Word: alloy
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...well-muscled Sikh who likes to beat up goras and Muslims suspected of fancying Indian girls; sheeplike Ravi, who is overeager to fit in; and angry Amit, tortured by "complicated family-related s___" involving his brother's impending marriage. The posse cruises London in Ravi's lilac BMW - "spoiler, alloy hubcaps that kept on spinnin at red traffic lights an matchin lilac windscreen wipers" - looking for "fit" women and making pocket money reprogramming stolen cell phones. That scam leads them into partnership with a menacing Indian ex?investment banker, and they're soon in over their heads. At the same...
...returned.LETTER OF THE LAWWhether Viswanathan is allowed to keep her share of the reported half-million-dollar advance depends on the terms of the contract, according to Justin Hughes, the director of the intellectual property law program at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law. Alloy Entertainment, a book-packaging firm that helped the sophomore develop her novel, reportedly received part of the advance.Pietsch told The Times last Wednesday that the publishing house would not sue Viswanathan for breach of contract. Most book deals include clauses stipulating that its content must be original, according to Hughes...
Viswanathan shares the copyright for Opal with Alloy Entertainment, a book packager, which develops book ideas, hires writers, then delivers a finished product to publishers. Packagers have been more common in nonfiction--cookbooks, joke books--but Alloy has turned itself into a giant of young-women's fiction. Headed by Leslie Morgenstein, 39, Alloy has put together hit series, including The Clique and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It's a "fiction factory," as a publishing insider calls it, but one with a well-respected sense of the mercurial girl culture; Alloy's parent company also owns the teen...
...typical Alloy book is farmed out to a contract writer, but Viswanathan (who declined to comment for this article) came to them. A college-admissions counselor liked her writing at 17 and put her in touch with the William Morris Agency. Her agent suggested she work with Alloy to develop a reader-friendly concept. Coincidentally, she and Alloy hit on a tale about an Indian-American teen who applies to Harvard, is told she has to prove she has a social life, hatches a plan to get one but realizes she has made a mistake by trying to be someone...
While packagers are known to heavily revise writers' work, Viswanathan said last week that she was responsible for the borrowings. An Alloy spokeswoman told TIME that although it helped outline and plot Opal, "Kaavya wrote the book." Whoever bears the blame, it's the publishing industry that will bear the burden of having again compromised its credibility with a big-money writer. As with Frey (junkie!) and LeRoy (hustler!), here was an author with a persona (wunderkind!) that was too good not to sell. They all point to the vulnerability of a publishing business (and, let's be honest...