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Critically acclaimed novelist, Maryann McFadden, is back with her much-anticipated third novel, The Book Lover (Three Women Press, May 2012). The Book Lover chronicles how an aspiring writer transcends countless rejections from agents, self-publishes her novel, and earns hard-fought literary success. The book is set amidst a publishing world experiencing the greatest changes in its history and the effects of these changes upon independent bookstores, writers, publishers, and those who share a love of printed books. A practice that had once been disparaged as “vanity publishing” is now gaining some respectability as “self-publishing” becomes viable by the technological advance of print-on-demand. However, in order to stay in business small bookstores still need to fill their shelves with books that will sell in order compete with the chains or online bookstores. 

Lucinda Barrett’s dream of becoming an author is complicated by her husband’s duplicity, so she must face alone the thousand-mile journey north from St. Augustine, Florida, to convince bookstores to carry her self-published novel. The only resource she possessed was her belief in herself and her craft. Plus, there was that encouraging note from the owner of a small, village bookstore on the New Jersey-New York line. The prospect of a book signing at The Book Lover bookstore in Warwick Village gave impetus to her journey. 

Ruth Hardaway, owner of The Book Lover for thirty years, is trying to keep her bookstore afloat during the current changing tides of the book business as well as to deal with the needs of her paraplegic son.

The two women become bound by mutual respect, multiple love stories develop, a microcosm of the challenges facing book authors and book sellers emerges, and a literal and figurative eagle takes flight on the wings of hope in this compelling literary tour de force. 

McFadden explores a world she knows all too well. In 2007, Hyperion purchased the rights to her wildly successful self-published novel, The Richest Season, on a two book hardcover deal.  

Maryann McFadden’s first two novels, The Richest Season and So Happy Together, were honored as “Indie Next Picks,” chosen by an association of independent booksellers from across the country. She hasworked as a freelance journalist, realtor, and photographer and currently teaches at a local community college, coaches writers, and, of course, writes novels. One day a week she also babysits her four young granddaughters while her own daughter teaches writing.  

After receiving a degree in English from Rutgers University, she stayed at home raising her children and worked for nearly 10 years as a freelance writer contributing to a variety of newspapers and health magazines like Working Woman and Women’s Sports and Fitness. Needing a change, she put her writing aside and immersed herself in business and pursued a career in real estate for the next 15 years. She loved the contact with people that her work provided and her clients’ stories and dreams became the grist for her later writing career. So she returned to graduate school and received a Master’s Degree in Literature with a Concentration in Writing.

The story behind the publication of her first novel, The Richest Season, is one that will resonate with so many first-time novelists and spans many years of overcoming agent and publisher rejections, refusing to accept failure, coming very close to giving up, then self-publishing the book, orchestrating her own book launch, pounding the pavement to convince independent booksellers to stock a self-published book on their shelves, conducting countless book signings and talks, addressing 40 book clubs in 10 states, and exhausting every marketing possibility for her book. She did not quit. And finally, overnight success: a New York agent loved her book and sold it at auction to Hyperion. Maryann received a two-book hardcover deal; Random House in Germany followed with German rights, and Mondadori made a deal for Italy. When a writer’s blog referred to her good luck as “winning the literary lottery,” Maryann responded, “I had to laugh. Because it implied that getting published was as simple as buying a ticket and waiting for a number to be drawn. Hah! If only it were that easy. My ordeal in trying to get my novel taken spanned 6 years intotal.” 

Maryann is proud of her two children, Patrick and Marisa, and her four granddaughters, Alice, Lily, Julia, and Phoebe. She lives in Northwest New Jersey where she is working on her fourth novel.