Booknews: The Hot Selling Season
Judy Quinn -- 4/10/00
Summer will bring major new campaigns to highlight literary fiction, boost brand authors
Everyone agrees: there's no "slow" season in publishing anymore. While the fall, thanks to all that heavy store traffic during the holidays, will always be a key season to put out blockbuster books, summer, a time when those frenetic consumers actually may slow down and read, has become a hotbed of activity to test new authors and build the sales of others.
Below, some summer season strategies already in the works.
A Spotlight on Literary Fiction
Doubleday's new "Fiction for the Rest of Us" promotion, which packages together seven summer authors--Myra Goldberg, Robert Bingham, Elizabeth Stuckey-French, James Welch, John Ed Bradley, Aleksandar Hemon and Aimee Bender--serves to highlight to the trade and to agents that the house is a place where literary fiction, not just the commercial blockbusters of John Grisham, gets published. But Doubleday editor-in-chief Bill Thomas says the program, and in particular its name, addresses what he also believes is a very important consumer marketing mission: to dispel the intimidation this genre often produces.
"Literary fiction is so often programmed like a funeral--treated very solemnly--instead of entertaining and fun," he said. Literary fiction, Thomas believes, should be positioned "for the rest of us," i.e., not for some snobbish, elitist and, as it turns out, mythical "them" who are often the focus of literary fiction marketing campaigns.
The quote from Lester Bangs on the cover of the program's skinny sampler also confirms the idea: "The first mistake of Art is to assume it's serious."
Doubleday, however, already has received some serious backing for its program. An early coup was lining up New York City's Whitney Museum to host both a launch book party featuring all the authors (except the late Bingham), as well as subsequent readings throughout the summer. And while the Whitney serves as a great focal point for media attention, Doubleday will also bring the group, along with "Fiction for the Rest of Us" book bags, to the heart of the trade world with an appearance at BEA.
The "Fiction for the Rest of Us" authors will also be featured in national advertising, including what Thomas believes is the key, often overlooked outlet of alternative weekly newspapers, popular with the 20-something demographic.
"It's a false truism that this age group won't buy hardcovers," he said. "They just have to be targeted to." While the "Fiction for the Rest of Us" authors will also receive separate promotional efforts, the grouping has already paid off in special bookstore displays as well as increased sell-in numbers for some of the lesser-known authors. Early trade enthusiasm was also fueled by a CD-ROM featuring live-action videos of some of the authors, delivered to bookstores by Doubleday's reps. "There's at least one collection of short stories that is now going out with probably double the print run it would have had before," said Thomas.
Best of all, the sampler paperback, featuring excerpts and biographical liner notes about the authors written by Doubleday Broadway exec Gerry Howard, was so popular with trade accounts that booksellers asked Doubleday for extra copies to give to consumers. At press time, the house had printed 60,000 copies of this giveaway.
At Random House, there's also cause to celebrate literary fiction, particularly by unknowns, since a record 24 first novels are being published within the RH Group in this calendar year. This astonishing amount of new fiction, said publicity chief Carol Schneider, reflects the full fruition of the taste and selection of publisher Ann Godoff, who has a particular track record and interest in cultivating new talent.
To help alert the world to this aspect of to RH's list, Schneider this past spring created a new magazine called Fiction at Random, featuring not the typical excerpts but profiles that serve as background pieces on these new authors. The magazine is similar to the house's popular At Random, which began life as a print magazine but is now online only. While Schneider noted that the costs of producing the print version of At Random had proved prohibitive, the smaller-in-scale Fiction at Random is a lower-cost promo tool (it's also available online at www.randomhouse.com/atrandom).
Fiction at Random will now be issued for the summer and fall 2000 seasons. The summer issue features an additional new promotion: a "Two for the Road" touring schedule that pairs a better-known author with a compatible but lesser-known one for three stops. For their May releases, Lisa Reardon, promoting her second novel, Blameless, will joint high-profile author Kathryn Harrison, coming out with her new novel, The Binding Chair, in Boston, Iowa City and Minneapolis. For their July releases, Elizabeth Berg (Open House) will help introduce Laura Catherine Brown and her debut novel, Quickening, in New York, Boston and Baltimore. For their August releases, Faith Sullivan, coming out with her second novel, What a Woman Must Do, is the "opening act" for Amy Bloom, out with a new collection of short stories, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You in Denver, San Francisco and Portland.
"It's a way to give a lesser-known author a chance to tour in areas they may not have without the pairing," said Schneider. "These are authors we previously would have typically toured only within their home areas."
While there are no plans for duo touring for the fall list, the idea is starting to catch fire where it has been presented. Schneider said that Diane's Books in Greenwich, Conn., which was booking Reardon for an event, asked to have Harrison, who is touring separately in the New York area, to appear as well.
Building the Brand Authors
While literary fiction appears to be a particular focus this summer--as Doubleday's Thomas likes to note, "smart people want to read good books on the beach"--the traditional "beach reach" of more commercial fiction is also receiving some key attention.
Bestselling author E. Lynn Harris, one of the chief progenitors of the male-authored Terry McMillan-like novels, is a beneficiary of the merger of Anchor into the Vintage empire. While his hardcovers have hit the New York Times bestseller list, his trade paperbacks haven't, partly due to the particular competition of this list (which also includes mass market titles) but also because of less aggressive promotion for this format in the past.
That's about to change as the author gets the heightened, classic "Vintage" push for the Anchor trade paperback release of Abide with Me in May. The goal is to build his largest trade paperback audience ever and to introduce his upcoming Doubleday hardcover and Abide sequel, Not a Day G s By.
Anne Messitte, associate publisher of both Anchor and Vintage, told PW that the decision was made to delay the paperback publication of Abide (the hardcover was pubbed in March 1999) to give Harris a lead title position in the summer--a strong season, she noted, for trade paperbacks. This new focus is already paying off, with sell-in orders at about 50% higher than the sell-in for Harris's previous paperback, she said.
Anchor publicity head Jen Marshall is also helping to fuel this breakout by booking the author for a 10-city tour that includes not only his traditional African-American markets but less obvious venues as well. One of these is downright newsmaking: Harris will visit Hawley Cooke in Louisville, a city where a local high school had banned Harris's books due to sexual subject matter. The undeniable appeal of Harris's prose , however, has also led to two new publicity vehicles: In Essence magazine, an excerpt with a contest to win a dinner with Harris; and, in a more breakout arena, a spot as inaugural author on ivillage.com's new Romance Club, which will launch this May.
Dutton author Eric Jerome Dickey, who writes in a similar vein to Harris and has been building his audience through great word of mouth and dogged touring, is being readied for his own sales upgrade this summer. The goal here, said Dutton publicity chief Lisa Johnson, is to improve sales velocity for an author whose last book, Cheaters, has sold over 100,000 copies to date but hit only #22 on the New York Times bestseller list (a performance that is nevertheless a jump from his previous hardcover, which only reached #31.)
Dutton's extensive marketing campaign is greatly aided by the pooling of resources with paperback partner NAL, which is releasing Cheaters in mass market in April as a lead-in for Dickey's next hardcover, Liar's Game in June, and is packaging Dickey's backlist in trade paper for the first time.
For Hyperion, the push for author Ridley Pearson, particularly in the mass market arena, has already paid off: Thanks to a record advance of 426,000 copies for his last mass market, The Pied Piper, orders for The First Victim, a June mass market, are at about 700,000 copies, and the first printing for the June hardcover Middle of Nowhere is 75,000--a 25,000-copy jump from his previous hardcover sell-in.
The house has committed $300,000 to a Middle of Nowhere marketing campaign, which includes a 12-city tour (a pre-sale tour to ID accounts, which helped to boost those mass market numbers, took place in February), the expected print and radio advertising, phonecards sent to booksellers (to use "in the middle of nowhere") and baseball caps. While the media hasn't picked up on the idea yet, Hyperion has floated the notion that Pearson's previous plots have proved prescient--The First Victim, for example, presaged real-life stories of Chinese being smuggled out of their country in cargo containers--and the book could get a "break" if Seattle police go on strike, as they do in Middle of Nowhere.
Pearson himself is an tireless promoter whose media alliances seem ready for convergence. It's now looking likely that series character Lou Boldt may be the subject of an A&E series, possibly starring Richard Dreyfuss. The author's Web site, RidleyPearson.com, is also readying to sell Ridley-related items--and will post never-before-seen footage of Dave Barry and Stephen King (the latter plays with Pearson in the authors' band the Rockbottom Remainders, on national tour to raise money for literacy this November).
Finally, St. Martin's is launching its new house author Robert Ludlum in a multiple-branding effort that has already proved profitable for Tom Clancy. The Hades Factor, with a June 13 laydown, is an original trade paperback written with Gayle Lynds, and the first of a four-part series called Covert One. It precedes Ludlum's first SMP hardcover--a more weighty international thriller--The Prometheus Deception, coming this fall. Reports at the time of Ludlum's jump from Bantam to SMP noted that the longtime author had reached a plateau of some 450,000 copies in typical hardcover sales; at press time, SMP's repositioning is already looking quite promising, with some 450,000 orders taken on The Hades Factor. V-p Matthew Shear hopes this momentum will lead to orders of 600,000 copies or so on the new hardcover. Ludlum is already getting some revitalization thanks to hot news from Tinseltown: there's talk Brad Pitt may star in a film adaptation of Ludlum's classic The Bourne Identity, with production to begin possibly as early as this fall.
You Gotta Have a Gimmick
In the midst of all this strategic, long-term marketing is the quick hit of a fun idea, during a season where such tactics seem most appropriate. Hyperion sent homemade pies to the first booksellers who responded with reader's comments on the ARCs for Karen Stolz's first novel, The World of Pies (June). Public Affairs is sending out copies of the FBI's "Wanted" poster offering a $250,000 reward for the capture of fugitive (and purported book lover) Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger, who is the subject of Boston Globe reporters Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill's Black Mass. This promotion may help not only this July release but could possibly solve at least one bookseller's battle with the economics of bookselling.
The lure of the open road is perhaps strongest in summer; thus, many author tours this season are particularly inventive. Sonny Barger is cycling Route 66 as part of his tour for Hell's Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell's Angel's Motorcyle Club, a June release from Morrow.
But the tour that most takes the cake--or in this case, the slice--is Ballantine author Bob Blumer's Off the Eaten Path jaunt in July. He'll be traveling through more than 30 cities in an Airstream trailer customized to look like a toaster, all to demonstrate his wacky cooking techniques.
Key Pub/Laydown Dates
Last year, Hannibal, Thomas Harris's decade-later followup to The Silence of the Lambs, became a major, relatively last minute addition to the summer schedule that no doubt knocked a few bestseller hopefuls out of the box.
This year, Harris is also a force to contend in the summer season--the mass market of Hannibal is landing a week before Memorial Day, on May 23. But it's Harry--Potter, that is--whom everyone is really worrying about: Scholastic recently announced that Harry Potter and the Doomspell Tournament, J.K. Rowling's fourth book in her bestselling series, will land July 8.
At least one summer blockbuster author is now out of Potter's path: Putnam is reporting that Patricia Cornwell's The Last Precinct, originally announced for the author's typical publication time in July, is not ready for release and thus is being moved to a November release date.
What can't be moved is the 50th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, which falls on June 29. A host of publishers, particularly in the military category, are releasing new titles and/or reissuing reprints; included are James Brady's new novel, The Marines of Autumn (SMP/Thomas Dunne), and nonfiction reissue The Coldest War (Griffin, June); Stanley Weintraub's MacArthur's War (Free Press, Apr.); Michael Hickey's Korean War: The West Confronts Communism (Overlook, June); and the reissue of S.L.A. Marshall's Pork Chop Hill (Berkley, June).
Below, some other major pub/laydown dates of the summer season (see main story for some additional release dates):
May 1: Melissa Bank's Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing (Penguin)
May 3: Elizabeth Peters's He Shall Thunder in the Sky: An Amelia Peabody Mystery (Avon)
May 3: Sandra Brown's Standoff (Warner)
May 8: John Sandford's Easy Prey (Putnam)
May 9: Jeffrey Deaver's The Empty Chair (S&S)
May 22: James Patterson's Cradle and All (Little, Brown)
May 23: Tim F. Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins's The Indwelling:The Beast Takes Possession (Left Behind Series, Book 7, Tyndale House)
May 31: Barry Sears's The Soy Zone (ReganBooks)
June 9: Barbara Delinsky's The Vineyard (S&S )
June 13: Danielle Steel's The House on Hope Street (Delacorte)
June 13: Maeve Binchy's Aches & Pains (Delacorte)
June 20: Janet Evanovich's Hot Six (SMP).
July 3: W.E.B. Griffin's The Fighting Agents (Putnam)
July 5: Mario Puzo's Omerta (Random House)
July 11: Jackie Collins's Lethal Seduction (S&S)
July 17: Alice Hoffman's The River King (Putnam)
August 1: James Lee Burke's Purple Cane Road (Doubleday)
August 7: Tom Clancy's The Bear and the Dragon (Putnam)
August: Anne Rivers Siddons's Nora, Nora (HarperCollins)
August: Faye Kellerman's Stalker (Morrow)
August: Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm (Vintage)
Please note: this list was created with information available at press time. PW would welcome any additions, updates and corrections for our database. Send to booknews@publishersweekly.com.
Movie Tie-Ins
The stellar year of book to-film adaptations (Cider House Rules, The Talented Mr. Ripley, etc.) continues this summer, with another Miramax interpretation of Shakespeare (Love's Labor Lost), a star-studded realization of Steven Pressfield's golf novel The Legend of Bagger Vance and George Clooney aboard an adaptation of Sebastian Junger's bestselling nonfiction narrative The Perfect Storm. There's also a host of kids' films based on children's books and other merchandise, including Thomas and the Magic Railroad, Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, Pokémon 2 and X-Men.
As often happens in the tie-in game, many summer tie-in book plans are yet to be finalized. HarperCollins, however, is doing the novelization for The Patriot, the Mel Gibson Revolutionary War epic that could spark consumer interest in other books about this era. And FSG perhaps has the most unusual movie tie-in of all: Whit Stillman's The Last Days of Disco (Aug.) a novelistic fleshing-out of the characters from his 1998 movie.
Below, some of the big summer movies adapted from books or with book tie-ins:
June 9: Love's Labor Lost (based on the Shakespeare play)
June 16:Shaft (based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman, currently o.p.)
June 16: Titan A.E. (futuristic animation, with tie-ins by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers)
June 23: Chicken Run (from the creators of Wallace and Grommit, with multiple Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers tie-ins.)
June 30: Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (tie-in novelization and joke book from S&S)
June 30:The Patriot (novelization by HarperEntertainment)
June 30: The Perfect Storm (now available in HarperCollins mass market)
July 14: X-Men (based on the Marvel comic)
July 21: Pokémon 2 (multiple tie-in partners)
July 26:Thomas and the Magic Railroad (new edition next month from Random House Books for Young Readers)
August 4: The Legend of Bagger Vance (based on the novel by Steven Pressfield, available in Avon trade paperback.)
Please note: this list was created with information available at press time. PW would welcome additions, updates and corrections for our database. Send to booknews@publishersweekly.com.
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