When a Best-seller Becomes a Disaster - Kathleen Jones on becoming a publishing pariah.

I have known what it was like to be on the front pages of newspapers, or the subject of a double-page spread inside the Independent.  Television interviews, radio shows – my 15 minutes of fame.  It was fantastic being chauffeur driven across London, with a huge bouquet of lilies and roses on my lap, to a champagne reception. The reviews were glowing and I’ll never forget the experience of walking into WH Smith and seeing my book, in hardback, at number 8 in the best-seller lists.  The six figure sums of money being bandied about were head-turning. ‘You’ll never have to worry about money again in your life,’ my agent said.  I should have known!

The doomed hardback

It was a story of luck and also of danger. I was commissioned to write a biography of Catherine Cookson just after she died, for a very modest sum. The estate wanted a northern author and, as a respected literary biographer, they thought I was eminently suitable.  But I’m also a natural detective, inquisitive and unstoppable when on the trail of a good story.  There were things in the official account of Cookson’s life that just didn’t add up.  But I wrote the biography anyway, finding that her published work was a lot better than the literary snobs would admit.

And then I met John Smith, the agent who ‘discovered’ Catherine and who directed her career for most of her life.  He had, at one point, been commissioned to write Catherine’s biography himself, but it had never been published and I was intrigued.  He told me that Catherine had given him a series of taped interviews that were very frank, but when he put the completed manuscript in front of her she had reacted with horror and agreement was reached that it would never be published.  He had kept the tapes and - a few weeks later - returning from a research trip, I found them in a big jiffy bag, just inside the outer door where the postman had left them.

Catherine Cookson's birth certificate, which names her father

The tapes were explosive.  They revealed a Catherine Cookson whose life story differed considerably from the official version.  There was a woman she had shared her life (and her bed) with for several years who turned up on her wedding day and threatened to shoot Catherine if she went through with her marriage to Tom. There were accusations of serious abuse directed against her mother, and there was a pregnancy she had quite blatantly tried to end by the use of powerful emetics prescribed by a naval surgeon.  She had serious mental health problems that required residential care and the use of shock therapy.  There was also a mysterious father whose identity she was never going to disclose. It quickly became apparent that he was not the aristocrat of her childhood fantasies, but a gambler, a con-man and a bigamist.

Catherine Cookson's father with his first wife?

The Cookson estate was horrified, so were her agents and publishers. It didn't matter that this was the truth. This was not the image of Catherine Cookson they wanted to market. Attempts were made to halt publication, but the same QC who adjudicated on the Charles and Diana tapes gave the opinion that they were mine to use.  More subtle approaches followed.  The BBC were persuaded to drop serialisation on ‘book of the week’. They badly wanted to keep their Cookson film contract. Then permission was withdrawn for all quoted material in the biography, which meant that the book could never be reprinted and the publisher who had paid a huge sum for the paperback, could never recoup that money.  From Cookson fans I had hate mail and threats were made against me.  To make matters worse, I was caught up in a legal battle between publishers and agents over who actually owned the rights to Catherine Cookson's literary estate.

Catherine Cookson pic-nicking on Alston Moor. Copyright Neil Ferber

My publisher went bankrupt under the weight of a best-seller.  This probably sounds strange  - many people don’t understand that because of the ‘sale or return’ culture and the long invoicing interval for books, publishers need good lines of credit to fund big print runs and their distribution.  According to my agent, I bust my publisher single-handed.  A contact told me that my ‘Mail on Sunday’ serialisation cheque had paid the staff’s wages.  Fortunately, the firm were bought out by another publisher and some money was salvaged - if they had not, I would have lost everything.

The suppressed paperback

Authors who bankrupt their publishers and who have huge unpaid advances are not popular.  I became a pariah in the publishing industry.  No one wanted to know me. I became depressed and unhappy and unable to write.  It was 7 years before I published another book, this time with a new agent and a new publisher.  But those years have left deep scars.

Kathleen talking about Catherine Cookon's father on TV. 

The biography has languished in cardboard boxes, but I have recently had the courage to return to it and experienced a flush of anger.  Why should I let these people get away with it?  I was telling the truth, straight from the horse’s mouth (apologies Catherine!), so why should it be suppressed?  Now, I have begun to re-write the biography, deleting and ‘writing round’ material that was previously quoted.  I have used more of the tapes to illustrate points, because I have an undisputed legal right to the words they contain.  We have a saying in the north, which Catherine Cookson knew perfectly well and which became one of her mantras: ‘Don’t let the b****s keep you down’!  No way.  Watch this space!


If you'd like to hear more about my bitter experience, I've been talking about it on the Royal Literary Fund website.  

Kathleen Jones has a website at www.kathleenjones.co.uk
She blogs regularly on 'A Writer's Life'
and can be found wasting time on Facebook
She tweets incognito on Twitter as @kathyferber

Her most recent book is a travel journal written on a journey to the islands on Haida Gwaii in British Columbia -  Travelling to the Edge of the World
Amazon Kindle edition £3.99  
Book Depository paperback (colour illustrations) £9.84