Younger Writers Focus on the ‘Other’ Hollywood

She’s the queen bee, the 800-pound gorilla, or whatever else you want to call her. But, most importantly, she sells books by the millions. And every aspiring Hollywood trash novelist wants to turn out bestsellers just like Jackie Collins.

Or do they?

“The trouble with Jackie is that she skips a whole, real, young Hollywood generation,” declares movie producer and “Dirty Dreams” co-author Lynda Obst.

“She’s writing about people who are very different from the people I know. While I’m struggling to get deals made and romances going, her characters are frequenting Giorgio’s and Chasen’s. Her women have a completely different lifestyle and set of problems than the women in our generation.”

That’s why Obst and screenwriter Carol Wolper claim they are the new spokespeople for a young Hollywood that, in their eyes, Collins ignores.

In other words, they write about the career-ladder-climbing junior executives at the studios, not the already-arrived studio moguls. They write about struggling Hollywood secretaries instead of shop-till-they-drop Hollywood wives. They write about Melrose clothing shops and downtown underground clubs, not Rodeo Drive and the Bistro Garden.

But tell that to Collins and her eyes glaze over.

“Lots of luck to them. The easier you make it look, the more they think they can do it,” says the Beverly Hills author whose 13th book about the Hollywood scene, “Lady Boss,” hits bookstores this October, timed to coincide with a NBC miniseries based on her previous works, “Chances” and “Lucky.”

All this sniping stems from the big bucks that are at stake.

The fact is that Hollywood trash novels sell, and sell big, when they’re handled by masters and mistresses like Collins, Judith Krantz, Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel.

Steel, a Delacorte author, has average hardcover sales of 1.1 million per book, according to the New York Times, while Sheldon, a William Morrow author, is also on top with 850,000. Close behind is Judith Krantz, a Crown writer, at 500,000, followed by Simon & Schuster’s Collins with 475,000.

For instance, Collins’ hugely successful 1983 novel, “Hollywood Wives,” topped the New York Times bestseller list for 30 weeks, sold 5 million hardcover and paperback copies and wound up as a TV miniseries.

But it’s precisely because Collins has been crowding bookshelves for so long that publishers are beginning to think some new and younger writers aping her style may be able to attract new and younger readers.

“I especially liked the young sensibility in ‘Dirty Dreams.’ It was new territory, and a different view of Hollywood than Collins’,” explains Michaela Hamilton, editorial director of mass market publishing at NAL-Dutton, which bought the Obst-Wolper book.

“It’s not hard to find Hollywood novels, but it is hard to find ones that make it seem fresh and exciting.”

Doug Stumpf, vice president and senior editor at William Morrow, says his publishing house bought Linda Lane’s and Nancy Lee Andrew’s “Malibu 90265” because “everybody is looking for another Jackie Collins or Danielle Steel. Why? Because they sell.”

But finding an author who can do it as well is a real challenge, Stumpf notes. “There are not a lot of people out there doing it because not a lot of people know how to do it.”

Pat Booth, who penned last year’s “Beverly Hills” and came out with “Malibu” this summer, is probably the most successful writer so far to focus on the “other” Hollywood.

“I believe that Jackie’s shop-till-you-drop, broad-shoulder-pads-on-Rodeo-Drive concept is complete passe,” Booth maintains. “In fact, I think she’ll be selling less books because she is reflecting something that was five years ago, not something that is now. And I think my readership will pick up because all of a sudden people are realizing I’m out there writing about this other Hollywood. I think my books are very much for the young at heart.”

Counters Collins:

“All this ‘new’ Hollywood and ‘old’ Hollywood really doesn’t exist. It just exists in people’s minds. What these people make the mistake of doing is they write what they think is the new, hip Hollywood but it’s only hip and it’s only young for a short while. And then it moves on to something else.

“So if you try to put yourself into a category, you’re doing yourself a disservice. I don’t write about any particular type of Hollywood. I just write about what I see out there, and I see it out there all the time.”

Still, Collins can’t be doing too much wrong. Just ask the authors of “Malibu 90265” who their favorite author is, and they answer in unison: “Jackie Collins.”