Corrupted Chapter 4 Read online

  Arnold told him frankly, “You have plenty of dead weight on your present contracts right now. How do you plan to alleviate that?”

  The boss was referring to several authors who had not recouped their advances.

  Vincent answered frankly himself. “Presently, we have four contracts that are all on their final books, and I plan to renegotiate only one of them . . . Chelsea Christmas,” he alluded. “She’s not expensive, and she continues to sell.”

  Thomas listened without a word. Vincent had always been able to speak well for himself.

  Arnold nodded, reflecting on the four contracts, and he agreed with Vincent. Only Chelsea was a keeper. But cutting the dead weight was only part of their business that morning. The company needed new blood, and fast.

  “And who do you plan to pick up? You know the urban marketplace hasn’t been doing as well for us as it has in the past,” he hinted.

  “I know,” Vincent agreed. “But I have six new authors in mind, all who are lower-priced, four with possible book series ideas, and they’re all multi-ethnic.”

  Vincent had already spent a considerable amount of time thinking about it, and his African-American base was no longer lucrative, at least not at the major publishing levels.

  Thomas continued to listen and hold his tongue. He felt badly about the loss of African-American authors over the years. But trends were trends, and hundreds of self-published authors and small street book operations had killed the profitability of the urban marketplace. So why keep the expense of a gas station if everyone pumps cheaper gas in their back yards?

  “You know, it’s nothing personal against the A-A market,” Arnold continued. “We’ve published plenty of groundbreaking books from black authors, but lately –”

  Vincent cut him off and said, “You don’t have to apologize to me. I’ve been in this business for years now, and the people who can’t understand the numbers, no longer have the positions. But I’m still here,” he emphasized, “and I plan on being here. So I’m ready to make the necessary cuts that are needed to maintain profitability. That’s just the nature of the business. It’s nothing personal for any of us.”

  Arnold nodded and took it all in. The young editor was indeed commendable. Now he had to make it all work again, like he had done several times in the past.

  How many lives does this guy have left? Arnold reflected to himself. Vincent was one of the last editors standing out of the dozens who had come and gone from the company over the same time span.

  Finally, Arnold exhaled and felt comfortable with the idea of moving Vincent Biddle further up the publishing ladder. “We’ll pull together your new contract next week,” he told him. And he extended his right hand.

  Vincent shook the brass’s meaty hand and nodded back to him. “Let’s get it all done.”

  Thomas watched it all go down in silence. He was proud but fearful. It was one thing to move up the ladder in good times, but it was much more stressful to guide a massive ship out of troubled waters, and Vincent was clearly asking for the wheel.

  As soon as Arnold stepped away to breathe and to speak to their other staff members, Thomas asked Vincent in private, “Are you really ready for what you’re about to do?”

  Vincent was calm and poised. “You know how I am, Tom. I’ve been thinking about my decisions for years now. And it’s not as if these things happen overnight. We’re talking about plenty of experience and numbers that back up every cut that we have to make.”

  He said, “But it’s the new acquisitions game that’s much harder. How do we really know who or what’s gonna sell out there now? That’s where people like Lauren come into play,” he alluded. “You wanna be able to sell the person more than the books nowadays. And Chelsea’s the only one left who gets that.”

  Thomas thought about the recent Steve Harvey book, where the comedian/movie star had done phenomenal numbers at the HarperCollins division of Amistad. After being a television guest on both Oprah and the Tyra Banks’ show, as well as hosting his own syndicated radio program, the new model was set; become an national and marketable brand or else.

  Vincent continued, “That’s why it’s so important to choose the right people now as opposed to just the right books. Jackson allows me and Lauren to extend our reach into television and Hollywood now. And I’m hopefully of all of the new possibilities there. But it took us years to get there, and still not with an African-American author. I had to use an Italian,” he lamented.

  Then he shrugged. “But so be it.”

  Thomas thought about it all and felt bad for him. He also wondered how Vincent had managed to get a high-powered PR woman like Lauren Grandeis on his team. She seemed to be a woman of various fringe benefits, and Vincent had a history of being very eager to provide them. Although his professional successes allowed his personal dealings to remain forgiven and unquestioned, the older white man knew for a fact that his ambitious editor would do just about anything to achieve his career goals. So he was skeptical of what Vincent would try next.

  Finally, Thomas took a deep breath and squeezed Vincent’s left shoulder. “Well, all right, my friend, you’re moving on up the ladder again.”

  Vincent joked and said, “Yeah, and I still feel like The Jeffersons.”

  Thomas laughed, but he could never fully understand the joke or the apparent pressure of a lone black man, who was steadily rising to the top of a ninety-five percent white industry. But it was what it was, even in year 2011.

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