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When Tim Butcher wrote a book about Africa, he did it for love. Then the most powerful couple in publishing got involved…
I could tell something was up. The familiar voice on the phone sounded, for that moment at least, very unfamiliar. It was the editor who had spent long months guiding me through writing my first book.
She is a sober, thoughtful and extremely balanced person, but for the duration of that call she sounded utterly deranged. In the background, I could hear gleeful screams.
“You’ve done it! You’ve done it!” she shrieked. “You’ve been chosen by Richard & Judy!”
It was my first heady taste of the R & J effect, the phenomenon that has shaken up British publishing and made millionaires of 10 authors. Before that call late last year, I had been busy doing what every first-time author does, striving to win an audience for my book Blood River - A Journey to Africa’s Broken Heart. As The Daily Telegraph’s Africa correspondent, I had become obsessed with recreating H M Stanley’s famous expedition charting the Congo’s river - and travelling alone.
I spent years studying pre-colonial era maps and persuading rebel leaders to let me travel through their fiefdoms before finally making my will and heading for the Congo’s eastern border. Two thousand five hundred harrowing miles later, having passed through jungles and once thriving cities and witnessed the marks of years of abuse and misrule, I reached the Atlantic Ocean.
Congo is the most troubled region of the world’s most troubled continent, and I find it utterly compelling. I put everything into my book, my weaknesses and prejudices, and was left feeling very exposed. I was rewarded by sales which, rather like the Congo River itself, were nothing more than slow and steady. And so I tried to raise the profile of the book, giving interviews to local radio stations, and polishing a presentation I delivered to audiences at bookshops and the occasional literary festival. It all helped, but not much. Then, on December 27 last year, the 10 titles chosen for the 2008 Richard & Judy Book Club were announced - and Blood River was one of them.
Since it started in 2004, the Richard & Judy Book Club - a weekly segment on Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan’s weekday television show - has established itself as the most important single influence on book buying in Britain. One in four of all books now sold has been endorsed by Richard and Judy.
Amanda Ross, the producer of the programme and sister-in-law of television presenter Jonathan Ross, is routinely described as the most powerful person in British publishing because she and her team co-ordinate the selection of the titles. This week it was announced that R & J-selected books could be studied as part of the A-level English course. Like most great ideas, the Book Club was partly borrowed from elsewhere. In the 1990s, Oprah Winfrey pioneered the idea of a book club tied in to her show, encouraging viewers to buy a particular book, while reviewers discussed the book on the programme.
With the R & J version, Madeley and Finnigan introduced 10 books, each championed by a celebrity reviewer. A book a week was discussed, the author interviewed and viewers were then invited to vote for an overall winner to be R & J’s Best Read of the year. Within a short space of time, and to the amazement of many who thought a teatime TV programme was unsuitable for this kind of project, thousands of viewers were turning into book buyers. Richard and Judy were acclaimed for selecting books that were challenging, stimulating but still unashamedly readable.
From the snottier end of the publishing industry there was, initially, some sneering that R & J books lacked literary merit. One author, the novelist Ali Smith, declined an invitation to take part, but she is an exception. The truth is, any author or editor would give anything to be chosen by R & J.
Everyone has asked the same question: “How did you get chosen?” Publishers submit books for consideration which are then whittled down to a shortlist by Ross and her team. The truth is, I was more gobsmacked than thrilled when the news came. R & J picks are almost always novels; there is rarely room for non-fiction like mine. So, when my publishers sent in copies of the book last year for consideration I can remember a friend in the business warning me not “to hold my breath”.
In this online age, authors can keep track of their sales via Amazon, which ranks its many million titles on how they are selling. It does not tell you how many you have sold but it does tell you how your book’s sales compare.
When Blood River came out, it was ranked at 1,460,909th, and for the next few months I spent an unhealthy amount of time charting the book’s progress. It was virtual torture. After my puny efforts at marketing, it rose to 2,000th and I was thrilled. But as it began to slip down again I was cast back into despondency.
All that changed as the R & J effect took hold. Such is their influence that all national newspapers carry the announcement of the latest shortlist. I had spent a career writing news stories for The Daily Telegraph, but that day I proudly pasted an article written about me in my cuttings book. And when I went back to Amazon, Blood River had stormed up to become the 500th best seller in the country. My publishers, Chatto & Windus, brought forward publication of the paperback by six months and increased the print-run.
But the moment it really hit me was while walking past a W H Smith and doing a double-take. Something had caught my eye in the window. A poster about my book - my ruddy river and the obsession that had haunted me for years - was there in the window.
Since being chosen I have felt “the love” from various editors, agents and publishing types - certainly more than I ever did before. Friends in the industry tell me that the R & J list is closely scrutinised and the stock of nominees rises significantly. However, I am afraid there is little risk of my becoming the Book Club’s 11th millionaire. I am just hoping that I might end up clawing back the income I lost when I took six months off to travel to the Congo.
But there remains one final instalment in this saga; my book is in the running for R & J’s Best Read 2008, to be chosen by the public and announced on April 9. If Blood River was to win, then I would be the one acting deranged.
‘Blood River’ by Tim Butcher (Vintage) is available for £7.99 + 99p p&p. To order please call Telegraph Books on 0870 428 4112 or go to books.telegraph.co.uk. His book will be discussed on ‘Richard & Judy’ at 5pm, March 5, on Channel 4
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Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s,the Congo has epitomised the dark and turbulent history of a failed continent - from colonial cruelty under the Belgians to the kleptocratic chaos of Mobutu Sese Seko and the current post-apocalyptic riot of robber-baron politicians. However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. He remembered his mother’s stories of her own genteel river journey there in the 1950s and his connection deepened when he discovered that Stanley’s expedition was funded by the Telegraph. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition – but travelling alone.
His extraordinary account describes a country with more past than present, where giant steamboats lie rotting in the advancing forest and children hear stories from their grandfathers of days when cars once drove by. Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still.
