Book deal first, puberty later
The Observer has a story about an 11-year-old girl from China who scored a book deal with HarperCollins U.S.
“[Nancy Yi Fan] has since been hailed as a prodigy by her editors who will use her book in a new attempt to establish the firm in China,” The Observer reports. “Her story, Swordbird, is an epic allegory about the struggle for peace and will be printed in [the U.S.] in the new year. Those who have seen it talk about it as the product of a mind as imaginative as some of the greatest names in children’s writing.”
The most remarkable thing about this story is the fact that she apparently got the deal by e-mailing the editor at HarperCollins her unsolicited manuscript. Miracles do happen.
We can only assume that editors at major publishers are preparing for a fresh onslaught of emails claiming the attached manuscript will be “bigger than the Bible and The Da Vinci Code put together!!!!!!!!”
Related links:
Read The Observer story here
