How the ‘scandalous’ Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann revolutionized the publishing world

On the Shelf Scandalous Women: A Novel of Jackie Collins and Jacqueline Susann By Gill Paul William Morrow & Co.: 384 pages, $19 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores. “They gave women permission to write about sex,” Gill Paul says about Jacqueline Susann and Jackie Collins. I had male authors who thought it was part of my job description to sleep with them.” Let’s just say the fireman’s pole that Susann’s publisher Bernard Geis makes new female hires slither down to gauge their willingness to put up with on-the-job sexual harassment is not a figment of Paul’s editorial license in “Scandalous Women” — out Tuesday. Paul could have just as easily crafted Susann and Collins to hate each other, as in her previous novel, last year’s “A Beautiful Rival” about competitors Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein. “It’s said that there’s a whole generation of girls who got their sex education from Jackie Collins novels,” Paul continues.