There's more than one set of brothers involved in A Haircut in Horse Town& -- and Other Great Car Talk Puzzlers, which will be distributed to the book trade with an initial 25,000-copy printing by Perigee next month. Yes, authors Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the Cambridge, Mass., auto mechanics (aka Click and Clack) who host National Public Radio's popular Car Talk are siblings. But so, too, are two key fellows behind the book, created with the help of Kirkland, Wash.-based book packager Becker & Mayer Books.
"I have to admit that I was the one who introduced Tom and Ray to Becker & Mayer -- as Andy Mayer is my brother," says Doug Mayer, who handles Car Talk's Web site, www.cartalk.com. The site attracts some 225,000 visits a week, a growing adjunct to Car Talk's weekly three-million radio audience and national syndicated newspaper column readership.
Other than as an NPR fundraising premium, the only way during the last few months to get a copy of A Haircut, a compilation of the show's popular brain teaser segments culled from its 10-year history, was by ordering it from the "Shameless Commerce" section of the Car Talk Web site. To date, 7500 copies have been sold.
Although this edition listed Becker & Mayer Books as publisher, Andy Mayer told PW that the Magliozzis decided to offer the books through their own channels first in a higher profit-sharing deal. As for other Becker & Mayer projects, Andy is most proud of his interactive books Lest We Forget: The Passage from Africa to Slavery and Emancipation: A Three-Dimensional Interactive Book with Photographs and Documents from the Black Holocaust Exhibit, so far a 75,000-copy seller for Crown.
In order to get A Haircut out into traditional bookselling channels, Becker & Mayer took the book out to bid to major publishers. The Magliozzis ultimately selected Perigee, no surprise since the brothers, who previously wrote 100,000-plus seller Car Talk for Dell a few years ago, signed a six-figure deal for another new book with Perigee last year. That book, In Our Humble Opinion: Click and Clack Rant and Rave, is scheduled for a May 2000 release. Most of the major publicity push is reserved for that book, although Perigee may try to get the busy duo to promote the current book now. And a specific promotional "vehicle" is already being discussed: the Car Talk hosts may come with a car to bookstore events.
