Same Title, Different Book

My novel seemed dead in the water. Destined never to pay off its advance. So imagine my surprise to see a recent, dramatic spike in its sales, particularly in e-books.
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In 2005, Farrar, Straus & Giroux published my coming-of-age novel Full Service. Set in small town Midwest in 1965, it's the summer when everything changes (most of have such a time) for 16-year-old Paul Sutton. Fresh off the farm, and from a conservative and church-going family, he takes a job at a gas station where he fills tanks, checks oil, washes windshields and, most importantly, meets the public. Tourist girls, a kindly old gangster, con artists, a beautiful and mysterious woman in a blue Mercedes, wise men and fools -- you get the idea -- all stop at the gas station on their way somewhere or nowhere. Over the long summer Paul's eyes are opened, and though he loses his religion (among other things) he gains the world.

With attentive editing by the FSG family, and a wonderful cover by Wendell Minor, Full Service launched to starred reviews. Kirkus called it "superb ... pitch-perfect." But then, well, my novel sat there. Hardcover sales were very disappointing. The paperback did better, but seven years later, still paddling gamely against the tide of fantasy and vampire fiction, Full Service seemed dead in the water. Destined, though close, never to pay off its advance.

So imagine my surprise to see a recent, dramatic spike in its sales, particularly in e-books. Of one million e-books available Full Service was suddenly at 60,000, and moving vigorously. I was beset by smugness: my little gem of a novel had finally been discovered. I used to tell my students that good writing will always find its audience, and here was proof.

Then, indulging myself with an Amazon title search, up popped the new, hot-selling Full Service: My Life In Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars. While my Full Service had all five-star reader reviews, the evil twin book had mostly one-star reviews that included such language as "absolute garbage," "yuck," "crap," "simply awful," "glad he's not my friend," and "worst book I've ever read" (24 of the latter). Yet there it was, this sweaty, trashy, Hollywood gigolo tell-all memoir cozy-ed up alphabetically and algorithmically to my tidy, earnest novel of small town Midwest. But pimping for it, too. It's pretty clear that fast-fingered book buyers were clicking on it by mistake.

I've always believed the literary gods to be sly but just, and now I know they have a sense of humor, too. Looking for sexcapades in Hollywood, my new readers instead find themselves at a gas station in Our Town. But here's my fantasy: maybe they'll be so surprised -- and then by engaged by my sentences and characters and description -- that they'll finish my book, and like it. They'll realize that instead of a book-buying mistake, they made a good choice after all. And I'll finally pay off my advance.

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