From the first time I read about it I found it hard to believe that author Kaavya Viswanathan could really be worth the $500,000 advance she received from Little Brown for her first book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. I didn't request the book because I was a bit annoyed by the whole idea. It could have been a decent read but $500,000 for a teenager to write her first book? WTF? (It was a 2 book deal) And her statements that she was writing 50 pages a week while studying for final exams really annoyed me. It didn't ring true and it certainly seemed ridiculous. I couldn't help but think that the folks at LB had offered too much money to a kid who was trying to do too many things at once. And then, this bombshell dropped. (Link via Bookshelves of Doom)

It seems apparently that Ms. Viswanathan didn't entirely write the book she has put her name on and author Megan McCafferty is not pleased (nor is her pubisher, Random House).

I'm sure the Harvard Crimson has done all the correct research and the comparisons they site in their article are quite damning. I also thought the final comment was interesting - that Viswanathan might have made slight changes in the quotes so they would not be easily "googleable". So she wasn't quite unconscious of what she was doing and took steps to cover it up. LB hasn't said much because I am sure they are completely freaking out over the whole deal (and who can blame them) but I have to wonder just what the hell were they thinking? Who in their right mind offers half a million dollars to a nineteen year old who is going to school full time at Harvard and expects her to get the job done? Did nobody think this kid had just a bit too much on her plate? Did nobody remember college at all? And why in the world would you sign a deal for that much money and then stay in college anyway? Why not defer for a year and get your book written?

Did this kid have parents?

I don't understand why publishers are flinging this kind of money around at writers who have yet to prove themselves capable of the job. She had not even written the book yet when they gave her deal - she had not written the book! What were they thinking she was going to do; how were they thinking she was going to handle it? Was she just so amazing that she convinced a major publisher that she wasn't like every other teenager since the beginning of time?

And yet - look what she went and did. Sshe apparently wrote this book the same way every college student in the world would deal with writing a paper they didn't have enough time for - she cheated. Ms. Viswanathan copied someone else's work so she could get hers done on time and Little Brown is just so surprised. They can't believe it. And I just keep wondering, really, what did they expect to happen?

They gave a half a million dollars to a teenager and while I know that many teenagers have done many great things in the history of the world, balancing time and money and commitments is generally not something they are good at. We have all been there, pulling an allnighter to get the paper done. But while you can do that and get a passing grade for 10 pages, and maybe even 20, it's not going to happen for 200. No way.

What were they thinking?

(And yes, I went to college - and no way in hell could I have written a novel while I was there.)

UPDATE: The plot thickens, via Galleycat.