What does a bestseller smell like? The creative team at Elizabeth Arden is wagering that people will be curious to find out with its latest celebrity fragrance, Danielle by Danielle Steel.

But according to T Magazine columnist Chandler Burr, the scent inspired by the woman who has sold more books than there are subatomic particles in the universe is gaudy and crass, much like the romance novelist’s prose.

For the first four seconds it smelled sort of vaguely like a kind of flower that you get in a gallon of floral-scented laundry detergent, and then for five seconds it reminded you of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Then it evaporated, like the prose in a novel by Danielle Steel evaporated from your memory the moment you read it.

Still, here’s betting that a nasty write-up (Burr gives the fragrance zero stars, and advises do not inhale) will have little impact on the potential market for the perfume. At $39 (U.S.) for 100 millilitres, however, it could certainly cut into consumers’ book budgets.