Kaavya Viswanathan learns a lesson. Maybe not the one she intended.
The issue with chick lit author wannabe Kaavya Viswanathan has opened a window into the world of book packagers: finally an explanation of how this business works, packaging plot and characters into something like a TV serial drama between book covers.
And they have been very successful.
But here, as I said in an earlier post, we have the worst of all worlds, commodification of a young and naive writer, for her background and race, not her talent, an obscene advance, and a formulaic product which gets pay to play coverage from the NYT.
so, with the agent, the connections, the NY address, the book moves on up the NYT list, along with its sister creations from Alloy, the company that also owns Delias, a clothing and lifestyle retailer in the pre-teen girls market. "This Sunday, books created by Alloy will be ranked at Nos. 1, 5 and 9 on The New York Times's children's paperback best-seller list."

First, Plot and Character. Then, Find an Author. - New York Times: "Nobody associated with the plagiarism accusations is pointing fingers at Alloy, a behind-the-scenes creator of some of the hottest books in young-adult publishing. Ms. Viswanathan says that she alone is responsible for borrowing portions of two novels by Megan McCafferty, 'Sloppy Firsts' and 'Second Helpings.' But at the very least, the incident opens a window onto a powerful company with lucrative, if tangled, relationships within the publishing industry that might take fans of series like 'The It Girl' by surprise.
In many cases, editors at Alloy � known as a 'book packager' � craft proposals for publishers and create plotlines and characters before handing them over to a writer (or a string of writers)."