Sorry, Harry Evans and Peter Jennings. The current buzz on century's-end books belongs to Our Dumb Century: 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source, written by Scott Dikkers and the rest of the staff of the Onion, the popular Madison, Wisc.-based humor magazine/Web site.
The trade paperback from Crown's Three Rivers Press imprint hit #10 on the Independent Bestseller List, even before its official (and appropriate) April 1 publication. Crown's Andy Martin reported that the book is "flying out of the stores," and the house is planning to go back for a third printing of 50,000 copies, which would bring the total in print to 138,000.
On the book's official publication date, it almost got what would have been an incredible promotion: Crown said barnesandnoble.com discussed replacing its regular home page with the "special all-book edition" newspaper front page the Onion created for Crown's sales conference. "Oprah Viewers Patiently Await Instructions"; "Reading-Is-Fundamentalists Slaughter 52 Illiterates"; and, yes, even "New Cambodian Barnes &Noble: Will It Threaten Cambodia's Small Book Shops?" are just some of the spoof headlines that barnesandnoble.com ultimately chose not to run. (B&N.com spokesman Ben Boyd refused comment on why the site dropped the idea.). Other online booksellers also plan promos -- AOL's Book Central will hold a headline-writing contest and book giveaway -- and Midwest-area in-store events are also scheduled.
On March 31, hoping for some April 1 consumer media attention, the Onion held a press conference at N.Y.C.'s Players Club to announce its list of top news stories of the century -- unavailable at press time by no doubt an irreverent counterpart to the lists recently compiled by the Freedom Forum and New York University's journalism school (see previous story). "Really, you think so?" asked Crown publicity manager Brian Belfiglio, who told PW there will be "noted historians" at the event, "although we're still lining them up." (One "expert" has already been picked -- humorist Al Franken.)
What Crown already has lined up is the kind of print ad campaign you'd expect for this book: its tagline reads "The Most Important Century Retrospective You'll Read on the Toilet This Year."
Consumer sales for Our Dumb Century kicked off on March 1, when the Onion posted its first promo for the book on its site, which attracts some 500,000 readers each week and provides links to online booksellers. By that night, the book shot to #5 on Amazon.com's Hot 100 and has stayed on the list since. Brick-and-mortar stores started selling the book after a March 10 ship.
It's all been good news for Crown, but are sales of the Onion book now making Hyperion cry? That house, after all, was the original publisher for the book, but dropped it amidst rumors of that there was some anti-Disney content.
Hyperion wouldn't comment, but Crown's Martin promised that the possibly offensive material is still in the book. "We let them do the book they wanted to do," he said.
