Let me suggest a still relatively untapped premise that’s better suited to the tastes of today’s book-buying public: the heartfelt memoir by a distinguished literary son celebrating his mother. Besides, the market has changed a lot since the days Cerf had to take government censors to court to win the right to publish Ulysses in the U.S. Canines can still move copies, but unless you’re Doris Kearns Goodwin or George Saunders, forget about Lincoln, and nowadays doctors just churn out diet-book blockbusters on their own. Reasoning that books about Abraham Lincoln, doctors, and dogs all did reliably well, Cerf suggested that somebody write Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog. According to a hoary legend of the book publishing world, Bennett Cerf, one of the founders of Random House, was once asked if he could discern any formula for a best-seller.
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