'Salesmen don't get books free, you know,' she told Life magazine. If they hadn't, or did not have a copy, she would give them one and autograph it. Susann would ask the head sales clerks if they had read her novel. She and her husband criss-crossed America, dropping in on bookstores in every one of the 250 cities they visited. “You have to let the public know about it. “A new book is like a new brand of detergent,” she said. Susann, who had appeared in minor roles in 21 plays on Broadway and in numerous TV roles, remained unembarrassed by the hard sell, and the failure of her poodle novel only made her more determined that Valley of the Dolls would succeed. Staff at the publishers remembered her stomping around the office shouting, 'What’s going to happen to my bookings now?' as staff in tears watched television coverage of the dead President. Timing was against her, though, as the book's publication coincided with the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, her campaign to publicise Valley of the Dolls lasted more than a year, and was organised like a military campaign.įor that campaign, in 1963, she and the poodle had dressed in matching leopard-pattern pillbox hats and coats. She was at heart a pragmatist and told friends that, as she had spent 18 months writing the book, 'the least I can do is spend three months promoting it'. Susann, the daughter of a portrait painter and teacher, was born in Philadelphia in 1918.

The “dolls” in the title are the 'uppers' and 'downers' Susann's characters swallow to cope with their soap-opera lives. The novel, which is about the sex lives and addiction problems of four Hollywood 'glamour girls', is 50 years old on February 10, 2016.

So how did such a poor book go on to be registered in The Guinness Book of World Records in the late Sixties as the world's most popular novel? The success of Valley of the Dolls – to date more than 30 million copies have been sold worldwide – is a tale of one of the most tenacious and sharp-eyed publishing campaigns of all time. Her novel Valley of the Dolls was dismissed as 'painfully dull, inept, clumsy, undisciplined, rambling and thoroughly amateurish'.

Even by the standards of a cold rejection letter, the one Jacqueline Susann received from publishers Geis Associates in 1965 was brutal.

Novel valley of the dolls