Bestseller tells the story (among others) of Emma, an editorial Cinderella – underpaid, overworked in a cramped office and unappreciated at a wickedly managed publishing house. Her virtues are finally trumpeted in Publishers Weekly, while she becomes editor in chief at a new ‘boutique publisher’.
Goldsmith knows every trick of the publishing trade of which she is writing, having worked in it herself.
The original, hardback edition of Bestseller runs to 507 pages. The three pages of acknowledgements begin with: "So many people contributed to this book that I had to put together an index. (I hope all of you actually read the book, but if you only want to see your name mentioned, just consult the back.)"
The disclaimer reads: "This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Though it contains incidental references to actual people and places, these references are used merely to lend the fiction a realistic setting . . ."
The index (triple-column, six pages) consists of names of people - real-life or fictional - only, with no topics, place names or subheadings.
The celebrity and professional names relate in different ways to the book. Each of the 110 chapters is headed by an attributed quotation about writing or publishing – that accounts for the appearances of such as Margaret Atwood and Graham Greene in the index. Then there are text passages carefully contrived to yield interesting index entries, such as: "Years at the library reading Flaubert, Turgenev, Austen, Forster and the other greats had given Opal an informed and exquisite taste. Now she found that she could write. Not as well as Beryl Bainbridge or Kay Gibbons or Anita Brookner, but . . ."
"I think it’s like our Hello magazine. Rock stars and their wives, and endless stories on Paula Yates and Princess Caroline of Monaco."
These celebrity names all make their – surely superfluous – appearance in the index.
This index seems to be intended as an appetite-whetter, a marketing ploy – and the text devised in some measure to provide suitable matter for the index.
Alas, the index was omitted from the 688-page paperback edition of 1997. Why - joke over?