He certainly possesses one of the most interesting resumes seen lately—punk musician-turned-social worker-turned-police officer-turned-vicar-turned author—and now, G.P. Taylor takes his place alongside the select few writers who have parlayed self-publishing success into a worldwide sensation and a new, prolific career.
The unassuming and soft-spoken 43-year-old vicar, husband and father of three girls, didn't plan to become a bestselling writer. "This is my first attempt at writing, period," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm not a writer."
The readers, of course, say otherwise. Taylor's gothic YA chiller Shadowmancer (Putnam, May), the story of a dark-hearted priest who wants to summon the dead and unseat God himself, has become England's biggest children's publishing sensation since Rowling took pen to coffee house napkin.
Taylor, who lives with his family in a small vicarage in the village of Cloughton, on the Yorkshire coast, said the story came to him unbidden. "One day I was driving back across the moors and it was late at night and there was lightning and all these things, and all of a sudden the story of Shadowmancer just came," he said. He always fancied himself a storyteller—a skill that comes in handy at the pulpit—and on a whim he began writing.
A friend read the finished manuscript and was enthusiastic, and encouraged him to take it public. "He said to me, you've got two options—you can either spend the next two years sending it from agent to publisher, agent to publisher, or you can print it yourself," Taylor recalled.
In a story that is now famous, Taylor sold his prized possession—his motorcycle—to raise the funds needed for a print run. He avoided subsidy publishers in order to save money, opting instead to set up his own publishing company and handle the paperwork and fulfillment himself. A few weeks later, a pallet of 2,500 books arrived on the church's doorstep, and Taylor and his family began their grassroots publicity efforts.
His first real success came when he scheduled a signing at an area bookstore. The bookseller had asked for 10 copies to have on hand—only to see a crowd of 150 arrive. Fortunately, Taylor had a carload in the parking lot; he estimates he sold about 500 copies that day alone. "That was when we began to feel that something was going on," he said.
What happened next was either serendipity or the hand of God, depending on your point of view (Taylor will tell you it was the latter): one of his parishioners sent the book to his uncle, who just happened to be Bloomsbury's David Reynolds, who almost immediately called Taylor and encouraged him to get an agent. He was introduced to Caroline Sheldon, who agreed to represent him after spending a weekend reading Shadowmancer. A deal with Faber & Faber was not far behind.
Now, Taylor is crossing the ocean: Putnam offered him a half-million dollar advance for U.S. rights, and is preparing a first print run of 250,000.
Although Faber printed Taylor's text nearly verbatim, the U.S. edition went through a round of editing. "In the U.S., I have learned that we tend to do a little more editorial work," said Nancy Paulsen, president and publisher of G.P. Putnam's Sons. "There were just a few loose ends and plot lines that I wanted him to address, and I wanted him to slow down the ending just a bit. He was more than happy to do it." Paulsen said that Taylor's original ending was rushed so that he wouldn't have to pay for an extra signature—a cost-cutting measure that is no longer needed.
"I didn't realize there was such a difference in language, in the way that things are presented," Taylor said. "The American version is tighter—I just read it through and I loved it."
Book Two in the series, Wormwood, is complete and currently in editing, and Taylor is hard at work on Book Three, Tersias. "I'm really enjoying Tersias, because I'm now feeling confident that I can write!" Taylor said with a laugh. Putnam has signed up three more books after that, and Paulsen guesses they will likely be set in the same universe as the first three.
"The thing that really impressed me when I saw the second manuscript," Paulsen said, "was the breadth of his imagination—it's a gold mine. His imagination is probably one of the most vivid I've encountered."
According to Paulsen, the U.S. and U.K. release dates are still staggered, but she's working to get them closer together, beginning with the second volume. "[Faber] had put a moratorium on the galley situation, because galleys on the first book were being sold on eBay for thousands of dollars. We really need to have that lead time for galleys to go out—so we figured we'll have our galleys in late April/early May, to coincide with when they have the book. "In the future, we will try to close this gap. Once he's a well-known person, we will want to do it at the same time."
Taylor's publishing career has been considerably more lucrative than his ministerial one, and a recently announced film deal promises to help Taylor's coffers swell even more: according to Variety, Taylor has been offered a $1 million advance against a total potential price of $6.2 million for the rights to Shadowmancer. The vicar, who is proving himself a quick learner and shrewd businessman, has already trademarked the Shadowmancer name and the book's characters, and will get 15% of merchandising income, according to the report.
"Shadowmancer is nothing like Harry Potter," Taylor is quick to point out, perhaps weary of the press's overuse of the "hotter than Potter" catchphrase. "It's a new genre that takes a lot from Victorian thrillers, Robert Louis Stevenson, that sort of thing. It brings excitement and villainy back to reading. It's just a good yarn, where kids and adults can get lost."
