Here’s a funny novel that fellow writers will especially love. The Accidental Bestseller is an inside look at the publishing industry from a group of struggling mid-list authors. A book about writers working to meet a deadline. Or, is it a book about the book you’re reading?
The rungs of the publishing ladder are a slippery slope, but the warmth and loyalty these women share is so captivating, you root for their success all along.
The author, Wendy Wax, has written ten books. One of her novels, Hostile Makeover, was excerpted in Cosmopolitan magazine. Her writing is so natural, I think you will wonder if it is as much autobiography as fiction.
Among the four females in The Accidental Bestseller, we see the struggles of being a writer without a husband’s support or the troubles of an author who’s a singe mom, living with her children and her mother in a double-wide trailer. And a happily married author who finds out she isn’t after all.
The boiling anger of a mid-list author is accurately portrayed, when one waits for a publishing contract, then worries her sales won’t keep her on the publisher’s A-list. And that she may have to return the advance money. We know the pain of every author: Take the deal, hoping you’ll leave them someday for a bigger publisher, when the reality is your numbers aren’t good enough, and you’re about to be dropped.
You’ll pick up the pace of your reading when tension grows. You learn one author has to deliver a book or return the $30,000 advance, her three friends pitch in to get the book done.
“The thing is, Mallory, even in a tiny bookstore like this, there are thousands of titles vying for a reader’s attention. And I have to ask myself, what are the chances that someone wandering in off the street is going to choose one of mine?”
But that’s when the plot changes from a cute story about writers, to the revelations and realities of modern life. Wax does a terrific job creating true characters, believable stories, and fast-moving dialog.
Article comments
1 - Mongo
Sounds like a good read, especially important for aspiring writers. I wonder if there's much change in publishing books like there has been for music in the post-napster era.