“if you’re a woman and you make a lot of money, you’re a bitch.”
Originally published at tansyrr.com. You can comment here or there.
Not so long ago, I wrote a post about my disappointment in the recent Stephanie Plum release, and cited the media reports about the money Janet Evanovich had been paid to move from St Martin’s Press. I sort of feel now that I should make a retraction, or at least a follow up, in response to this interview with Janet where she says that the media misreported the amount she was paid, and represented her unfairly as “demanding.” The quote I used in the title is I think a very accurate statement about how successful women are perceived in the media.
She also makes it clear that her main reason for moving publishers had nothing to do with money (unsurprisingly she is quite well off) and more to do with creative direction: “I think they did a fabulous job for me, but we had some differences about moving forward, about the projects that I felt very strongly about in the future, and that really was not so much a matter of money, it was a matter of a vision. I just had a slightly different vision than St. Martin’s. So, I just felt like maybe I needed a change, maybe I needed some new ideas. Sometimes you are the new girl on the block, and there is just a lot of enthusiasm and there’s a lot of energy. You all of a sudden have this rush to do something fabulous.”
That kinda sounds to me like the issue was Janet wanting to write something other than more and more and more Stephanie Plum… and while I personally have never enjoyed her non-Plum books as much, there can be nothing worse for an author than that expectation that you keep doing your cash cow successful series at the expense of growing and developing and trying new things. Her intentions to hook up with co-writers to help boost other careers is kind of an interesting thing, too - and probably something that would help her kick herself out of the rut she might be in. I see other authors doing this - Jenny Crusie for one, though I think she mostly does it with close friends - but have rarely heard one talking about their motives for doing so openly.
There’s I think an unfair assumption with co-writing that it’s entirely a trade of famous name for leg/fingerwork, and that the no-name writer does all the work while the famous person just signal boosts the book by existing. More authors talking about the co-writing process and their methods and what they get out of it would help to get rid of that myth, I think. Also I just find co-writing a fascinating thing to read about because everyone does it differently!