“Type Porn” That, in a nutshell, is what grabbed the man who would become my literary agent when I sent out my manuscript exactly a year ago. He was “transfixed” by my story of Gutenberg’s invention, he said, shooting me an email from Berlin an hour after I had hit “send”. When we met a week later in London, I was struck by the typographic artworks on his office wall. Beyond the story itself, which I had always considered epic, I began to realize that most people of the book are innately in love with letters, and therefore letterforms.
I had been writing, researching and rewriting “Gutenberg’s Apprentice” for five years by that point. I was hopelessly entranced with the people, the place, the early technology of printing—the descriptions of the struggle to craft metal letters which Simon Trewin, with his inimitable élan, referred to as “type porn.” Give me more, he’d say, and we would laugh. The manuscript went through another full edit before he sent it out to publishers. Much of that draft focused on describing clearly–and not too overwhelmingly—obscure 15th century techniques.
Every unpublished author dreams of a big agent saying “yes” with the alacrity that mine did. In hindsight, there are two reasons that this miracle occurred. The first was my “what the hell” decision to lob my manuscript not only toward boutique shops, but top worldwide literary agencies. Yet I think the second is what clinched the deal. I was obsessed, I had a passion for my subject beyond reason. That passion found a mirror in a reader with a corresponding passion for the printed word. The takeaway for me is this: no matter what form that strange, consuming love might take, embrace your inner nerd.
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