1.   Any bookseller will tell you that more women than men buy novels.

2.   At a bar that evening, she runs into a woman who has bought her novel from a secondhand book bin, but kept only the cover.

3.   Not every woman buying a novel is reading Don DeLillo or Iris Murdoch or even, for that matter, Jonathan Franzen.

4.   Six months after that, Hyperion bought the novel.

5.   Someone who buys a novel, for example, is legally free to resell that book at a used bookstore or a garage sale.

6.   Someone who buys a novel, for example, is legally free to re-sell that book at a used bookstore or a garage sale.

7.   Within weeks, Michaelson called Dewberry to say he wanted to buy her novel.