Alessandro Gallenzi is the founder of Hesperus Press, Alma Books and Alma Classics, and the successor of John Calder at the helm of Calder Publications. As well as being a literary publisher with fifteen years of experience, he is a translator, a poet, a playwright and a novelist. His collection of poetry Modern Bestiary - Ars Poetastrica was published in 2005 to critical acclaim. He lives in Richmond with his wife and two children.

Jim Talbot, a writer with a dozen unpublished novels under his belt, has been roundly rejected by every agent and publisher in the land, and is willing to go to extreme lengths to make his dream of literary stardom come true. Charles Randall, the eccentric founder and managing director of Tetragon Press, a small independent publisher that has managed to survive for thirty years in a fierce environment dominated by corporate juggernauts, is about to be brutally sacked by a newly appointed business consultant. In the cut-throat world of modern publishing, Charles and Jim's paths towards literary salvation are fraught with the most unpredictable dangers. A novel of intrigue, deceit and sheer desperation, Bestseller is a caustic portrait of contemporary culture and of Britain's obsession with fame, success and becoming the next J.K. Rowling.

A novel which is light yet serious, funny and painful, somewhat fantastic yet shot through with truth

Gallenzi... slips in sound insider's judgements on how this business works. Read it for the lowdown on the low trade

Sly, tongue-in-cheek novel that will leave readers in stitches of laughter.

Very funny and too awfully right in so many ways

Too depressing, too accurate

Very amusing - a Conrad on the way.

A clever satire on the world of publishing

A fine comic caper and a biting satire on the publishing industry... it is cleverly plotted and lands several juicy thumps on its target.

While not necessarily directed at paying off old scores. Bestseller shows that its creator clearly enjoys laying about him, not just at the book trade's monsters and grotesque, but at their consensual victims in the shape of writers and editorial underlings.