SHE WROTE: About Those Rats . . .

Two years ago, give or take several months, I wrote an essay called Rats With Islands: How to Survive Your Publishing Career (http://www.jennycrusie.com/essays/ratswithislands.php) and in it I said this about the collaboration:


"Last year, in the midst of a major burn-out, I started collaborating on a book with a guy. Nobody thought it was going to work because there's this impression floating around that I am controlling and opinionated (tsk) and because Conventional Wisdom says that collaborations that are not hidden behind a single pseudonym sell 60% of a book written under one of the author's solo names. (CW also says that you never tell anybody that CW says the book will only sell 60%, which pretty much tells you how tight CW and I are.) The thing was, though, this was a really good collaboration and the book it produced was not only exciting to write but great to read (IMHO). So now Reality and I are facing off, but it's okay because I have an island. On this island, people look at a book with a male and female writer listed on the cover and think, “Wow, both genders' points of view, gotta have it.” On this island, the word of mouth is terrific and the book sells 110% of what a solo author book would sell. On this island, editors all over New York read it, see the sales, and grab their assistants, saying, “Get me a male/female collaboration, stat!”


I am mentioning this because of two things:

Don't Look Down sold better in hardcover than my last book, BET ME (which did damn well, thank you).

And this appeared yesterday as a press release announcing a multi-book sale:
"Janet Evanovich and Stephen J. Cannell's new hardcover adventure series, in a major deal, in a two-book deal, to Jamie Raab at Warner, by Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group (NA)."

It is, of course, possible that the participants in the afore-mentioned deal, both very fine authors, have no knowledge of the Crusie-Mayer collaboration and came up with idea entirely on their own, but we did spend three weeks on the NYT list and Ms. Evanovich and I do share an editor at SMP, so I'm thinking they probably noticed us. Which means I called it on the nose two years ago. Which doesn't happen too damn often in publishing.

You may bask in my wisdom now.

(Oh, come on, after all I went through convincing people I was right about this two years ago, including, yes, BOB, I deserve a little moment of glow here.)