This year Reviver had the honour of winning the Audie Audiobook
award in the Paranormal category, and it struck me how it was very much a
shared honour – author, narrator, production team.
Look behind the Audie in the picture above and you’ll see a BAFTA, one
that I was lucky enough to be presented with at the 2012 Video Game BAFTAs for Shogun
2: Total War. This is a more extreme case of shared honour – the development
team had about 150 people. Only three get to accept the award on the night, and
I was one of the few who got to shake the mighty hand of Dara O’Briain. (You
can catch it on YouTube. Spot the moment where my wife (at home) was yelling at
the TV for me to take my hands out of my pockets…)
But there’s an important point to be made here. With the
BAFTA, I was part of a large team; with the Audie, I was part of a small team.
The thing is, with Reviver the novel, I was also part of a team.
My ‘shared honour’ description in the first paragraph above
is missing some people. Whenever you see the word ‘author’, don’t think of it
as one person. Really, the creation of the text is a team effort. Agent,
editor, copy editor, early readers – they all make a huge contribution to the final text,
and without the help of a great editor a book is never going to shine.
Even once the text is locked down, the rest of the team
comes into play: publicist, sales, design, and more.
Everyone who has a hand in the creation of a
book deserves credit. I’m the jammy bugger who gets to take the award home...