Chad Taylor

Readers


In 1983 Nobel Prize winner-to-be and Greg Bear fan Doris Lessing wrote a novel under the pen name 'Jane Somers' to test publishers, their readers and critics:
'I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that "nothing succeeds like success," [Lessing] said in a recent telephone conversation from London. 'If the books had come out in my name, they would have sold a lot of copies and reviewers would have said, "Oh, Doris Lessing, how wonderful." As it is, there were almost no reviews, and the books sold about 1,500 copies here and scarcely 3,000 copies each in the United States.'
From The Paris Review:
INTERVIEWER
Could you tell us more about how you put the Jane Somers hoax over on the critical establishment? It strikes me as an incredibly generous thing to do, first of all, to put a pseudonym on two long novels to try to show the way young novelists are treated.

LESSING
Well, it wasn't going to be two to begin with! It was meant to be one. What happened was, I wrote the first book and I told the agent that I wanted to sell it as a first novel . . . written by a woman journalist in London. I wanted an identity that was parallel to mine, not too different. So my agent knew, and he sent it off. My two English publishers turned it down. I saw the readers' reports, which were very patronizing. Really astonishingly patronizing! The third publisher, Michael Joseph (the publisher of my first book), was then run by a very clever woman called Phillipa Harrison, who said to my agent, "This reminds me of the early Doris Lessing."
Lessing believes that by the time the novel was published, 'four or five' people knew the secret.
We all expected that when the book came out, everyone would guess. Well, before publication it was sent to all the experts on my work, and none of them guessed. All writers feel terribly caged by these experts — writers become their property.
Jane Somers earned mixed reviews:
A lengthy review of ''If the Old Could. . .'' in The New York Times Book Review last June, for example, said the novel ''fails to achieve greatness.'' But, the reviewer added, ''This is an extremely courageous attempt, and Jane Somers is a courageous writer.''

The Washington Post's reviewer said of ''The Diary of a Good Neighbour'' last year, ''Jane Somers extends one's comprehension of the possibilities life offers, and does it with wit and compassion.''

But The Los Angeles Times's reviewer found ''If the Old Could. . .'' a ''cryptic novel.'' It is, the reviewer said, ''a little like a beautiful sweater made by a woman with arthritis. Through unravelings and dropped stitches, you can make out a lovely pattern, but can't quite figure out what it is.''
Nowadays Lessing's concerns seem quaint. Publishers are more than willing to gamble on unknown writers, and lately they have been betting large:
Gabriel's Inferno and Gabriel's Rapture, popular books that started as Twilight fan fiction, have been acquired by Penguin's Berkley imprint in a "substantial seven-figure deal,” the publisher announced.

Berkley will immediate take over publishing the ebooks from Omnific Publishing. Trade paperbacks will follow in the next few months, with Berkeley planning a 500,000 copy first printing.
I once asked an editor what sort of book sells half a million copies. He smiled: 'Nobody knows.'

UPDATE: speaking of best-selling franchises: Grace Bello interviews Ryan Nerz about ghostwriting Francine Pascal's young-adult series Sweet Valley High:
Nerz: Sweet Valley High is this series that just goes on and on and on. So you're always having to come up with new plots. You're always having to come up with new character arcs. We would just sit around and come up with new ideas. And then they would hire out freelance people, like what I eventually became. You get a one-off amount of money, which is okay. Meanwhile, Francine Pascal sits in a château in France. I'm not even sure if Francine Pascal wrote a single book, which is really funny. She just came up with the idea and the Bible for it.

So the titles that you wrote, did you pitch those ideas?

No; the would-be writers, we would have to do a two-chapter sample, about 30 pages. They have to see that you can match the style and the tone and pull the heartstrings of anonymous 13-year-old girls across the country.

Were there a lot of men writing?

There weren't a whole lot of men. There were few men, predominantly gay, and one other guy, Daniel Ehrenhaft, who now is a fairly successful young-adult writer. Other than that, no. There weren't many men. It was mainly post-college women. That was the main ballgame. There were some dudes. But not a whole lot.
Read the full interview here.
(Pic: Fay Godwin)