The Bookseller.com

25th July 2008

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Misery 'queen' Tomlin follows Jordan

14.03.08 Benedicte Page

Century is hoping to apply the strategy it used to turn Katie Price into a bestselling novelist to Jenny Tomlin, mother of actress Martine McCutcheon.

Tomlin, whose misery memoir Behind Closed Doors has sold almost 370,000 copies for Hodder, will publish her first novel, Sweetie, as a £6.99 Arrow paperback in July. She will then be moved into hardback, and will follow up with one book a year. Unlike Price, whose novels were ghostwritten, Tomlin will write the novels herself. Price (a.k.a. Jordan) has sold over half a million copies of her two novels Angel and Crystal since she moved into fiction in 2006.

"We've had a certain amount of success taking Katie Price out of the celebrity market and into fiction, and the idea is to do the same with Jenny Tomlin," said Century publishing director Mark Booth. "She's probably the queen of British misery. We're starting with a paperback in Arrow so that we can get the maximum number of copies out there and everyone can see how good the writing is. The second book will be in hardback, in the same way as Katie Price."

Sweetie is a novel based upon actual events, concerning a paedophile who operated in London in the 1970s and a group of women who clubbed together to mete out punishment when the authorities failed to act. Tomlin will promote the novel on publication.

Book Benedicte Page century Jordan Jenny Tomlin katie prize