Chapter 47: Gold Sticker Test
The gold sticker promised recognition and cost exactly the future I had fought to separate.
On Wednesday, North Quay placed two print-test covers inside its paired buyer lab.
Each carried the same metallic circle above the new title. The proofs were test assets, not jackets for an authorised print run.
A MARIAN CROWE STORY.
The retail forecast predicted a thirty per cent lift in recognition for both projects.
Offering the sticker equally made the proposal look fair. Both teams would receive identical size, position and predicted retail support.
It also asked both new books to borrow the identity C3 had isolated. Equal access could still produce the same prohibited confusion twice.
The asset manager called the words a discovery aid rather than an authorship claim.
I asked what a buyer would believe she had discovered.
The forecast measured recognition clicks, not the title buyers thought they recognised. A familiar colour could improve the wrong answer.
C3 barred cross-marketing that converted the shared brand into either independent project.
I invoked its paired-confusion procedure rather than refusing only my own sticker.
North Quay created matched proofs with and without the gold circle. Asset hashes confirmed that the sticker was the only changed variable.
The files differed in no other colour, type, title or author field.
Larkspur received the same treatment through its separate asset record.
Neither team saw individual buyer names or the opposing cover's private comments.
The paired method tested North Quay's proposal; it did not invite us to inspect each other.
The lab asked one neutral question after a three-second view.
WHAT IS THIS BOOK?
Unstickered responses named the displayed titles or described new mysteries.
Stickered responses produced an answer the click forecast had ignored.
BLACKWATER ROOMS, BOOK SEVEN.
Some buyers supplied that answer even when Larkspur's title filled the cover. Recognition had attached to the series, not the displayed new work.
The misunderstanding was not a minor association with our publishing history.
It converted independent test books into a continuation no one had authorised.
At 13:18, North Quay closed the paired sample.
FORTY-ONE PER CENT OF STICKERED RESPONSES — OLD-SERIES SEQUEL MISIDENTIFICATION.
The platform preserved the sample threshold, question wording and response categories. North Quay's asset vault kept the paired proofs and forecast.
I received the aggregate result, not buyer identities or verbatim private notes.
The asset manager withdrew the gold-sticker proposal under C3.
She did not merely remove it from Saltmere.
Both projects lost the right to use the sticker in this test. The ban applied to print proofs, thumbnails and buyer sheets alike.
Both also lost their reserved gold-sticker promotional positions.
Those positions would not be converted into unlabelled bonus placements. Withdrawal meant lost inventory rather than redesigned advantage.
The withdrawal notice named confusion, not misconduct by either new-project team.
Pippa had not designed the sticker.
Oliver had not sabotaged my cover.
I had demanded a test of North Quay's commercial proposal, and the proposal had failed. No author was classified as the cause.
The publisher archived both paired proofs, its forecast and the withdrawal notice.
Only our independent-name cover tracks remained open. Those tracks were still cost development, not print licences or offers.
Losing the sticker meant surrendering the predicted recognition lift before shelf testing.
It also meant a buyer could no longer mistake recognition for a seventh Blackwater novel.
My own unstickered proof looked timid beside the empty promotional circle.
I had filled it with a ledger, lighthouse, fog bank and seven telephone icons.
Every object pleaded that the book contained enough mystery to replace a famous name.
Together, they made the title the least memorable part.
At 16:40, the designer opened my sole complimentary rearrangement.
Any second rework would be charged to me and recorded in the cost-development file.
The revised cover would return to the same blinded buyer pool at 10:00 tomorrow.
I had one free chance to make Grace Ellison visible without turning Marian Crowe gold.