Naeem Murr

I've never had that before.

I mean, it's hard to express what it's like to have your book orphaned, both in England and here in America, every single time.

And often, sometimes within a few months of the book being bought, you know, to be working with people who have nothing at stake in your book at all, you know, who have their own books.

And, you know, you spend five years on a book and...

to have that experience where you just don't feel that anyone in the publishing house really, as I say, has anything at stake in whether the book does anything at all.

I mean, with The Perfect Man in England, for example, I was told just before it came out, the head of Random House kind of took me to a very nice lunch and said, look, we're just going to

We're going to print 2,000 copies of the hardback.

That's it.

No more.

So essentially the same print run as you'd have for a book of poems.

And it was then sort of long listed for the book or it won one of the Commonwealth Prizes and nobody could get hold of it at all.

It was just like this nightmare situation

where people were writing to me saying, you know, it's like a four month wait to get hold of your book.

And these things, you know, when I say it's no one's fault, you know, I'm not angry with anyone.

It's not like I have any bitterness or anger.

It's it's the it's the business.

It's such a difficult business, this business.

Nobody really knows what books are going to do well or succeed.

So it's a really hard business.

And so many writers could tell you exactly the same stories.