Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [149]
S&S, like all publishers, was mildly conservative about expense accounts. Nobody made much of a fuss on the subject, but it was understood that you didn’t splurge or spend more on a meal than Max would have spent, and he was a cautious spender, except where Ray was concerned.
That was about to change, along with much else. We were in show business now.
SHOW BUSINESS had swept into the S&S promotion and publicity departments with a bang. Where, formerly, a spot on the Today show and a modest cocktail party at the Schusters’ apartment had been about par for the course for launching a book, we were now orchestrating huge parties on both coasts, sending out gift ankhs in plush-lined leatherette presentation cases shaped like books (accompanied by a personal note from Jackie on special Love Machine stationery), and ordering cakes in the shape of the book, with the cover to be reproduced in icing. For the first time in publishing history, the author’s photograph seemed to be as important as the contents of the book, and hitherto unheard-of sums were spent on brand-name photographers and, inevitably, retouchers. While much of this did not concern me—I was busy transforming Jackie’s scrawl into prose and engaging in a daily “story conference” to work out the plot—I was soon thrust into the role of S&S’s ambassador-at-large to the Mansfields, since almost from the word go they had quarreled violently with Dick, whose role in the enterprise was to say no to their more extreme demands. No was not a word Jackie was accustomed to hearing, and while Irving had heard it often enough in his lifetime, he was reluctant to pass it on to Jackie. “You go back and tell Snyder that this is a deal breaker,” I heard several times a day.
Of course, plans for the cakes had to be placed on hold until we had a dust jacket for the bakers to copy. This was no easy task. The Mansfields had strong ideas about what they wanted. Poor Irving came to jacket meetings with color swatches Jackie had given him, from which it was apparent that pink was her favorite color. Most authors, even major ones, took very little interest in their book jackets in those innocent days. In the case of very important authors, the publisher might show him or her the sketch for the jacket, but there was seldom any question of the author’s approval. The Mansfields had it written into their contract and took it seriously; packaging, a concept that had not yet come into widespread use among book publishers, mattered to them, a lot. They sent every jacket suggestion to Hollywood, where, as they put it, there were people who really knew packaging, pros at the game instead of amateurs like us. Eventually, however, after much argument, angst, and innumerable flare-ups of temper by our art director, a theme was decided upon. The cover of the novel would resemble a movie poster (surprise, surprise!) featuring a man’s hand touching a woman’s, each of them wearing—what else?—gold ankh rings. Irving instructed us to get the best hand models in New York for the shot, which Frank Metz, our art director, did. When Jackie saw the proof, though, she didn’t like it—she thought the hands were ugly. We explained that we had hired the best hand models in New York, just as Irving had instructed us. Jackie didn’t miss a beat. “Get me the two second-best hand models in New York,” she snapped.
“Heh, heh,” Irving chuckled. “Isn’t she great?”
“I WANT the name of the girl who put me on hold,” Jackie screeched at me over the phone one day. “I want her fired! Nobody puts Jacqueline Susann on hold!”
There were tears at S&S whenever Jackie didn’t get what she wanted or was made to wait even for a moment.