Joe Finder must have thought he knew the secrets to selling a book. His first, a work of nonfiction, Red Carpet: The Connection Between the Kremlin and America’s Most Powerful Businessmen, had a hardcover run of 10,000. 

It sold out.

Sounds like an early and smooth ride into the literary sunset. But there’s a catch. (There’s always something in book publishing.)

Finder, a Harvard graduate student in Russian Studies at the time, managed to anger one of the richest and most powerful men in America while writing Red Carpet. The man was so mad he approached Finder’s academic advisor with a proposal: kick Finder out of school and he’d write Harvard a check so big they’d have to use a wheelbarrow to deliver it. He also tempted the university with a trove of personal papers for its archives.

Harvard flexed its backbone and turned the mogul down, and Finder stayed on to complete his studies and his book. But after it was published, Finder learned a hard truth about power. 

His book sales were so good because the angry oil magnate had purchased and trashed almost every one of them. Only a small group had a chance to read his first book.

“That was my introduction to publishing,” Finder says, shaking his head as he tells the story.

How did the young graduate student get off to such a successful, yet inauspicious start? 

He was studying Russian history, Soviet history, and Russian intelligence and military relations at the Harvard Russian Research Center. He thought he wanted to work in intelligence or teach Russian studies. He even had a job offer from the CIA.

“The experience of writing this nonfiction book was incredible,” Finder says. “I went to Moscow and poked around like an investigative journalist because I spoke Russian.”

During his research he learned that industrialist Armand Hammer’s father, Julius Hammer, had helped launch the American Communist Party. Julius was a friend of Vladimir Lenin, the Soviet Union’s founding head of state. More than a half century later when the Soviet Union collapsed, leaked files revealed Julius was raising money for the notorious KGB.

Finder’s problems started when he interviewed Armand Hammer, the head of Occidental Petroleum, for Red Carpet. As soon as the topic of Hammer’s father surfaced, the great American capitalist declared the interview over and stormed out the room.

Finder’s experience may sound odd, but it proves nothing about riding the book publishing roller coaster is odd. Every smooth beginning is followed by twists and turns, the slow ride up and too often, the incredibly fast and terrifying ride down. Every oddity is this business is a new normal, which explains why we’ve yet to get to the real story: Finder’s first novel, The Moscow Club, a spy novel based on—you guessed it—Armand Hammer.

“I thought that was so deliciously ironic. I thought, this is a great thing to write a novel about,” he says.

His writing journey to The Moscow Club started many years before Hammer. When Finder was a child, he was enthralled with children’s author Eleanor Cameron, who wrote The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and other light science fiction. She later won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

“I wrote her a letter asking her all kinds of questions. I got a form letter back with none of them answered.”

  But he was a persistent kid and wrote back to the return address on the envelope. This time she wrote a two-page letter, typed single-spaced. 

“I wrote back to her. We were like pen pals for several years. I found behind a novel was a person. This was the coolest thing.”

As Finder grew older, his parents talked him out of becoming a novelist. Instead, he decided to work in intelligence and teach Russian studies. But first he had to study everything about Russia, which was how he ran into Hammer. 

He soon was teaching at Harvard while writing The Moscow Club, despite his parents’ wishes. He made a list of greatest thrillers at the time—ranging from Graham Greene to Robert Ludlum—and took detailed notes of how the novels were crafted, examining their protagonists and villains and how they met. He compared their action scenes with pages of exposition.

His novel went through 25 drafts. The protagonist morphed from being a ghost writer to being a CIA analyst. “I wanted this to be an adventure story. I began to realize I wanted my character to have angles to him. I really learned by being rejected.”

Having no experience in this genre and being a bit naïve about the business, he quickly learned the joys of being rebuffed by agents. “I literally called up an agent—something you just didn’t do—and the reaction, was, well, not good.”

Later, he met another literary agent, this time on Cape Cod while she was standing on the beach in her swimsuit and lathered in suntan lotion. She told Finder she represented blockbuster author Sidney Sheldon. “So, I said I want you to read my book.”

It went on like this for some time.

One agent turned him down twice. “I didn’t want to argue, but I wanted to know why he turned it down. He was impressed enough with the manuscript to tell me why it wasn’t any good.” The agent spent 45 minutes with Finder before telling him, “Don’t send it to me again.”

Yet another agent sent a copy back to Finder with a paper clip on page 55. His comment: the plot was too slow.

Finally, Danny Baror, a foreign rights agent, sold the rights to a British publisher. His advice to Finder was to take some of his advance and buy a fax machine. (This was a long time ago.) With his UK contract in hand, Finder sent the same manuscript to Henry Morrison, who repped Robert Ludlum. Morrison told Finder he’d represent him if he would cut the first 80 pages. 

“I said, deal.”

Morrison still made Finder revise it a couple of times. They went through three rounds with publishers trying to get a nibble anywhere, but nothing bubbled up. But then word got out the foreign rights had been sold and interest skyrocketed. Viking pounced, and Pam Dorman became his editor. Not long after, he had a hardcover bestseller. He was finally on his way. Years later, Publishers Weekly named The Moscow Club to its list of the ten best spy novels ever published. Go figure.

Amazing journey? Odd path to success? Not in this business. 

More like typical.