The Publicist Book One and Two (23 page)

Chapter Five

Lulu popped her head into Kate’s office. “The
New York Times
is trying to reach you for a quote, but somehow he got transferred to me. I’m sending the guy to you, Rick somebody. Given how he got bounced around, I think he’s new.”

“Thanks, Lu. Do you know what he wants a quote on?”

“No idea. Want me to ask?”

“No, just put him through.”

Lulu went back to her desk. “Rick, I’m sending you to her now. Hang on.” Lulu had an odd feeling about this guy. Maybe she should have asked him what he wanted instead of just sending this on. She hit the transfer button and hoped for the best.

“Kate Mitchell,” she answered in her best, crisp, ‘I am a publicist’ voice. Regardless of the matter, it was always important to keep the publicity face on for the
New York Times
.

“Thanks for taking the time, Kate, I appreciate this. My name is Rick Vaughn, and I’m new to the book department. I’ve been assigned a story on fake reviews polluting the Amazon pages of authors.”

Kate knew this topic well. A piece in the
Times
weeks before had launched a firestorm of discussion about authors who faked their reviews either by populating the page with a slew of fake identities or hiring someone to do it for them. There were companies set up to do just this, and authors hired them in droves, hoping to glam up their Amazon author pages with high praise in the form of five-star reviews. Now, however, an author page with nothing but five star reviews was regarded as suspect. Several weeks before, Edward had brought this touchy subject up in a meeting and had strongly encouraged all publicity people to caution their authors about doing this, reminding them that this could negatively affect the integrity of their book.

“Yes, I am well aware of this problem,” she said.

“We started doing this piece after someone had populated their book with a truckload of negative reviews, then we realized that the issue of fake review placement is still going on.” He was referring to a recent book about Michael Jackson that had triggered an outrage from his fans who went onto Amazon and posted over one hundred one-star reviews, all anonymously.

“I imagine it’s hard to stop this, but MD takes this matter very seriously. We discourage our authors from this type of activity.”

“Then you’ll probably be surprised to learn that we’ve found newly-released books with no less than ninety-five, five-star, raving reviews. When we investigated further, we found that they were all set up from dummy accounts.”

“Wow, terrible; it’s amazing the lengths people will go to. I would hope that Amazon would step in on this kind of a thing. Who was the author?”

“Sasha Meiner.” The name fell on Kate like a ten-ton load of bricks from the sky.

“Excuse me, did you say Sasha?” Kate drummed her fingers on her desk in a nervous rhythm.

Sasha was
her
author and although she was talented, a negative review by the
New York Times
for her first book had sent her into a tailspin. The sales had been affected, though it was tough to prove it was the only reason why the book had done less than stellar. MD had reluctantly published her second, and though she had a three-book deal, it was likely that MD would find a way around the third book unless the second one blew the doors off of their expectations.

“We discovered this and went back to Amazon for clarification. They have yet to respond to us.”

“Right, well, it’s tough to get them to respond to anything, isn’t it?” Kate tried to force a lighthearted tone into her voice, but the truth was she couldn’t even fake a smile, unlike Sasha who could, apparently, fake dozens of reviews. It was all Kate could do not to slam the phone down, find Sasha, and slap some sense into her.

“So, would you like to say anything about this, Ms. Mitchell?”

“Please call me Kate,” she said, trying to buy some time. What the hell could she say? My freak of an author didn’t think the rules applied to her? If Kate could rip the reviews down from Amazon herself, she would. But that was out of her control, much like anything this loose cannon did.

Kate took a deep breath, and in her best publicist voice said, “Rick, we discourage our authors, and in fact, we admonish them for doing this. It’s never been an issue before. I suspect Sasha was feeling vulnerable; she has a lot riding on her publishing career. Not to defend her actions at all. We’ll make sure she sets this right.”

“What will you do?” the reporter asked.

Go over there, handcuff her to her computer, and force her to remove every one of her fake-ass love-letter reviews until she’s blue in the face. Then I’ll slap the crap out of her and hopefully knock some sense into this spoiled, rich bitch child.
Kate, of course, couldn’t say that. She also wondered if anyone in publishing gave out medals for showing amazing restraint.

“I’m going to call Sasha and demand that she remove these. We don’t tolerate this at MD.”

“Thanks, Kate. If I need anything else, I’ll let you know.”

Kate slammed the phone down. “Damn it!” she said to no one, and dropped her head in her hands. Of course, it had to be one of her authors, and of course, it had to be Sasha. Kate scrolled through her contacts for Sasha’s number. Without taking a minute to calm herself, as she normally would, she punched “call.” It rang once before Sasha picked up.

“Sasha here!” said the chipper voice on the other end of the phone. Kate wished she could reach through the phone and punch her.

“Sasha, you once called me at three a.m. when you got a bad review, and you cried in my ear for twenty minutes. Do you remember that?” Kate was furious, but her voice remained almost frighteningly calm. She gripped the phone so hard, she was pretty sure her knuckles were turning white.

“Uh-huh.”

“That incident pales in comparison to what you’ve done now. I just got off the phone with the
New York Times
. They are doing an article on fake reviews and discovered that your page is polluted with five-star fakers.”

Kate could hear Sasha gasp. “No, Kate, really, I promise. These are all just people who love my work!” Sasha’s insistence sounded as “authentic” as her reviews.

“The
Times
has been investigating this, and you’ve been caught. Now I don’t care what you have to do, but you need to remove those reviews immediately. Do you hear me?”

“I can’t and I won’t!” Sasha said. Kate could almost see her jutting out her chin. Kate was grateful she wasn’t in the same room with Sasha. She would certainly do something that would get her arrested, and she knew she looked terrible in orange.

“You can and you will. Why on earth did you do this?”

She could hear Sasha start to cry, Kate had flashbacks to the night Sasha called her in hysterics because the
Times
hated her book. Sasha’s breath came out in sobs. “I had to do something. You weren’t doing anything for me. You got me no reviews—well two—but I needed more, and you weren’t helping me.”

Story of her life, Kate thought. Authors telling her, “You’re not doing enough for me.” While some authors were genuinely grateful, many had serious entitlement issues, expecting their publishers to pull out all the stops and forget every other author except for them and their book launches.

“Sasha, I’m not going to sit here and defend the work I did for you, nor will I let you use that as an excuse to do this. It’s completely unethical, and I won’t tolerate it. Neither will your editor.”

Sasha was still crying on the other end of the phone. “No, you can’t! Please don’t tell Rebecca!”

“I can and I will. Now remove those reviews, and let me know when you’ve taken care of it.”

Kate hung up without waiting for Sasha’s reply. She knew Sasha would call her editor immediately and try to play her case with Rebecca. Kate punched up Rebecca’s extension.

“Becca, it’s Kate. I’m coming by. Promise me you won’t pick up the phone until I get there.”

Kate walked out of her office and right into Pete, who was hovering near her door. Pete was, in a word, the company rodent. He spent most of his time sucking up to everyone and annoying the hell out of Kate. Somehow, he always found a way to insert himself into situations he had no business being in.

“Get out of my way, Pete,” Kate said as she tried to maneuver around him.

Wrinkling his freckled face, Pete broke into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You look upset, Kate. What’s going on? Is this about that
Times
reporter? He seems to have bounced around a bit. I spoke to him, too, but he was dead set on talking to you.”

“Go back to your desk, Pete, and mind your own business.”

“Is this about one of your authors?”

Kate stared him down and debated shoving him out a window. Instead, she pushed him out of the way. “Go back to your desk.” Her voice was low, almost threatening, and she noticed the spineless one seemed to flinch, if only slightly. Kate left him and marched to Rebecca’s office.

“What’s up, Kate?”

“I’ll be there in a second.”

Kate stopped by Lulu’s desk on her way to see Rebecca. “Lu, the
Times
is doing a piece on fake reviews and our very own Sasha has packed her book page full of them. I told her to yank them down immediately. I want you to keep checking her Amazon page today, and see if there’s anyone at Amazon we can reach to expedite this.”

“The
Times
is really running a story on this and mentioning Sasha?” Lulu asked.

Kate nodded and headed to Rebecca’s office.

The editor was waiting for her. “My phone’s been ringing off the hook since you called me, Kate. What’s going on?”

“It’s Sasha. She wrote about a zillion fake reviews on her Amazon page.”

“Fuck.” Rebecca leaned back in her chair.

“It gets worse. I just got off the phone with a reporter at the
Times
. They discovered this first. Isn’t that great? They’re running a story on this in tomorrow’s paper.”

“Shit, Kate. What did you say?”

“I told them it isn’t MD’s policy to tolerate this and that I would direct our author to remove these immediately. Then I called Sasha and laid into her. I told her to get those reviews off of there. I figured she’d call you to see if she could beg your understanding.”

Rebecca shook her head. “Suddenly staying home with a screaming infant sounds more soothing than this day so far. Porn and Sasha, great combination.”

Kate wrinkled her nose. “Don’t even mention that word in the same sentence as Sasha. God knows that might be the next thing she attempts in order to make sales.”

“Damn it. This will tank her book,” she said with a sigh.

Kate nodded. “I checked their pages; I checked all of my author’s Amazon pages. I swear, I checked Sasha’s not even three days ago. I don’t know how she did this.”

“Kate, this isn’t your fault. You can’t babysit these people.”

“Edward expects me to,” Kate replied, taking a deep breath.

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, trying to control what Sasha does is like trying to stop a dam break with your finger. That girl is just out there.”

“Well, I wanted you to hear it from me, first, Becca, and I’m sorry.”

The editor shook her head. “Not your fault, so don’t worry. I’ll send Sasha an email, too, so she knows she shouldn’t waste her time trying to convince me to take her side.”

“Thanks. Let’s hope we can fix this, but candidly, by the time the piece runs, it’ll be too late anyway. I asked Lulu to check on it, too.”

“Listen, Kate, let me take you to dinner tonight. Danny can watch the baby, and I’d love to grab a bite with you.”

Kate smiled. “I’d love to Becca, but let’s do it another night. I already have plans.”

Rebecca returned her smile. “I hope it’s a date, Kate. You deserve a nice man who can take you away from all of this, or at least make you forget it for a while.”

…

When Kate left the office, it was already past six. She was going to be late. Mac insisted she come by his apartment before they headed to dinner. He was being pretty mysterious, even for Mac. Kate pulled her jacket tighter around her. The cold, biting air almost cut through her. They were expecting more snow—maybe even later that night. By January, New Yorkers hoped for the end of snow season, but often that’s when it began. Weather reports said up to a foot in some areas, which meant that some trains might not be running tomorrow and the folks who live in Westchester could be delayed for hours getting into Grand Central. Kate kept a few extra sweaters and blouses at Mac’s; a habit that she’d only recently started after Mac had encouraged her. “Too far to go in the morning from my place to your apartment and then to work.” He was right, of course, though if they were a real couple, they might be talking about living together in the near future. Kate walked into Mac’s building, and the doorman waved her on. By now, the staff all knew who she was. Kate wondered if they ever talked about Mac’s “visitor.”

Kate pushed the thought from her mind. Mac didn’t sleep around, he had promised her that. It seemed like an odd promise, but she tried not to think about it. She was already knee-deep into this relationship with Mac, and each day that passed made it harder to get out. As the elevator sped up twenty floors, Kate thought about Nick. She really needed to call him soon. Tomorrow, she promised herself, and the elevator doors slid open.