Olivia Goldsmith - Bestseller

COPYRIGHT

HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

This edition 1997

First published in Great Britain by

HarperCollins Publishers 1996

First published in the USA by

HarperCollins Publishers 1996

Copyright © Olivia Goldsmith 1996

Olivia Goldsmith asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780006496731

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2015 ISBN: 9780008154066

Version: 2015-10-28

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Acclaim for Bestseller :

‘A highly entertaining tale.’

Publishers Weekly

‘Olivia Goldsmith’s forte has always been the writing of revenge novels with great, good humour … There’s lots of romance and revenge here … Plenty of awful people get their comeuppance and there’s more satisfactory coupling at the end than in a Shakespeare comedy.’

Washington Post

‘The achievement of Bestseller is that Olivia Goldsmith takes the sometimes arcane publishing industry and makes it interesting as well as completely credible. Her descriptions of the pressures on authors, the often arbitrary editorial process and even the bottom-line problems of small booksellers are dead right.’

New York Times Book Review

‘Goldsmith hands out her characters’ rewards and comeuppances like Jane Austen dealing blackjack … You keep licking your fingers and reaching for the next page as if it were another potato chip.’

Newsweek

DEDICATION

To Larry Ashmead

Editor of Genius

Cultivator of Tomatoes

Whose stories of writers, agents, editors, and publishers inspired, awed, and amused me.

This is your book as much as it is mine. Let them sue you .

EPIGRAPH

The year I returned to active publishing there were five varied manuscripts submitted to Davis & Dash; five manuscripts, each by a different author, each with different aspirations. All five made the enormous jump from unpublished manuscript to published book, but only one among them was destined to make the next leap to become the bestseller.

—Gerald Ochs Davis, Sr.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Though it contains incidental references to actual people and places, these references are used merely to lend the fiction a realistic setting. All other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One: A Novel Idea

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part Two: Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Part Three: In Chains

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Part Four: The Bestseller

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Chapter 73

Chapter 74

Chapter 75

Chapter 76

Chapter 77

Chapter 78

Chapter 79

Chapter 80

Chapter 81

Chapter 82

Chapter 83

Chapter 84

Chapter 85

Chapter 86

Chapter 87

Chapter 88

Chapter 89

Chapter 90

Chapter 91

Chapter 92

Chapter 93

Chapter 94

Chapter 95

Chapter 96

Chapter 97

Chapter 98

Chapter 99

Chapter 100

Chapter 101

Chapter 102

Chapter 103

Chapter 104

Chapter 105

Chapter 106

Chapter 107

Chapter 108

Chapter 109

Chapter 110

Keep Reading

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

PART ONE

A Novel Idea

One day God decided he would visit the earth. Strolling down the road, God encountered a sobbing man. “Why are you crying, my son?”

The man said, “God, I am blind.” So God touched him and the man could see and he was happy.

As God walked farther he met another crying man and asked, “Why are you crying, my son?”

The man said, “God, I am crippled.” So God touched him and the man could walk and he was happy.

Farther down the road God met yet a third man crying and asked, “Why are you crying, my son?”

The man said, “God, I’m a writer.” And God sat down and cried with him.

—Gerald Ochs Davis, Sr.

Fifty Years in Publishing

1

Nobody ever committed suicide while reading a good book, but many have tried while trying to write one.

—Robert Byrne

Terry was looking down at the pilled cuff of her sweater when she saw Roberta approaching. Roberta had an even sadder look than usual on her plain face. Terry was not surprised. Business at The Bookstall had dropped off a lot over the summer, when any West Sider with disposable income uses it to get out of Manhattan on the weekends. But now, with Christmas coming, business had not picked up, probably because of the superstore that had planted itself on twenty thousand square feet just two downtown blocks away.

Roberta was a little woman, small-boned and birdlike. Terry liked the way the older woman looked. Her skin had those tiny, even fine lines that fair-skinned brunettes are often saddled with, though Roberta’s hair had gone from brown to gray long ago. Now Roberta laid her hand on Terry’s ratty sleeve. Reluctant, Terry looked into Roberta’s sad brown eyes.

“I have some bad news,” Roberta said, but Terry didn’t need to be told. She’d seen it coming. Still, Roberta was from the old school, the one where people took responsibility for their actions and felt they owed explanations. She lived up to her name: Roberta Fine. “I don’t think I have to tell you that it’s not your performance, and that it’s certainly not personal,” Roberta began. “You know how much I’ve enjoyed working with you the last year and a half.” Terry, a writer, heard the nuance. She didn’t need Roberta to continue, though she did. “But even on a part-time basis, I simply can’t afford …” Roberta paused, shook her head, and briskly licked her lips for a moment, as if moistening them would make the words come out more easily. “The only other option …” Roberta began, then stopped.