My Harvard Hell

A few years back, I managed to sneak a paper into HBR.  It was a complete fluke, more down to luck than anything else.  I submitted an off-beat idea at the very time they were trying to liven up the journal, courtesy of ace editor Suzy Wetlaufer.  In retrospect, I reckon she was trying to do a Tina Brown.  Just as Tina had put a bit of zest back into the New Yorker, so Suzy tried to do likewise with the venerable but staid HBR.  She was on the lookout for a bit of literary rough and they don’t come much rougher than me.

Anyway, the article duly appeared in the October 2001 issue. A few months later the book publishing wing of the organization, Harvard Business School Press, got in touch.  They wanted me to write the book of the article.  Although I was flattered by the approach, I was very reluctant to sign up.  In the first instance, I was already working on other things and I’m a one-thing-at-a-time kinda guy.  Secondly, there’s a world of difference between a 4,500-word article and an 80,000-word book.  Third, I felt that I didn’t really fit into the HBSP imprint.  It’;s very, very middle-of-the-road, as a glance at their list attests.  Naturally, I expressed my concerns to the commissioning editor.  But they, well, sweet-talked me with promises of unlimited promotional support and other pecuniary blandishments.  I was the main man, don’t you know, the up-and-coming guy who was gonna bring a touch of sass to boring old HBSP.  

I signed up and, after a bit of humming and hawing about the exact content of the book, I spent most of 2002 frantically writing Free Gift Inside!! in order to meet an extremely tight deadline.  My editor, wouldn’t you know, was off ill for much of the time and I got no formal feedback as the months passed and the deadline loomed ever larger.  The first official feedback I got arrived when I was writing the penultimate chapter!  Be that as it may, I delivered the MS on the very day that it was due, exactly as per the proposal. 

Unfortunately, the environment had changed in the meantime.  The one and only Suzy Wetlaufer had a high-profile affair with the former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch.  Shock-horror headlines followed in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, to say nothing of exposés in Vanity Fair etc.  Having dragged Harvard’s name in the mud, Suzy was unceremoniously sacked.  Her policy of livening up the brand went with her.  Coincidentally, the Enron, Worldcom, Imclone et al corporate scandals erupted in the US and, in the aftermath of the dotcom meltdown, the corporate climate changed suddenly.  Excess, bombast and celebrity CEOs were out and a new ethos of low-key, good-to-great, total social responsibility was in.  Big time.

The upshot of all this was that muggins was writing a book about teasing the customer – for a congenitally conservative publisher –at the very moment when customer coddling was back on top of the corporate agenda.  The manuscript was delivered on time and promptly rejected as, get this, “off brand”.  Of course it was off brand!  You brought me on board to help take the brand off brand!  The rejection email arrived about two days before Christmas 2002.  I’ve received lots of nasty rejections in my time – it’s part of the academic game, after all – but that was the nastiest, bar none.   No “thanks but no thanks” or “sorry it didn’t work out”  Just sod-off you so-and-so and repay the advance we gave you.  Or else.

Love you too, Harvard.