Recently I have had the opportunity to travel to the US twice, and for a great reason too: ”The Google Code”. That clever rip-off of a title was created by my editor-in-chief at Sydsvenskan, mr Daniel Sandström, as I asked him for advice on a name for my next book.
So, another book about Google, huh? Well, no. It’s not ”another” book about Google, it’s the very first. In Swedish, that is. Strangely enough, there has been nothing written. Nothing at all. And none of those really high quality American corporate biographies about Google have seemed to catch Swedish publishers’ attention.
Strange, strange indeed. But a window of opportunity for me.
Not that I necessarily wanted to open it. I was talked into it by editor and publishing house CEO Svante Weyler, who has stepped down from a similar role at one of Sweden’s leading publishing houses to finally make it on his own. I respect him a lot. Weyler förlag will only publish something in the vicinity of ten or fifteen books per year, focusing hard on each title, really making very concious decisions on what to print. Among published writers are German superstars Juli Zeh and Ingo Schulze, as well as Nobel prize winner Inre Kertész. So when Svante kept on repeating a few simple things as we swapped e-mails (”this is it, this is your topic, this is the time and I swear, you will be swept away once you get going and I DON’T CARE that you are not a tech guy, you are a REPORTER and you can ASK about stuff you don’t know or understand, that’s kinda your JOB, right?”) I finally believed him. Decided he has the experience to make that call.
Damn, did he ever.
I have been on a three month long high since we agreed to do this. Partially because of the very speed of the project. I have worked harder and faster than ever before, and I have rarely been as happy writing as I have the fall of 2009.
More to come…
Andy – question for you. What is a best seller in Sweden. Here in the USA – some have said, in business anyway, that over 5,000 copies is “successful.” How about in Sweden? How many copies of your Daddy book have sold? And what are your projections for The Google Code book?
A Swedish best seller? The big big ones might be somewhere around 100,000 – but that is unusual. The “good sellers” might be around 25 000, but that is not very common either.
The daddy book did very well – 15,000 copies sold, 10,000 of those were paperback. Anything over 5,000 is definitely more than I would expect from “The Google Code”. We’re printing 3,000 for starters. If I get a paperback deal later, it might pick up… But you just never know. So many factors come into play.