by Chris Pavone
This whole operation took place at an outfit called the Crown Publishing Group, which is prevented from falling apart by president and publisher Maya Mavjee, along with David Drake and Jill Flaxman, as well as Kevin Tobin and Katie Ziga in finance. Crown itself is a division of Penguin Random House, where The Accident benefited from the work of Megan Thomas, Dorothy Boyajy, and David Sanford in contracts; Matthew Martin and Kathy Trager in legal; Amanda D’Acierno, Sue Daulton, Amy Metsch, and Dan Zitt in audio; plus Annette Danek and the whole warehouse and customer service team, which consists of hundreds of people; plus James O’Malley at 1745, who never forgot me, even when I disappear for years at a time.
And then there’s the sales department. In a business with tens of thousands of producers creating hundreds of thousands of distinct new products every year for an uncountable number of distributors and retailers, the sales process is not exactly simple. And all these products are full-length books, not T-shirts or cell phones or snack bars; you can’t assess—or sell—them in a glance or a bite. If you bought the Crown edition of The Accident, first someone at Random House needed to have sold it, and those people included John Adams, Andy Augusto, Patty Berg, Pam Brown, Eric Buscher, Cathy Calvert, Morgan Carattini, Candice Chaplin, Tom Cox, Chris Dufault, Christine Edwards, Michael Gentile, Amiee Gibbs, David Glenn, KJ Grow, John Hastie, Toni Hetzel, Cheryl Kelly, Cyrus Kheradi, Nan Khilall, Michael Kindness, Ann Kingman, Beth Koehler, Ron Koltnow, Dan Kosack, Ceneta Lee-Williams, Jerry Lex, Wade Lucas, Shauna Masi, Lisa McCormack, Annette Trial O’Neil, David Phethean, Bridget Piekarz, Judy Pohlhaus, Anke Reichelt, Andrew Rein, Jennifer Ridgway, David Romine, Sasha Sadikot, Kim Shannon, Ron Shoop, Scott Smith, Michele Sulka, David Underwood, Jaci Updike, Sherry Virtz, Valerie Walley, Jeff Weber, and Lori Zook.
All these people, and many more whom I’m sure I’ve overlooked (sorry!), earn their livings transforming manuscripts into books, and launching books like mine into the world. I thank them all sincerely and immensely.
Also by Chris Pavone
“Thoroughly captivating.” —New York Times Book Review
“Bombshell-a-minute.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Ingenious.” —Washington Times
“Impossible to put down.” —Associated Press
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