“Only this business is books, and artistic egos are involved.”
“And a product’s marketability is less determined by statistical consumer need than amorphous factors like trends, luck and instinct.”
“Vegas is a perfect location for an ABA, then. From what you say, publishing is a crapshoot.”
“But a classy crapshoot, Temple. Some book people cringe at the idea of having an ABA in a crass commercial arena like this town. It’s the antithesis of publishing’s Manhattan roots. Yet they must. This convention center is one of the few in the country big enough to handle a display and crowd of this size.”
“So what was Chester Royal’s story? How’d he happen to hit it big—and get hit?”
“He stumbled across Mavis Davis, number one. She was a long shot for established publishers, who turned down her first book in droves. But Royal with his medical background saw something there, and the rest is history.”
“Medical background?”
“He trained as a doctor, even practiced briefly, I guess, decades ago. That’s what he had that regular editors didn’t; firsthand knowledge of the field. Apparently it was a magical combination in medical thriller fiction.”
“About Mavis Davis—”
“She’s having a nervous breakdown over Chester’s death. I know.”
“From what I can tell, she was hooked on him as her editor. There’s something almost sinister about his influence over her.”
Lorna’s mouth quirked, and she took a long swig on her drink. “Listen. A lot of us at RCD-about-to-be-slash-P didn’t approve of Royal’s methods, but we couldn’t argue with his bottom line. His imprint was essentially independent although RCD distributed his list and shared the profits. He got plenty out of it personally, believe me. More than the old buzzard deserved. He ran his own fiefdom, but he had a compulsion to handle his authors with an iron hand. He underpaid and overedited them into numb obedience and, frankly, that’s why his bottom line was so attractive. This is a business, Temple, it’s not an experiment in the nobility of the human spirit. Sometimes the meanest bastards make the most dough.”
“Owen Tharp seems rather realistic—and bitter—about the system. Yet he got along with Royal.”
“Some writers did. A lot didn’t.”
“Couldn’t the unhappy writers just leave the imprint?”
“Sure, they left, but Royal kept pulling new gullible ones from his slush pile. His madness had a method: to prove that his judgment, not any particular writer’s talent, was the cornerstone of Pennyroyal Press’s success.”
“And was he proving that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Was his bottom line still firm? How long could he afford to alienate his more independent authors? How long could an abused writer like Mavis Davis remain productive under such pressure?”
Lorna shook her head, her expression troubled. “Temple, it’s the real world. Jobs are being lost out there, paperback books are being returned in huge percentages, publishing houses are going under.”
“Exactly. How could a heads-up company tolerate an ego mill under its wing? The law of diminishing returns holds true for paperbacks, too. Maybe nobody was admitting it, but his bottom line was crumbling. Claudia hinted that Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce was ready to dump Royal, if it could, for running his own imprint into the ground. Those whom the gods would destroy they first make mean.”
“He was mean,” Lorna spat out suddenly. “He was a mean, small-souled man. Why do you think he kept Mavis Davis down on the farm? Ex-Doctor Royal despised nurses; he didn’t want them to benefit at his expense. Everyone knew that her terms were worse than simply being a shrewd deal for the publisher. Other houses tried to lure her away, but she was so brainwashed into thinking she needed Chester Royal... I don’t know if she’ll ever write another book, now that he’s dead.”
“Then she wouldn’t want him that way, would she?”
“Mavis? A suspect? You’re dreaming.”
Temple shrugged and watched as a man angled toward their table, keeping his eyes on Lorna. She didn’t know what a prince of publishing should look like, but this one was tall, bald and wearing rimless spectacles.
Lorna rose as he neared the table. “Temple Barr, this is Raymond Avenour, publisher and CEO of Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce.”
“Thank you for your time,” Temple said, shaking hands with the CEO as he sat.
He shrugged. “Anything I can do to help, as I told the detective in charge.” A flash of instantly charming smile. “I’ve discovered that there are a lot of bright, attractive professional women in Las Vegas.”
Temple, who seldom bothered to protest the rote male gallantries common to the PR business, blinked as she realized what the man had said. She’d couldn’t quite put herself and Lieutenant Molina under the same umbrella, however flatteringly it was extended. She wondered what the blunt-spoken detective would say to such a remark.
But Temple didn’t carry a badge as backup, so she just got down to business. “Since I’ve had some experience in cultural PR, the officials are relying on me to offer some guidance to the book field. I confess, Mr. Avenour, that I’m confused.”
“What about?” he asked with another perfectly charming, perfectly bland smile.
“This imprint business. If Pennyroyal Press was an imprint of RCD, why wasn’t it included in the corporate name?”
“It would have been.” Avenour rebuffed an approaching waiter with a brisk shake of his head. “The matter was under discussion. The lines of control within an imprint and from it to the overall corporate entity are delicate and must be clearly defined.”
“It was a power struggle, then?”
“No! No.” Avenour gave a genial laugh. “You ever seen a book publishing contract, Miss Barr? They’re legal-length pages—and pages—of fine print on the simplest one-book deal. To unite separate publishing entities requires a whole telephone book of fine print and more lawyers than a Trump bankruptcy. The process is closer to a royal wedding than anything so crude as a power play.”
“But what if RCD had doubts that Chester Royal had all his marbles together? He was getting older and had been set in his ways for years. He was losing promising authors.”
Before Temple even finished talking, Avenour’s head shook as briskly as it had when warning off the waiter. “Authors can be bought back if they’re important enough. The point is, Royal built the imprint. He could run it as long as—and how—he wanted to. If he ran it into the ground, Pennyroyal Press would go under. Reynolds-Chapter-Deuce would be protected, you can count on that.”
The publisher was rising, fanning a palm to keep Lorna seated for his departure. “I hope I’ve dissipated your confusion, Miss Barr. Call on me for clarification anytime.” He spoke with such careless cordiality that only a fool or Crawford Buchanan would take him literally.
Soon after Temple said goodbye and raced off; somehow she didn’t have much of an appetite. She left Lorna nursing a third Manhattan. A PR director’s life was no bed of roses.
Neither was Temple’s.
When she got back to convention central, Emily Adcock was waiting by the press room door. A sprinkling of media types—their numbers lessening visibly as the convention lengthened—sat respectfully while a pop-singer-turned-kid’s-book-author tried to say something profound.
“He wrote a kid’s book?” Temple asked with some wonder. According to the tabloids, the singer had acquired the usual accouterments of success—drug and alcohol addiction and scandals involving underage females, and possibly males.