Jon Mooney: PW's Rep of the Year

When your job requires describing 300 titles to more than 70 accounts across eight states, you learn to talk quickly. Short. To the point. So when Penguin Putnam's Jon Mooney pitches a book on the new fall list, he d sn't spend much time clearing his throat.

"This is the last book Faith Sale worked on," he says at today's sales call, describing The Mineral Palace, an anticipated novel from one of the Village Voice'sanointed stars, Heidi Julavits. The man on the other side of the desk is Trent Shaw, a senior buyer at Booksource, Mooney's biggest client.

"If I was going to compare it to anything it would be Susan Power's Grass Dancer," Mooney continues.

"Same subject matter?" Shaw asks.

"No. A little depressing. 1930s' Colorado. Almost like a Steinbeck."

"Readers' copies?"

"Lots."

It's not that Mooney d sn't enjoy the chitchat, though compared to his garrulous Midwestern clients, he can sometimes seem reticent. It's just that consolidation d sn't afford him the luxury of long conversations. His job demands a knack for distillation, for becoming an impromptu blurbist. While pitching, he remains acutely aware of his account's time--and his own. At the same time, some of the chattier types in his territory are skeptical of fast talkers, so much of Mooney's skill lies in striking a balance. Working fluidity off his cheat sheet, he'll offer some information, see if the account bites, then, depending on what read he gets, either move on to the next title or elaborate. Even more remarkable today is that he's barely two days out of sales conference and already his presentation has the polish of someone who's been making it for months.

If consolidation has littered the land with rep casualties--those who must cover an inordinate amount of ground and titles--Mooney is the reconstructionist laborer intent on making everything work. Consider, for a moment, the sheer diversity of titles he sells. Putnam's lists ranges far enough--Tom Clancy and Patsy Cornwell on the one hand; the less commercial titles edited by Sale and Marion Wood on the other. At least the bestsellers offer a chance for an easy score, right? Not exactly. "I have to convince the independents that there are people coming in who want these books," he says. Since the merger with Penguin, he's found himself repping books by Douglas Rushkoff and Nick Hornby. About the only category he d sn't handle is children's.

As much as the range can sometimes seem overwhelming, Mooney says it affords certain advantages. "Twenty years ago I wouldn't have had two titles on my list that they [Left Bank Books, an alternative bookstore] would have bought. Today I have Riverhead."

While Mooney's job carries an abundance of responsibility, it also offers a lot of latitude. His most immediate supervisor is a regional sales manager based in not-so-nearby Ashland, Ore. "It's like running your own business," he says, clearly relishing his independence. "Sometimes you have to remind yourself that you work for a big company based in New York."

Ah, Gotham. The literal and metaphorical versions are as far away to Mooney as he can sometimes seem to them. He describes his one incident taking a cab in New York with a kind of excitement and palpitation that suggests he's not likely to do it again soon. That St. Louis isn't New York, and that very little of his territory can really be described as urban, is something he is constantly aware of. When we visit Left Bank, he and owner Kris Kleindienst share an empathetic moment about the difficulty in landing certain authors for a tour. "Boston, New York and Washington? That's not a tour; that's a shuttle ride," Christy laments with a smile, and Mooney laughs with her.

Mooney talks to the home office infrequently, and describes it in a way his clients might--New York, the place over there, the city that d sn't really understand what Middle America likes. Yet he is also conscious of what other reps say and what headquarters wants, and integrates this into his pitches. The Julavitz title, for instance, is a rep pick, and at sales conference the previous week there was a sort of informal agreement on the part of reps and upper management to give it a particular push. He is happy to oblige. With a list as big as his, Mooney is grateful for the suggestions of other reps. And, ironically, Mooney is aided by the shrinking size of the rep force: it gives them a tight-knittedness that a larger staff may not enjoy.

Repping: More Than a Little Dab Will Do Him
Despite starting his career far from the book world, Mooney is accustomed to making quick pitches from his previous job: radio-jingle writer. In an industry known for resume one-upmanship--people think nothing of tossing out lines like, "I've been in the industry for 40 years"--Mooney makes no apologies for his earlier career. In fact, he finds many similarities between that job and his present one. "You have to be able to sell something in 30 or 60 seconds," he says. With books, it's the same thing."

Mooney's first experience in the book world, as a telemarketer, offered similar training. Looking to make a break from jingle writing about 10 years ago, he walked into what was then the Putnam warehouse in upstate New York (Mooney is a Binghamton native) and landed the phone gig. Again, sitting in an office all day might seem the polar opposite of driving across large swaths of the country, but Mooney sees a comparison. "You're getting to booksellers in hard-to-reach places," he says. And the job also valued the skill of knowing when to go long and when to cut it short.

Mooney's flair for reaching far-flung locales made it logical for Putnam to ship him out to what has been, historically, more of a bookselling Baghdad than a Mecca. He admits to "kicking and screaming" before he came to St. Louis in 1994. But since then, he's found that he actually likes the driving, likes the contemplation it fosters and the feelings of conquest that go along with it. (His accounts, incidentally, can be found in Iowa, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Nebraska, Illinois and Oklahoma.) His biggest chore has turned into one of his distinguishing traits. In the weekly newsletter he distributes to accounts--something he undertook, he says, to give them the feeling of being attended to personally even when he found himself several states away--he prints his odometer miles so that accounts can share his road trips vicariously. He points to the driving as one of the reasons he has stayed in his territory for six years, longer than most field reps will remain in any one place. "The only thing I don't have in my car is a fax machine, and I'm sure that's probably coming," he says, and though other reps may make a joke like this, you get the sense Mooney would be happy to have one in his vehicle--he racks up more than 50,000 miles per year.

This kind of workmanlike attitude has put him in the good graces of nearly all his accounts. It also benefits him in other ways. Drive with him for even a brief time and you'll see how he's picked up the nuances of geography. He expounds on the differences between St. Louis and Kansas City with ease. Accounts, say, in New Mexico and Arkansas demand very different approaches, and Mooney has cultivated ways to attack them both. "One is very West Coast New Age; the other is Bible Belt. There are things I'm really using in Santa Fe that I won't even take out of my bag in Little Rock. Sometimes," he concedes. "It's a little overwhelming. I have to stop myself mid-stream."

Even on a one-day jaunt through St. Louis, we cover a lot of ground. We dart over the river several times, from Booksource in St. Louis to Piece of Mind Books in Edwardsville, Ill., back to St. Louis's Central West End for a stop at Left Bank and then to the suburb of Clayton, where the Library Limited can be found.

Before Borders took it over, the store, one of the country's largest indies, was Mooney's biggest client. So critical was the store's happiness to Putnam operations that the publisher stationed Mooney in St. Louis specifically to serve it. The Library's exacting attitude is storied among reps; Mooney recalls more than occasion when he was roused late at night to bring over a few copies. He still makes trips there occasionally, mostly when a Penguin Putnam author is in town. But he says the day when Borders took it over, though sad for independent bookselling, meant something else to him. "It was as a mixed blessing," he says, referring to how he could now be guaranteed a little more sleep. Or, he might have added, a few more hours behind the wheel.
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