I prepared my lunch and sat down with the New Yorker which flopped open to a Profile of Nora Roberts, who I must admit I haven't heard of or if I have, it hasn't registered. I learn that she is America's most popular novelist. Lauren Collins in the Profile informs us that Roberts has written a hundred and eighty-two novels, in addition to short stories and novellas. "Twenty-seven Nora Roberts books are sold every minute. There are enough Nora Roberts books in print to fill Giants Stadium four thousand times." (I'm fascinated with who came up with that statistic. How high do the books fill the stadium? Do they reach over it, touch the sky? Does the figure account for seats? What about Yankees stadium?)
"Roberts grosses sixty million dollars a year, Forbes estimated in 2004, more than Grisham or Stephen King, who is, incidentally a Roberts admirer."
She is a worker, sits firmly at her desk many hours a week.
Collins writes: "According to my calculations, it takes Roberts, on average, forty-five working days to write a book."
There are Nora t-shirts, Nora water bottles, and Nora stadium cushions.
She is clearly smart, savvy and deserving of her success and certainly this great deal of success is something of which, until now, I've been unaware.