Then I rang the woman at Random House whom I had met briefly in Atlanta. She said, ‘That sounds interesting, send me the manuscript.’ I said, ‘Well, I don’t have one.’ She said, ‘Well look, that’s not how it’s done.’ She asked me where I was. I said, ‘I’m here, I’m in the lobby.’ I sat and chatted with her. I think sometimes when you’re very naive, you get away with things.
She took me into a mega-emporium of books. She said, ‘Now, you tell me why you’re so clever.’ I said, ‘All those books are really posh. I don’t do posh very well. I’m going to show you how to do it cheaply.’ They ended up doing all eight of my books.”
The Family Is Always the Last to Get It
“I spoke to my father in England. He said, ‘How’s that little book thing going?’ I said, ‘You know dad, they’re actually going to do eight.’ He said, ‘If I speak to your grandma you can probably sell nine.’
On the Competition
“The home market is like food—it’s so broad and there’s something for everybody. My thing is I’m British and I have a laugh at everything. I try to take the stuffiness out of it. You try to inspire people but at the same time, you try to entertain them.”
A Stamp of Differentiation
“Everybody has a stamp. Try to think of one word that sums up that person. Martha Stewart is a teacher. She’s not there to entertain, she’s not there to be funny and lively or cuss and shout at people. She’s there to teach you to be the best you can be, and that’s a particular market.
I’m a working mother . We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s find the least expensive way. There’s more of a speed to it. We’re also very international—I’m talking to the mom at home in an ordinary house who is short of money, has a lazy husband, and children that are running wild every five minutes. I get the same letters from someone in Zimbabwe as I do from Dallas: ‘Can I paint the floors?’ ‘Can I put fuchsia on my walls or am I going to cause a scandal on my street?’ We’ve all got the same dilemmas and challenges.”
Talk to Your Girlfriends
“I find young women today are afraid to open up and share the fact that they want to kill their husbands or run over the math teacher. They feel that they’re the only ones. Going back to my mother’s age group, mothers had more time together to moan and groan and have a martini. Now, women are commuting, they’re not having the time to sit and just have a bottle of wine with a friend and go, ‘I hate them all.’ But once you say that, you’re fine. You can go home. It is so imperative that we open up to each other and use our friendships, because they are the most valuable thing we’ve got.”
