Taking on Doubleday's dropped 'Daughter of China' as successor to sleeper 'Falling Leaves'
Was Doubleday wrong to drop planned March 1999 pub Daughter of China: A Story of Love and Betrayal because its authors, Meihong Xu and Larry Engelmann, have divorced?
John Wiley & Sons thinks so--the house has picked up for October release Chinese army officer/student Meihong's memoir, which ends in 1990 with her marriage to visiting professor Engelmann, a man she was supposed to spy on, and her emigration to America. The Wiley edition now has an afterword by Engelmann, who helped Meihong write her story, to acknowledge and explain the couple's split.
There may have been other reasons for Doubleday's rather last-minute January 1999 cancellation of its planned March title--both the acquiring and the second editor for the book left the house, and the book had been slated to appear in the now-defunct Anchor hardcover line. But agent Sandy Dijkstra told PW the divorce was definitely a main factor.
"Doubleday did not feel they could properly publicize this book because they saw it as a love story," said Dijkstra.
Contacted by PW, Doubleday spokeswoman Suzanne Herz confirmed, "We really didn't feel that the book represented the love story any more after the couple split up."
However, Wiley acquiring editor Hana Lane told PW she didn't feel that an ongoing personal love story was required for the book to have impact.
"The 'love' of the book's subtitle also refers to Meihong's love of China. And actually, her subsequent divorce makes her story even more real to me," Lane said.
She also noted that the California-based authors' split was amicable, and that both are still working to help promote the book, although Meihong will be the primary one to tour.
Lane's acquistion of Daughter of China is a follow-up of sorts to a previous buy, Adeline Yen Mah's Falling Leaves: The True Story of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter, now a sleeper hit for the house--and, ironically, a current indie bestseller for Doubleday's newly aligned paperback partner, Broadway. "I think we're proving we know how to publish this kind of book," said Lane.
Since Daughter of China also details the story of Meihong's mother and grandmother, however, Lane believes Daughter of China more closely resembles Jung Chang's family memoir Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, which, in another irony, is available in an Anchor paperback edition.
Just as it did with Daughter of China, Wiley acquired Falling Leaves after other U.S. publishers rejected it. U.S.-based Mah scored a Penguin U.K. publishing deal for her book first, and although that edition was a bestseller abroad, U.S. trade houses passed on publishing it here. Wiley finally picked it up and saw great payoff: thanks in part to the wealthy Mah's tireless and well-funded promotion, the book went on to sell in the high-figure range in hardcover--and snagged a mid-six-figure paperback rights buy from Broadway.
While it's too soon to tell what fate awaits Daughter of China, the book, like Falling Leaves, is already making waves abroad. Published this summer by Headline in the U.K. with Meihong there on book tour, Daughter of China is now in its fourth printing--and is an import bestseller in China-obsessed Hong Kong and Singapore. Given these indicators, Wiley has just upped its initial print run--hoping the lightning of Falling Leaves strikes twice.
IN THE NEWS
A Well-Timed Waco Book
When A Place Called Waco: A Survivor's Story by David Thibodeau and Leon Whiteson shipped on August 20, no one was thinking about the controversial FBI raid on the David Koresh-led Branch Davidians. After all, that tragic incident had occurred more than six years ago.
But several days later, news broke that the FBI may have used pyrotechnic tear gas grenades in the standoff, and Janet Reno promised an investigation. With so few current titles out on the subject, the book, published by Public Affairs, is exquisitely positioned to reap benefits. It's already going back to press for an as-yet-undetermined second print run, after a 12,500-copy first run.
Thibodeau, who is one of only nine Branch Davidians to survive the raid and one of four not to be imprisoned, was instrumental in the reopening of the Waco investigation. His testimony about spotting incendiary devices in the Davidian compound is part of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Rules of Engagement, which prompted reporters at the Dallas Morning News and the Department of Justice to another look at charges of undue FBI force.
With the case reopened, Public Affairs got the perfect plug in Time magazine, which led its story with Thibodeau's remembrances, drawn from "his forthcoming book A Place Called Waco."
With Waco back in the headlines, Public Affairs' previous modest promotion plans grew exponentially. CNN and CBS This Morning called, and while the Today show had already planned a segment for mid-September, it moved the air date up to August 30. Nor is there reason to think this will abate soon. A civil suit in which
Thibodeau is involved is set for trial on October 18. An investigation, say news outlets, could last for months; this same investigation might also require Thibodeau's participation.
Serendipity is a theme that runs throughout this story. Thibodeau, a former rock drummer who met David Koresh in California, got to agent Charlotte Gusay by picking her name out of an agents' directory. Gusay paired Thibodeau with co-author Whiteson because the latter, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of A Garden Story (Faber & Faber), is also a client. And the book came to Public Affairs after being rejected by approximately 20 other houses.
As Time magazine noted, "Once it was easy to pass over a story like David Thibodeau's." No longer.
--STEVEN M. ZEITCHIK
SMALL PRESS SUCCESS
'Quickest' Hits Lists Months Later
Steven Kotler's first novel may be called The Angle Quickest for Flight, but its path to bestsellerdom has been anything but.
While the book has been on the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list for the past two weeks, publisher Four Walls Eight Windows released the book about five months ago.
Even before that, the publisher had done the typical prepublication promotion, and submitted for wide review and first novel co-op consideration the ambitious 416-page novel, in which a motley crew, including a runaway boy, a smuggler, a priest and an albino Rastafarian (!), search for an ancient Kabbalah text.
But while the intricate, literary thriller garnered respectable trade reviews--even snagging comparisons to Thomas Pynchon--many consumer outlets passed on initial coverage. A "big book" competitor at that time was Lauren Belfer's successful 518-page saga set in Buffalo, N.Y., City of Light, published by Dial in May.
Since men's magazine journalist Kotler is based in San Francisco, however, and places at least a sliver of his epic there--as well as in Jerusalem, New Mexico and Vatican City--Four Walls Eight Windows decided to do a post-publication regional push. This summer, the house hired Los Angeles“based publicist Lisa Wyeth Kirk to help move things along, and she certainly did: Kotler appeared on a San Francisco affiliate of National Public Radio, and the book debuted on the Chronicle bestseller list right afterward. Kotler is set to return for another local NPR appearance and also did a reading at local bookstore A Clean Well Lighted Place in mid-August.
According to acquiring editor JillEllyn Riley, the book's appearance on the Chronicle list is now paving the way for national exposure. "We're seeing reorders for the book, and some review media are calling to get it again and will probably run reviews," she said. "And paperback interest from the trade houses has been renewed." Agent Mary Evans also now expects for foreign rights deals for the book and is working with Kotler on his second book--an equally complex tale about a radio DJ's possible involvement in the Cuban missile crisis.
And thanks to the months-later momentum, Four Walls Eight Windows is finally going back to press on The Angle Quickest for Flight--it now plans a second printing of that's about half again as much as its initial outlay this past spring.
--J.Q.
