The Bestseller

by Olivia Goldsmith

Opal pulled off her thick rubber gloves while she held the envelope between her teeth. Then she took it in her hands and looked at the return address. Davis & Dash. She trembled as she turned the envelope over. Although she was usually extremely careful, she tore at the back of the flap, and, hands shaking, she scrabbled to open the folded sheets inside. She nearly ripped the cover letter, which was a handwritten note from Alex Simmons.

  Well, here’s the contract. You’ll receive a check on signing, which is standard.

  I’ll begin negotiating foreign rights once we have review copies. Such a long and complex novel presents special problems for both translation and printing. Still, I believe it will sell well abroad, though not fetch high advance money.

  I am really thrilled and deeply grateful for the opportunity to be involved in this book. Let’s hope that Davis & Dash can give The Duplicity of Men the worldwide audience it deserves. Call me if you have any questions.

  All the best,

  Alex Simmons

  Opal took a moment to look at the enclosed cover letter from Pam Mantiss to Alex Simmons, then she checked to see that the attached pages were indeed what looked like a legal contract between Davis & Dash as publishers and Opal O’Neal as proprietor. Her hands began to shake harder. She glanced at the advance amount and realized that she would be receiving two payments—one of fifteen thousand dollars when this very contract was fully signed and another for the same amount when the book was published.

  When the book was published! Opal clutched the papers against her chest. A breeze riffled them. She would never forget this moment, standing here amidst the trash and the garbage bags, the buildings looming around her, the empty pewter sky overhead. When she lay dying, it would be this moment that she would recall, the feel of the paper in her hands, dead grass against her leg, the faint smell of cat that the earth gave out. She felt such a deep gratitude, a bittersweet joy. Now Terry would become not dead but immortal.

  Opal looked around her, as if she were seeing the space for the first time. She would plant a tree here, a weeping, flowering tree. And under it she would put a little plaque, or maybe a stone, to commemorate the moment. There were trees in other yards—she had been gathering their leaves, and she could see some big ones over the back fences—so if she planted one here, it might remain for a hundred years.

  When Aiello returned with the scythe he was astounded to find Opal standing where he left her, silent tears coursing down her cheeks.

  56

  The publisher is a middleman, he calls the tune to which the whole rest of the trade dances; and he does so because he pays the piper.

  —Geoffrey Faber

  Sales conference was a hallowed tradition at Davis & Dash, despite the terrors and boredom involved. It was the chance for the house’s two enemy camps—the editorial and the sales staffs—to meet, catfight, lay blame, and then be united in the huge joint effort to push and sell the ever-growing number of books on the fall list.

  For his own comfort, Gerald made sure that sales conference was held at a decent resort hotel, and that he, of course, was housed in the very best suite. But to contain costs, he made sure that it was off-season, at greatly reduced rates. Another cost-saver was forcing all junior staff to double up with roommates. This season’s sales conference was being held in Palm Springs, and though he himself blanched at the thought of the climate there in mid-April, he was smart enough to know that those who had never been to Palm Springs would be all a-twitter. It had cachet, and Davis & Dash was known for that. Because the sales conference was not just for getting business done, but a motivation and a reward. It was also an opportunity for staff to make their mark; to be singled out as a presenter of books was to be awarded the cordon bleu; some salespeople received accolades and a special emolument for best sales performance. They knew, most of them, that this was one of only three shots a year at exposure to him, Gerald Ochs Davis, and a chance to clamber up a few rungs of the ladder. A lot of effort went into making the sales conference as slick, as professional, and as motivational as it could possibly be.

  That didn’t mean that it didn’t bore the shit out of Gerald, and gearing up for it was even worse.

  Apparently, it bored the shit out of Pam Mantiss as well. She had asked Emma Ashton to take her place today and run down the books each editor would present to sales staff. The young editor was stiff and cool, but Gerald sensed her underlying nervousness and smiled. It annoyed him that Pam had ducked this meeting, but alternatively he’d enjoy teasing Emma Ashton. There was something removed about her that ignited the impulse in him to bully—if she were a fly, he’d be forced to pick off her wings.

  “So, how is our video star?” Gerald inquired.

  This season, because she was a new acquisition and because her book was so important to the fiscal health and well-being of Davis & Dash, Susann Baker Edmonds was going to be presented via a videotape. In it she explained her past work and would tell the salespeople about her new book. It was costing a packet, and Gerald had heard it had caused all kinds of problems. “It’s finished?” he asked Emma.

  “Not quite,” Emma admitted. “But it will be done in time,” she assured him.

  “What’s the problem?” Gerald had received word that Susann was miserable about how she looked on tape, insisting the whole thing be shot again. “Will it run over budget?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Emma said coolly. “You’d have to ask Dickie Pointer or someone in charge of it. I only have the lineup of the program and editorial presenters.”

  Disappointed that she hadn’t risen to his bait, Gerald looked at the schedule Emma had handed him. Of course senior editors would present their books, and the publicity and marketing people would give the sales reps the usual follow-up rap about the support each book would get, though the reality was that only the big books, the Trawleys and Edmondses and the like, got much beyond a wave good-bye. Like nineteenth-century orphans, once they were released they were on their own. And usually as lost.

  “How about the Daniel book? Pam presenting it?” She was their best presenter, and even after all these years, when she was hot on a book she could ignite the crowd. In this case, from long experience, Gerald suspected Pam was hot on the author as well—perhaps literally and at this very moment. Maybe that was why she’d canceled their meeting.

  “Yes,” Emma said, either ignoring his jibe or running with it. “Jude Daniel is also going to make an appearance. As our new rising hope, we’re pretty pleased and excited about the presentation.”

  “So I would wager.” His own book would be presented, not by him alone but also by Pam. And she’d better be at her most perfervid. For Twice in the Papers they had made an extrazealous effort, Emma assured him, as if he didn’t know. A multimedia presentation—which showed the newspaper clippings from the original scandal, family photographs of Gerald’s aunt and uncle, and even a picture of the murder scene complete with the victims—had been pulled together, along with old newsreels that described what was at the time called “the High-Society Crime of the Century.” Gerald hoped that the fact that the event happened fifty years ago wouldn’t be a noticeable marketing problem. Of course, Jim Meyer’s department did have something of a legal problem, since Gerald was using all this as a promotion while simultaneously insisting the book was fiction (and he had indeed added quite a few flourishes of his own). But, as he had explained to Jim, the presentation was only in-house, to set the tone, and it included a full disclaimer at the end. That, of course, didn’t mean that anyone would believe it. Gerald was going to try to play this game from both ends, rather as Joe McGinniss had played the Kennedy book—but reversed. McGinniss had insisted that his creation of the private thoughts and conversations of Ted Kennedy and his family was nonfiction, while Gerald was insisting that these actual historical events were all invention.

  Gerald smiled. It was one of the developments in publishing over the last decade that made purists like his father weep and cynics like Gerald laugh. A book lik
e Mutant Message Down Under was self-published first as nonfiction. After questions were raised about whether the author had actually been abducted for a months-long walkabout with Aborigines, the book was simply reissued as fiction and became a bestseller.

  “So, the presentation has been vetted with Meyer, and Pam has it all prepared?” Gerald asked Emma. He knew Pam was always working until the last minute, courting disaster in her quest for excitement or self-destruction, Gerald was never sure which.

  “I haven’t seen it,” Emma said blandly. “But Pam says she’s prepared. And I believe that Jim has a memo on the presentation for you.” Emma handed him a copy. Gerald smiled at her. She was a cool one—no doubt about it.

  The memo was a typical Meyer legal CYA maneuver. Everyone loved gossip, and Gerald was desperately counting on the fact that old gossip retold would sell as well as new gossip. Adultery, high society, a guilty man going free, and the piquancy of lesbian love should make a potent combination. Lesbians were hot right now, Gerald reflected. Except perhaps for this one. Gerald smiled again at Emma. Idly, he wondered if she swung both ways. Or if she’d consider a ménage. He glanced at the memo. Jim Meyer didn’t trouble him; it was only the fear of word getting back to his father that held any terror. But he could not allow this book to fail. Not after the Chad Weston fiasco, the death of Peet Trawley, and Susann Baker Edmonds’s recent poor showing. If it did, there would definitely be trouble with David Morton over another big contract and questions might even be asked about past contracts that Gerald would not like to have to answer to David Morton or anyone else.

  Mrs. Perkins rang to tell him that Carl Pollenski was waiting. Gerald sighed and dismissed the little dyke, telling Mrs. Perkins to send Pollenski in. Carl was the manager of MIS—Management Information Systems—the computers that they all depended on but nobody really understood, except perhaps for Carl. And Carl was now probably the highest paid MIS man in publishing. But then, Gerald reflected, people who kept secrets should always expect to be well paid. Keeping secrets and publishing them were two ways to get rich.

  Carl was tall and broad. He wore his hair in a buzz cut that might be fashionable except that he had worn it that way since the last time it was stylish. He was rarely invited up to Gerald’s lair, and, unlike the unflappable Emma Ashton, he looked uncomfortable. His suit was light green—why couldn’t these nerds who were queer for their gear learn how to dress? When Gerald got up from behind his desk and moved to the sofa, Carl awkwardly sat on the sofa too, which meant they were at oblique angles to each another, their knees virtually touching. It was too much for Gerald, who got up and sat in the chair opposite. More proof that it was best to keep Carl busy with machines. “Do we have all of the backup information for sales conference?” Gerald asked.

  Carl nodded. The whole industry based its print runs, shipping, and sales projections on the computerized results of the author’s last book’s performance, and the ones before that. Because the booksellers, especially the chain stores, had also automated, there was now very little left to opinion, luck, or chance: Advance orders were based on the number of books the author had previously sold, and all the hype in the world, all the advertising and all the buzz, did very little to change that. Gerald thought back to the old days, when a brilliant PR guy had once sent an advance copy of a novel to people in the phone book—people with the same names as important reviewers and authors. Then he’d put their positive opinions in huge ads, with their names—Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, et cetera—printed boldly across the two-page spread. A ploy like that wouldn’t work today. Past performance was all that mattered. It was only with a new author, one without a database, that there was not just leeway but an opportunity to make a killing.

  For Gerald, the dismal sales of his last book had been so disastrous that there was no way, despite his special presentation, despite the pushing from Pam, despite the big catalog spread, that Twice in the Papers was going to initially be ordered in any kind of numbers that pleased him. Unless, of course, he had a special strategy.

  “Well, I wondered if you’ve come up with a strategy yet, Carl.”

  “You mean for your book?” Carl asked. No, Gerald was tempted to snap, for world peace. But he kept his temper in check. Regretfully. Because when it came to perceptions of performance, that was where Carl came in. Because while Carl couldn’t control what the bookstores actually ordered, he could change what Davis & Dash’s sales sheets indicated were ordered. And what Gerald had found was that to top management, printouts reflected reality more than reality itself. A few keystrokes from Carl and an extra ten or twenty thousand copies of Gerald’s book were reported as ordered, or even shipped. Take that, David Morton.

  On the last book debacle, Carl had developed a complicated system where book orders and shipments were “borrowed” from other authors, adding to Gerald’s bottom line. Though Gerald had never admitted it, it had saved his ass. Carl had explained it to him. A bookstore in Kansas City might reorder fifty copies of Trawley’s latest. The bookstore received the fifty Trawley copies, but the order was credited as an order of Gerald’s books. Trawley never knew the difference, though what made Gerald nervous was that an author at Trawley’s level could afford to actually pursue an audit and compare a printout to warehouse shipments. That’s why ever-cautious Carl had refined the system and decided this time it was best to spread appropriated sales over several midlist books. The trick was to be sure the selected authors would sell enough so that five or ten thousand copies could be purloined and to be sure that the book price was exactly the same as Gerald’s. Carl had now developed a way to set it all up in advance. The purpose of this meeting was to decide which books were likely candidates for poaching.

  Because of his help, Carl was receiving not only forty thousand dollars more a year in his annual salary, but he also had a generous expense account that Gerald himself signed off on. And he had been given the use of a corporate car and driver whenever he requested it. A small price to pay to help ensure Gerald’s next million-dollar contract, especially as it didn’t come out of Gerald’s pocket.

  “So, Carl, have you some suggestions?”

  “Sure do, Mr. Davis. Sure do.” But despite his words he just sat there. Perhaps he mistakenly supposed Gerald actually enjoyed his company or gazing at his noxious verdant suit. Carl was originally from Brooklyn, and if his suit didn’t give that away, his voice did. He’d been working on Wall Street for Drexel Burnham when it closed its doors, and he had been grateful for the job at Davis & Dash. Gerald needed to keep him grateful.

  The oaf just sat there sweating. Gerald allowed himself a tiny bit of sarcasm. “Well, Carl, I thought we might take a look at the list before sales conference, just so we could be sure everything was set up.” Carl nodded his bristly head, which the remark had flown right over, and took out a list, which he handed to Gerald.

  “These are my candidates,” he said. “The price is right, and the ISBN numbers are similar.” Carl always hoped that—if unearthed in any way—their joint fraud could look like miskeyed entries. Gerald doubted that, but he was determined that there would be no discovery in the first place.

  He looked over the sheet that Carl had handed him. There were only four titles on it, but none of them would be able to “lend” more than five or six thousand copies to Twice in the Papers. Gerald looked up at Carl. “This won’t be enough,” he said flatly.

  “Well, with your legitimate sales, and a boost of twenty or twenty-five thousand copies—”

  Gerald shook his head. “I have to be guaranteed a minimum of seventy thousand hardcover copies,” Gerald told Carl.

  Pollenski shook his head. “Seventy thousand?” he asked. “That’s including your actual sales?”

  “Sales or no sales,” Gerald told him. “I want to touch a hundred thousand. I don’t want there to be any doubt about the success of this book. I’ll make sure that it will appear in the media as a success. You’ll make sure it appears that way on our bottom line. If
it doesn’t make the New York Times bestseller list, well, that’s the luck of the draw and their Byzantine weighting system.” Gerald shrugged. No one knew for sure how the Times compiled its list. He remembered the article in Business Week exposing the fact that large numbers of books were bought from specific bookstores that were involved in calculating the placement of bestsellers on the list. In the old days, fifty thousand copies would guarantee you a place on the list. Now the framework had changed. A Crichton or a Waller could sell a million hardcover copies and throw the rest of the list off. “So, Carl. That’s our target.”

  Carl swallowed. “Look. I would like to. But I can’t get seventy thousand copies onto your account sheet,” Carl said. “Not without taking bigger risks than I’m prepared to take.”

  Gerald smiled, but it was the smile he used to freeze men’s blood. “Carl, I know you can if you simply think about it a little longer. Let’s choose another dozen books we could borrow from.”

  “A dozen! You don’t understand. Every new book we bring into this represents a significant risk. It has got to be keystroked. The chances of misposting a credit are good—it happens all the time—but the chances of misposting sales of a dozen books, and all to one account, are virtually nil. If anyone examined—”

  “No one is examining anything,” Gerald snapped, “and I need another seventy thousand hardcover sales.”

  He was implacable, and he knew it, and he didn’t care. This book would not be a failure, not in anyone’s eyes. He needed the next contract forlornly. And this book would sell. And if it sold a hundred thousand copies on its own, he would still add to the figure. He merely had to make sure that his figures did not contradict those in USA Today, which had started a revolutionary bestseller list based on actual point of sale.

  “Too bad about SchizoBoy. It would be a pleasure to have credited some of Weston’s sales against mine.” Gerald went over the list again, picking out a few backlist titles he expected would continue to sell modestly. Then he added three new titles. At last he circled half a dozen more. He handed the list to Carl, who looked it over glumly.