How Mindy Kaling Chooses Mindy's Book Studio Projects — Like “Rules of Fortune” by Danielle Prescod (Exclusive)

Mindy Kaling chooses all of her projects the same way: The story’s got to be juicy, and women who fade into the background need not apply.

That’s true of her TV series, like Champions, Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls, as well as the books she publishes under her Amazon publishing imprint, Mindy’s Book Studio which launched in 2022.

“I really like ambitious women, underestimated women, women with secrets,” she tells PEOPLE. “Those with big personalities. I'm not involved in a lot of things with demure female leads. That's not my vibe, and it's my taste in books, too.”

The first Mindy’s Book Studio offering of 2025, The Rules of Fortune by Danielle Prescod (out Feb. 1) came under Kaling’s wing the same way all of her picks do: It’s a book she wants to read, from an author on the rise.

The Rules of Fortune is Prescod’s first novel, but the 15-year veteran of the fashion and beauty industry’s 2022 memoir Token Black Girl caught Kaling’s eye.

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“When I read that book I was like, if this woman ever does a novel, I will read it instantly, not knowing that it would be coming out through Mindy's book studio,” she says. “That is exactly what I want to be doing.”

“Honestly, I know this sounds bad, but I wish I had a bigger, broader strategy of how I pick things. But the truth is, I just pick things that I really really like,” Kaling continues. “And honestly, every book I can picture as a movie. So they're all sort of inherently cinematic. It's called ‘book studio’ for a reason: everything that I pick is through the eye of, ‘Could we dramatize this for the screen?’”

The Rules of Fortune follows the Carter family drama as Kennedy, an aspiring filmmaker, investigates her wealthy family’s history and the twisted web of secrets that threatens to unravel their legacy. When the Carter family’s billionaire patriarch dies just shy of his 70th birthday, it throws the future of their multi-industry conglomerate — and associated fortune — into question. Amid the ensuing succession crisis, Kennedy learns more about her father’s past and what it means for their future.

“It’s definitely an awkward time to have written a book about billionaires,” Prescod tells PEOPLE. “But as the conversation around wealth, and the ethics of wealth started growing, I was definitely thinking about how that conversation certainly leaves out people who are not white. And what would it mean for Black Americans to have amassed a certain amount of wealth? And what would they have to interact with, what would they have to give up in order to protect it?”

Related: Children's Books That Celebrate Black History, to Read All Year Round

Writing her first novel felt more daunting than her memoir, Prescod admits, because she could make literally anything happen. “Quickly I understood why people gravitate toward fantasy, or sci-fi, or speculative novels,” she says. “Because it's so much pressure! I was like, ‘Okay, yeah, I understand why it's like dragons and  pirates, why people do that. Because this is really intimidating.”

As she researched, Prescod kept uncovering real-life examples of how wealthy people are perceived differently from everyone else — up to and including Oprah.

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“There was one point where Oprah had talked about how she was racially profiled in a store. And [on social media] people were like … doesn't it feel great that she finally has to feel what it feels like to be Black,” Prescod explains.

“And I'm like, ‘Wow, that's so interesting that everyone thinks that her money insulates her from the Black experience, even though that is obviously not true. She knows what she has to go through every single day, but just the perception of her being wealthy was putting her in a different racial category even.”

But if Prescod’s book sounds weighty, Kaling assures us there’s plenty of humor to balance things out. “[Prescod] is just one of those uniquely talented people who can put her wit into a book and have it shine through,” she says. “Yeah, family dysfunction is so much better when it's written in a witty way. I really relate to Danielle's book.”

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Rules of Fortune by Danielle Prescod is on sale now, wherever books are sold.

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