While the book is fiction, it helps readers understand an eccentric business, said the author, Matthew McCleery, president of industry newsletter publisher Marine Money in Stamford, Connecticut. A German ship owner recently wrote McCleery that his wife read the book and “now she finally understands what I do.”
If not a bestseller, the book has paid dividends.
“A billionaire even read it, said he identified so much with Robert Fairchild that he hired me to sell his dry cargo ships,” McCleery said in an e-mail April 3. “When people ask if there’s money in publishing, I think of that deal and smile.”