John Grisham’s formula for success

Success came abruptly to John Grisham, said Nicholas Wroe in the London Guardian. He was working as a small-town lawyer in Mississippi in 1991 when his second book, The Firm, became an overnight sensation. The legal thriller sold more than 7 million copies and was made into a blockbuster film starring Tom Cruise. “It became popular so fast I was in a daze,” he says. “It is something you can’t prepare for.”

But it was a chance meeting with a publishing executive that taught him to capitalize on his early success. “A young executive with a big book chain said in passing, ‘The big guys come out every year.’ He meant the likes of Clancy, King, Crichton,” Grisham explains. “At the time I was halfway through The Pelican Brief and had no idea when it would be finished. But I went home, locked myself away for 60 days, and finished the book. It was published a year after The Firm. One year after that I published The Client.”

The formula paid off. Throughout the 1990s, Grisham and Michael Crichton regularly exchanged the record for the most lucrative publishing and film-rights deals. “We had a good thing going,” he remembers happily. “I was told that Crichton’s agent started asking for the X million Grisham got, plus a dollar. Money on the table.”

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