network.
This author had published several times before, to the point she now does it professionally. The book was well written - it hit all of the creative writing techniques one expects from a seasoned author. Honestly, I had no complaints about the book. But in the face of other pitches that had prompted me to think deeper, and would go on to spark fiery conversations, or had crazy end goals to aim for, a simply satisfactory book wasn't going to reach its full potential with us.
I appreciate this author's trust in our brand and look forward to re-engaging on a different book because she is a talented writer.
7. The Future Candidate
This author was - you guessed it - referred to us by an acquaintance in the professional services industry. I must make a note to myself that we should re-allocate some marketing budget to networking events.
This author had self published a book on Kindle. Layout done, cover complete. Like all South African authors that publish on Kindle, the difficulty was now in getting this book printed and distributed in South Africa. As a matter of interest, several of our existing clients are authors that had published with international publishers (including self publishing on Kindle) only to realize that their books would not easily be available to friends, family, and readers in South Africa. With that being said, it's not impossible. This particular author was hoping to enlist us only for printing and distribution of the book he had already created himself. True to our cardinal artistry standards, I said that we weren't able to market and sell books under our brand that hadn't actually been published by us. And he said that he had invested too much into the book so far to start with us again, but he would consider our House for future books in his series.
And so this was the quickest 'no' both parties mutually arrived at this month. I actually don't even know what the book was about because we didn't get that far. A lot of business owners think that continuing the conversation will somehow convince a client of the value of working with them. Perhaps.
But if the client has any deal breakers whatsoever - whether the pricing, or the offer, or the turnaround time, or simply not being able to do what they need - I'd prefer to arrive at the answer sooner rather than later, so everyone's time is well utilized.
I do hope the author returns for a future conversation about the next books in his series as our South African footprint is very established. And it's always a pleasure to work with self confident authors who know exactly what they want.
So that's a March wrap up. We head into Q2 of the year with some good titles under our belt. Let's hope my desk fills up with yet more wonderful stories.
Written by Keli H, author and literary artist. Quintessentially Keli is her personal editorial archive on style, authorship, art, and inspired living. More articles at keli-h.com
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