The Publicist Read Online Free PDF Page A

wanted to publish it, you could bet it would hit the list. But there was a time or two when even The King would pick a book that just couldn’t carry its weight and on the rare occasion when something didn’t hit the mark, it was quickly forgotten amidst the other wildly successful titles. Edward carried himself like the New York royalty he was; one of the few people who could say he was born and raised on the Island. He often joked that there was no world outside Manhattan, well, no world that mattered anyway. He lived with his wife of almost forty years on the Upper East Side, in a sprawling and expensive apartment overlooking his favorite city in the world. Edward came from old money and good breeding. He had an air of dignity that was only marred by an occasional wrist slapping when he got too close or too friendly with one of his female co-workers; something that Edward did whenever the mood struck him. And often, considering his status, he got exactly what he wanted. The minute he did, however, the girl would vanish. Either into the bowels of the company or some far-flung publishing house no one had ever heard of. Sex with Edward Sherman was not a corporate climb but a descent into professional oblivion. Still there were women who were willing to risk it, who were enamored with the idea of being close to power. And Edward was powerful. A single call could get him anything from dinner with Madonna to golf at a private club with whoever was currently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
    “Shall we begin?” It was how Edward always started these meetings. He would smile, welcome his team and listen as the various teams presented their reports. Mac got up from where he was sitting and headed to the front of the room: “We’ve got a lot to focus on, team, so let’s get started. Before I hand this over to our salespeople I wanted to alert you to the fact that we are currently in the works to get a few very high-profile titles.” Mac ran through the list and Kate wondered how many of these she’d actually end up with. All of them sounded exciting and perfect for her. Mac sat down and turned it over to the head of their sales team: Charlie Manning, who’d been with MD for ten years and was one of the best sales leaders the company had ever seen.
    Charlie began, “Let’s talk about electronic rights.” He knew this wasn’t Edward’s favorite topic. “We need to move several of our older titles into eBooks and determine their pricing, which, as you know, remains challenging.”
    “I fucking hate eBooks,” Edward said, “when I was first in this business, there was no discussion of electronic rights. Who wants to read a book on a fucking contraption?”
    “If I may, sir,” Charlie ventured, “the number of eBooks sold continues to rise, we need to get our backlist out there. It’ll be a great extra revenue stream for MD.”
    Charlie knew how to reach Edward.
    “It’s all Amazon’s fault,” he said and then paused. “Fine, send me the list of books you want to convert and I’ll go over them—eBooks, what a fucking joke.” Edward was never one to silence his opinions and especially when it came to something he hated.
    During the meeting, each of the PR people was required to offer their status report. When Kate got up to give her five-minute run-through, Mac leaned into her and said, “Go get ‘em, Tiger.” Mac always said something to make her giggle, this meeting was no exception. Usually he joked about some lame thing someone else had just said but this time he sensed that she needed his support, especially since this was the first sales meeting since the dreaded “Haley incident.”
    Kate rattled off the list of her authors and the media she’d secured for all of them and also for those authors who had hired outside PR firms to supplement what MD was doing. “Now, to Sasha…” she paused to thumb through her notes, “We’re expecting a review in the Times tomorrow.” She smiled