The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

  Gerald put down the phone, picked up the port, swilled it down in a single gulp, and wondered what in the world he would do next.

  22

  There are two kinds of editors, those who correct your copy and those who say it’s wonderful.

  —Theodore H. White

  Emma stood beside Mrs. Perkins’s desk at the entrance to God’s Little Acre. Gerald himself had called her in and asked if she would “take a look” at his book’s opening. Emma didn’t really have a choice. Gerald was not the kind of person who would willingly listen to criticism. The fact that he asked her opinion meant the book must be in a lot of trouble, which would make him more defensive than usual. Now she stood waiting for the opening chapter. Mrs. Perkins, however, was busy gossiping with Andrea, her assistant. Emma shared Heather with two other editors, but Gerald’s secretary had an assistant of her own. “So now my husband wants a dog,” Mrs. Perkins said.

  Andrea shook her head. “One more thing you’ll have to clean up after,” Andrea said. “You need a dog like I need a bigger ass.” Emma couldn’t help but let her eyes flick over Andrea, including her wide butt. As she cleared her throat, Mrs. Perkins looked up at her.

  “I’m having trouble with the printer,” Mrs. Perkins smiled. Somehow, Emma doubted it. Mrs. Perkins simply liked to make editorial staff wait. The phone rang. Mrs. Perkins answered. “I’ll tell him you said so,” she said after a moment. “Another enraged call about SchizoBoy,” she told Andrea.

  “Did you see the old lady?” Andrea asked Mrs. Perkins.

  “Is she in the reception area again?” Mrs. Perkins asked.

  Andrea nodded. “Sandy should send for security, but she doesn’t have the heart. She says the old babe looks like her grandma.”

  “That’s no excuse,” Mrs. Perkins said. “If we let every homeless person into the lobby, the building would fall over.”

  What homeless person, Emma wondered?

  “She isn’t homeless” Andrea said. “She’s just—”

  The intercom buzzed, and Gerald’s voice snapped out an order. “Mrs. Perkins, I’m waiting.” As Mrs. Perkins strode toward Gerald’s door, she turned to Emma. “I’ll have to get that to you later,” she said. “We’ll leave it at reception.”

  Emma walked back to her office. She looked at her watch: quarter to five. Usually she worked until six or seven, but she was tired. It had been a long week, and her work wasn’t nearly finished. “Taking a look” at Gerald’s opening was only the icing on a very large cake.

  Well, she told herself in her mother’s voice, no use putting off the inevitable. She eyed the piles of paper that not only covered her desk but were also neatly stacked all around the floor. Despite the tiny size of her office cubicle, she managed to stuff in an incredible number of manuscripts, galleys, and finished books. Emma sighed. For people in Pam’s job publishing offered the rewards of serf and turf: Emma was enslaved while Pam ruled her fiefdom like a feudal lord. Emma sighed. She had better begin packing up her work to take home for the weekend.

  Today she felt put upon. Pam had dumped the Susann Baker Edmonds manuscript on her, and Emma was looking forward to neither reading it nor editing it. It was a no-win. Edmonds was a high-ticket author and had to be handled with kid gloves. Emma didn’t like women’s commercial fiction to begin with, but even if she did, editing a bestselling author was most often a nightmare. If all authors believed that their words were holy, bestselling authors had their large advances and royalty checks to prove it. There was an insider’s editing story about Dwight D. Eisenhower: He’d written his memoirs, and they were significantly cut by his editor. When the book was ready to go to print, the editor met Eisenhower, who took out a small box and put it on the table between them. “What’s that?” the editor asked. Ike opened the box to expose snippets of all the deleted words. They had been cut from his book with a razor blade. “I wrote them,” Ike said. “Surely they shouldn’t be wasted.”

  Susann Baker Edmonds wasn’t a commander in chief or an ex-president, but she’d sold more copies of her books than Ike ever had. If Emma got Ms. Edmonds’s nose out of joint, how hot would Susann make it for her?

  Up until now, Pam had handled Susann. But with the problems Pam was having on the Trawley book and the heat she was taking for the Chad Weston thing, Emma had guessed she’d be stuck with Edmonds. It was a thankless task. If she suggested a lot of changes, Susann would be angry. If she didn’t, Emma doubted the book would sell. So, in the end, it became not just the tricky task of untangling plot, character, style, and pacing, but also presenting the problems and possible solutions to Susann in a way that would make her see the need for the change and the way to make it. Emma was an excellent editor and could do the often brain-splitting work involved, but being diplomatic to stupid authors was something Emma knew she was not good at, probably because she didn’t really care.

  She knew there was a time, not too long ago, when she was thrilled with her work, when she felt that it was exactly the right job for her and that nobody could do it better. Now she wondered what in the world was significant about any of it.

  There are two kinds of editors—the ones who like to sit over a manuscript and really edit, often brilliantly. Then there’s the second kind, who are too busy. Emma knew she was the first kind and Pam was the second. She put the rubber-banded manuscript into her canvas backpack. Then she added a short-story manuscript, and the final galley corrections of Annie Paradise’s latest novel, which needed flap copy. How do you sum up a book in a hundred words in such a way as to make readers buy it? And do it without using grandiose superlatives or clichéd phrases like “this heartfelt novel explores the deepest reaches of the human heart” or “touchingly and sensitively told, you won’t soon forget this coming-of-age saga.” Emma was self-conscious about this. After all, could one sum up a whole book and seduce a prospective book buyer in a few paragraphs without distorting the truth, or promising more than the novel could deliver? Should one even try? With a grin, Emma remembered a description of Warrior, an obscure book by Donald E. McQuinn: “Brilliantly blending post-apocalyptic science fiction, historical frontier adventure, medieval-style warring between church and ruler, and even a futuristic Romeo and Juliet story, this riveting novel has something for every reader…” Now, without being ridiculous, she had to write something for Annie’s book, hoping she could help sell it.

  Emma struggled with it into the heavy backpack. Wearily, she picked up the memos and interoffice mail and stuffed them into her purse. Dispiritedly, she closed the door to her office and walked along the cluttered hallway, past the open-plan space where all of the junior people sat, to the reception area. A neatly dressed old lady sat on the couch. She must be the one Mrs. Perkins had been talking about. Emma looked away, feeling sorry for the woman. Sandy, the receptionist, stopped her. “Mr. Davis was looking for you,” she said.

  “I already spoke to him,” Emma told her. Then she remembered she had yet to review his opening.

  Sandy looked concerned. “Well, he said you shouldn’t leave until I gave you something. He had an envelope for you.” Sandy began looking through her desk, and Emma groaned inwardly. Sandy looked up at her. “I don’t know where it is. It was right here. Let me call his office.” Emma sighed and looked idly around the reception room. The small, older woman with curly gray hair didn’t look like a nut job.

  Emma felt the straps of her backpack slicing into her shoulders. She would have to straighten it. Sandy got off the phone. “It’s not here. I’ll just run down and get another printout for you.” Emma nodded and went over to the seating area, using the back of it to readjust the pack.

  “Can I help you?” the old lady asked. She carefully moved the wrapped stack of papers from her lap to the coffee table.

  “Thanks,” Emma smiled. “If you could just lift the straps and move them forward.” The woman did, and Emma’s backpack slipped more comfortably into position.

  “That looks awfully heavy,” the woman said. Em
ma nodded.

  “It’s filled with manuscripts,” Emma explained.

  “Oh. Are you an editor?”

  “Yes.” Emma was pleased. With her black leggings, running shoes, and leather jacket, she’d occasionally been mistaken for a messenger.

  “Then I have a favor to ask of you,” the old woman said.

  Uh-oh. As a new resident in New York City Emma had quickly learned the rules of survival, which included never sitting in empty subway cars, never counting your cash in public, avoiding eye contact with everyone, and never talking to a crazy. But was this woman crazy? Emma watched as the woman lifted her carefully wrapped stack of papers. And then, too late, she realized what kind of crazy the woman was. To an editor, she was the most frightening kind of all: an unpublished writer with a book. “I’d like you to read this manuscript,” the woman began, but Emma was already shaking her head.

  “We don’t accept unsolicited—”

  The old woman was nodding her head. “I know that, dear. Believe me, I know. You can’t get an agent unless you’ve already been published. You can’t be published unless you’ve already been published. And you can’t be considered for publication if you don’t have an agent.” There was no bitterness, only fatigue in the woman’s voice. She looked at Emma. “Don’t you think that if there was another way, I would do it?” For a moment her voice sounded exactly like Emma’s mother’s. Emma blinked.

  But she couldn’t—shouldn’t—get involved. The world was a minefield of people with exploding manuscripts: Emma had only to mention she was an editor for taxi drivers, dentists, and even her doorman to pitch her a book idea. At first Emma had been encouraging, but too many DOA, incompetent, derivative, boring, mad manuscripts had detonated on her desk since then. She looked at Opal, about to blow her off.

  “It’s not mine,” the woman said. “It’s my daughter’s. She’s dead. It’s good. Please.” And to her horror, Emma saw tears rising in the old woman’s eyes. You must just walk away, Emma told herself sternly. It’s hopeless, and it’s not your problem. “Help my daughter be heard. Stop the oppression of the women’s voice in literature.” It was then Emma knew she was doomed.

  “All right,” she sighed. “But I can’t make any promises as to when I’ll read it. I’m very busy right now.”

  God, that sounded awful! So pompous and unkind. The woman’s pale face suffused with color. She bit her thin lower lip and nodded. She handed the gigantic manuscript to Emma. “My name is Opal O’Neal. I’m serving as my late daughter’s agent.” Emma wondered if there was a dead daughter or if this was simply another scam, designed by an old lady to get her manuscript read. Emma felt guilty for having the thought, so she just nodded her head. Well, she’d only read the first ten pages and then send it back. At least that was something. She scrabbled in her pocket for a card and, finding none, pulled out a pen and wrote down her name and extension number on a slip of paper, which she handed to Opal.

  “Thank you,” Opal O’Neal said, her voice small. Her gratitude was so disproportionate that Emma couldn’t bear to look at her. Hefting the new burden, she turned and walked out the door, forgetting to wait for the opening chapter from Gerald Ochs Davis’s book.

  23

  The writer who can’t do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he wouldn’t dream of offering to share his royalties with that editor.

  —Alfred Knopf

  Pam couldn’t believe it: Peet Trawley, the cheap bastard, hadn’t left her a penny. First the motherfucker dies on her, leaving her with a gaping hole in the fall list. Then he forgets her in his will. Unbelievable! Pam blamed the piranhas, the family he had spent nearly two decades complaining to Pam about. Well, so much for author care: She’d written his books, listened to his complaints, found him an endless stream of doctors, and once or twice even serviced him sexually. Her reward for all of that was absolutely nothing except a hole in the fall list. Somehow it seemed worse than unfair. Pam felt truly sick. She was afraid she was getting one of her dreaded migraine headaches.

  Pam rubbed the place on her forehead where her migraines seemed to begin and looked down, one more time, at her printout. The numbers for the quarter were not as healthy as they should be, and she knew that this month they would not make their projected budget. It was dangerous not to hit budget—it was an invitation for the big boys at Communications General to stick their noses into the business. And Gerald hated that. More than anything else, Gerald hated to have his private fiefdom interfered with by outsiders, especially David Morton. The fact that the outsiders now owned the company made little difference to Gerald. Pam knew that screwing up the profit picture and bringing down the wrath of the suits was the only thing that could cost her her job.

  And she liked her job. She’d paid her dues and, after almost twenty years in publishing, had finally worked herself into a position where the pay was good and the status was high. Just as she had once been Gerald’s lackey, now she had a woman who was bright, hardworking, and willing to pay her dues. Pam had picked Emma Ashton out of the crowd of bright young things. The essential quality of any editor should be that anytime they pick up a manuscript they should be prepared to be surprised. Emma hoped for surprises. Pam knew she was long past them. Pam paid Emma a little bit more than the pathetic salary most little editor girls got, and for that tiny extra wage and for the equally tiny window Emma had in her minuscule office, Pam had bought not just intelligence, hard work, and stick-to-itiveness, she had also bought loyalty. Because Emma, unlike Pam herself, was not the type to fuck her boss—in either sense of the word.

  Peet Trawley’s lawyer and widow were coming by in an hour, but Pam didn’t want to see either of them, unless they had a big check for her. Meanwhile, she had this fucking sales report to go over while Gerald was off finishing his book. She wasn’t really a numbers person. For that, both she and Gerald counted on Chuck Rector, the vice president of finance and a lizard. What Pam was brilliant at was the instinct for what would sell and what wouldn’t; that and how to present and package a book in a way that would make it happen. But looking over the printout, she didn’t see anything from their last list that was going to happen.

  Susann Baker Edmonds’s first book for them didn’t look good, and Pam looked down at the huge printing planned, most of which she was sure they would have to eat. She had told Gerald not to poach the stupid woman from Archibald Roget, but Gerald’s ego had gotten in the way. Pam herself hated all those stupid woman’s books, those long tales of a woman’s struggle, her romances, her marriage, and then the renewed struggle she had with her children. In the U.K. they called them “aga sagas,” named for the upmarket kitchen stoves that often were a centerpiece of the stories. Pam hated too the unrealistic glitz-and-glamour stories of women with improbable names and impossible beauty having imprudent affairs. Pam lumped the two kinds of women’s books together and disdainfully called them “Pinks.” And why were they so often written by women with three names? Barbara Taylor Bradford, Mary Higgins Clark, Susann Baker Edmonds, Susan Fromberg Schaeffer! Jesus, if Mary Baker Eddy came back from the dead, she’d be a natural!

  Pam looked back at the printout. While Susann Baker Edmonds was about to disappoint, Gerald’s last book had bombed so badly that they could both be fired for it! Why he insisted on writing books—which he did badly—instead of publishing them, which he could do well, was beyond her. If someone in corporate took a careful look at his numbers and his new contract, they’d both be history. Luckily the suits in Communications General weren’t as good as Chuck Rector was at deciphering the numbers.

  But Pam knew she was good at picking hits. She did it season after season. After all these years, Pam had come to believe there were only five kinds of books that had a chance at commercial success in the American mass market: Pinks, Spooks, Dicks, Uh-ohs, and Hots. “Pinks” were what she called the women’s books (though a few—a very few—men read them). “Spooks” were all of those Stephen King/Peet Trawley/Dean Koontz scary
weird monster books. The type where a neighborhood grandma becomes possessed by the Evil of All Creation and begins microwaving tots. “Dicks” usually had black-and-red dust jackets featuring swastikas, daggers, planes, and the occasional Medal of Honor. Clancy, Ludlum, Follett (before he converted to cathedrals) all did those to death, and men bought them by the millions. Though she wasn’t political, Pam believed that Publishing’s greatest loss in the decade had been the end of the cold war, since Dicks were one of the guaranteed infusions of blood that circulated money through the industry. “Uh-ohs” were probably the biggest category, because, unlike Pinks or Dicks, both men and women bought them. They were the mystery and suspense books, where a character the reader liked was in some kind of jeopardy or a detective, amateur or otherwise, solved impossible murders despite their odd character quirks. Grisham, Elmore Leonard, Sue Grafton, and a host of others kept Uh-ohs going endlessly, though they bored the shit out of Pam.

  Finally, there were the Hots—the true wild card, the hardest to predict. They were books that either were the first to exploit a new idea or were “written” by the celebrity-of-the-moment. Ivana Trump, Fabio, Naomi Campbell. The good news was that a Hot could be ridden to the top of the New York Times list, but you rarely, if ever, got a second successful book out of the author. Try to imagine a second O.J. Simpson Q and A book. Crichton was about the only fiction writer who specialized in Hots; his commercial sense constantly read America’s pulse and pulled out dinosaurs, Japan-bashing, or sexual harassment at the very moment they were ripe. But aside from Crichton, Hots were usually fast rides that ended quickly. Pam made it a credo never to give a new Hots author a multibook contract.