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WRITING THE BOOK
In the late 1990s, as part of my academic research, I discovered the work of Jan Swammerdam, one of the key figures discussed in the book. I wrote some academic articles on Swammerdam's place in the history of science, and also set up a Swammerdam website, which got some good reviews and continues to attract several thousand visits each month.
But I also wanted to produce something more substantial on this period of 17th century science. I initially thought of writing a biography of Swammerdam, but none of the publishers I approached, either academic or trade, were interested. Like many other budding authors, I realised I needed an agent to help me shape my ideas.
I cheekily contacted the British scientist and popular science writer, Steve Jones, to ask his advice. (I'd met Steve once a long time ago, and we have some mutual friends, but he didn't know me.) Steve put me in contact with Peter Tallack, who had been one of his students and who, having been Book Review Editor at Nature, had first worked at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and then become an agent, working at Conville & Walsh.
Peter took my idea seriously, but finally decided it wasn't the kind of popular book he wanted to work on. Back to the drawing board. This will give you some idea of the kind of advice Peter gave me.
I continued working on the outline of the Swammerdam biography, more as a hobby than anything else. Then, at the beginning of February 2004, I was working on the chapter which would deal with the priority dispute with De Graaf over the discovery of the human egg. It suddenly occurred to me that this story was a book in itself. It seemed to have everything - a friendship ruined by ambition and competition, fantastic scientific discovery, and the backdrop of the catastrophic 1672 invasion of the Dutch Republic by the French.
Peter obviously agreed, because the next day (my birthday!) he phoned me and, with a blast of enthusiasm that I came to be very familiar with, committed himself to working on the book.
Over the next four months, we worked together on "The Proposal". This is a summary document, around 20-30,000 words long (in my case, about 1/4 of the length of the final book), together with a sample chapter, which summarises the content of the book, explains what the market is and why you are the perfect person to write it. The agent works on this on a "no win no fee" basis - if the book isn't sold, she or he doesn't get a penny.
When we were both satisfied that the proposal was as good as it was going to be, he sent it round to various UK trade publishers, and we waited. By the end of August, it was obvious that none of them were interested. Or rather, they were interested, but didn't feel that such a "tightly focused" book would sell.
What they called "micro-history" – which had produced some cracking popular science books like "Cod" and "Mauve" – was not what they wanted. The Big Picture was back in fashion, they suggested. This was part of a common buzz in the publishing industry, which in Autumn 2004 made itself felt at the Frankfurt Bookfair, as recounted by John Harris.
Andrew Gordon, of Simon & Schuster UK, was not only interested, he also had a concrete suggestion for what exactly the "Big Picture" should be. Peter and I met him in September 2004 and he suggested we broaden the story out from merely the discovery of the egg, to include the more general issue of generation.
I hesitated (very briefly!), partly because it would take the focus away from Swammerdam, who had been the starting point of all my work. But I decided that Andrew probably knew best. He did.
Reworking the proposal was not too difficult, mainly because I'd been working on the period for so long that I knew most of the material already. Over the next six weeks, Peter and I exchanged drafts of the revised proposal, and I became increasingly sure that this was the right thing to do. The book became richer in the material it covered, and there was no danger that the section dealing with the priority dispute would drown in detail.
We finally sent the new proposal to Andrew, and he agreed to publish it, as part of Simon & Schuster's Free Press imprint. We signed the contract in November 2004, with a delivery date of September 2005. Shortly thereafter, through Christy Fletcher at Peter's agency's US agents, Fletcher & Parry LLC, the book had been sold in the USA to Bloomsbury. Peter also sold it to the prestigious Dutch publisher De Bezige Bij ("The Busy Bee").
Having sold the book, I now had to write it.
This was hard work, but soon became a routine, as I worked every weekend and virtually every evening. Thanks to the support of my family, I was able to keep to schedule and wrote a chapter a month, and sent the first six to Andrew in May; he gave me extensive feedback on questions of style and organisation, and crucially suggested I swap a couple of chapters round. I followed these suggestions and finally submitted the manuscript in September, at which point Andrew and my US editor, Gillian Blake, were basically satisfied.
The manuscript then went through several rounds of editing and correction. In particular, Gillian got me to substantially cut down the first chapter and showed me the kind of changes she wanted. I tried to follow her advice and make the rest of the book equally nippy. At the same time, the editorial team at Simon & Schuster were checking facts and dates, spelling and references, getting permission to reproduce some of the pictures and, finally, making the index. We managed to eliminate a few of my howlers, but no doubt there are still some lurking in there.
By January 2006 the proofs had been corrected, and the book went off to the printers. It was out of my hands. I was told to expect the first copies of the book in March, with UK publication at the beginning of April. As a final sign that it was all real, the book appeared on Amazon.
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