Blockbuster July 6 laydown planned for Berendt's five-year-old bestseller
Finally, having racked up sales of more than two million copies in hardcover, John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is set to go to trade paperback. Vintage, after coming to the decision early this year, has now committed to a July 6 one-day laydown for the paperback release, with a 300,000-copy first printing planned. Reps are just visiting accounts now about this late addition to the summer list.
Promotional details are still being worked out, but they are expected to include a special event in Midnight's Savannah setting on the laydown date, with Berendt in attendance. Vintage reps are soliciting input on how the author tour should be handled, but the reading group angle will most likely be played up, with Berendt to perhaps focus on visiting such groups. Vintage also plans an update to its previously issued reading group guide. The book's famous, striking cover (even used in the poster art for that disappointing film), will remain unchanged in the paperback release. At first, Berendt was planning to write a new afterword, to include a discussion of what's happened to the bestseller's colorful characters since the book's publication. But at press time, Berendt had decided not to include such an update in the trade paperback; instead Vintage will most likely include such information in its publicity material.
Two of Midnight's real-life characters -- Lady Chablis and Emma Kelly -- are scheduled to tour this fall with a Midnight traveling show set to the music of Johnny Mercer. Berendt is expected to join them for some guest appearances enroute. While Berendt has done this gig before -- most notably at Washington's Kennedy Arts Center -- this tour is to be national in scope, with accompanying bookstore stops most likely. To date, San Francisco, Cincinnati and Clearwater, Fla., are on the schedule.
Why the decision to go to paper now? Associate publisher Anne Messitte said Vintage had been waiting for the book to trail significantly off the bestseller list -- "although it stills sells a lot more than many hardcovers out there." That trail-off certainly took its time, with the book hiccuping back to #1 on bestseller lists with the movie release. The July 6 date was picked, Messitte said, because Vintage finds that July and August are its strongest months for the summer-reading paperback audience.
Although it's hard to imagine, Messitte is convinced there are people out there who have not yet read the book, and she expects a healthy life in trade paperback. "The 300,000 copies is just a starting place," she said. "When you consider that a lot of venues still don't take hardcovers, and the popularity of trade paperback to the reading groups, I think we're going to see huge sales." Vintage is planning TV advertising, the first ever for this book.
Vintage currently is seeing "huge sales" with the trade paperback of Memoirs of a Geisha, a hardcover bestseller that set off its year-later paperback life with a 350,000 first printing. A month later, it is up to 800,000 copies in print.
But Messitte d sn't wants to make any comparisons. "Midnight, as always, breaks all the rules," she said.
