Booknews: Handicapping the Fall Titles
Bridget Kinsella -- 5/29/00
Booksellers talk about the galleys they'll grab at BEA--and the books they expect to do well
It is a little like trying to handicap the Kentucky Derby in December, but this year PW asked some intrepid booksellers to share their thoughts about authors and books on the fall horizon. Even without the benefit of catalogues, most booksellers had a pretty good idea of which titles they will be interested in as BookExpo America opens this weekend.
Naturally, there are some big names, or "givens," on the way. This fall's fiction includes a new Margaret Atwood (Doubleday), Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins), Elmore Leonard (Delacorte) and Stephen Coonts (St. Martin's). On the docket for nonfiction are Stephen Ambrose on the Transcontinental Railroad (S&S), Evan Thomas on Robert Kennedy (S&S) and Margaret Salinger on her famous father, J.D. (Washington Square Press). Celebrity books run the gamut from Ted Koppel (Knopf) to Jesse Ventura (Pocket). For children (and adults) there will be another Harry Potter (Scholastic) and a new Philip Pullman (Knopf). But more than anything, booksellers are looking for that unknown first-timer who might become the buzz of the show.
"We all want another Pat Conroy. No one will ever forget that," said Roberta Rubin, owner of The Book Stall at Chestnut Court in Winnetka, Ill. She, of course, is referring to the time in New Orleans, when BEA was ABA, that Conroy and his first novel, The Prince of Tides, stole the show. "We all stood in line for galleys," said Rubin. "He was a hot commodity."
This year that break-out book might just be The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey (Random). The mere mention of "crime" and "cartography" in the same sentence elicited positive reactions from just about every bookseller PW spoke to recently. "With everything I've heard about it, with what Random House is planning and the subject, if it's as well-written as they say it is, then it's got everything going for it," said Elaine Petrocelli, co-owner of Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif. Count on Random to have the galleys at the ready. "But every year what we think is going to be hot is not always quite right," said Petrocelli.
Among the many BEA tasks for Betsy Burton, co-owner of The King's English in Salt Lake City, is to find the first novels that she thinks her customers might not hear about from other sources. "That's what they want to know from us," she said. "Those galleys are our life blood. Without them we wouldn't have the knowledge to stay ahead." Burton said she would be scanning the aisles at BEA for first fiction but that she is a little leery of the publisher's push with new talent. "I don't want to buy into the hype unless the books are good," she said. "That's another reason why we need galleys."
First fiction is certainly popular when it comes to galleys. From Norton expect copies of The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri, a novel much heralded by Michael Cunningham ("...brings to mind Flaubert and Flannery O'Connor"). Based in an apartment building in Bombay, the novel explores the many layers of Indian life. Even better than a galley, Harcourt Brace will have actual hardcover giveaways of Under the Skin, a first novel by Michel Faber. Faber, who has been everything from a pickle and medical guinea pig, has written a comic paradoxical allegory about a woman who picks up a cast of hitchhikers in the Scottish Highlands. As so many new writers are compared to two known writers, Faber has been called a cross between Roald Dahl and Franz Kafka.
Other first novel galleys on-hand at BEA include A Good House by Bonnie Burnard (Holt), a Canadian bestseller about three generations in one family; Diamond Dogs by Alan Watt (Little, Brown), a father-and-son crime novel: and L.I.E. by David Hollander (Villard), a coming-of-age tale from an author called a blue-collar Rick Moody. (Moody, incidentally, has a new short story collection, Demonology, from Little Brown. But there are no galleys.)
One bookseller who said he was not going to BEA predominantly to grab galleys was Robert Fader, buyer for Posman's Books in New York. "I'm afraid I don't really look forward to titles that way," he said. Posman's BEA strategy is to search for nonbook items, remainders and titles from publishers he might never have heard about or who do not send reps to his store. "I'm not looking for Random House because I see them regularly," he explained. "We are very lucky being in New York, we get to see everyone. That might be different for a bookstore out there in New Mexico."
So PW spoke with a bookseller in New Mexico. Ironically, Nancy Rutland, owner of Bookworks in Albuquerque, tackles BEA much like Fader d s. She said she is there for the time-sensitive deals, small press finds and the remainder gems. "I'm looking for things I don't know I'm looking for, I guess," she added. Still, she acknowledged that her staff benefits greatly from the BEA galleys. With one of the buyers at Bookworks, it is an obsession.
"I have this excessive-compulsive need to read every book," Susan Wasson confessed. Every year Wasson pores over the pre-BEA listings and carefully plots her path for the show. "I will go specifically to the publisher looking for a particular galley," said Wasson, who has a glass-encased galley collection. Some of the books she is excited about heading into this BEA include: Wish You Well by David Baldacci (Warner), Wild Justice by Phillip Margolin (Harper) and Winter Soltice by Rosamunde Pilcher (St. Martin's). How about the new Kazuo Ishiguro (When We Were Orphans, Knopf)? "I'd pick up one of those, but I'd be more excited about the David Baldacci," said Wasson.
Co-owner of The Regulator Book Shop in Durham, N.C., Tom Campbell said he was looking forward to the new Tom Wolfe essay collection, Hooking Up (FSG). "If there's a galley of that around, I'd love to grab it," he said. Alas, no. Other books on his list include Disobedience by Jane Hamilton (Doubleday), Killing Time by Caleb Carr (Random) and The Diagnosis by Allan Lightman (Pantheon). About Lightman, whose Einstein's Dreams was a big seller in his store, Campbell said: "I just heard he was coming out with a new novel and, wow, that sounds good."
But names are not the only thing that sells Campbell. Just from the catalogue copy he said he is interested in a first novel called Gloria by Keith Maillard (Soho). Gloria intrigued Campbell the way Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur S. Golden (Knopf) did. Gloria's author is a man from West Virginia who writes about a 1957 prom queen and Golden is a Jewish New York guy writing about a Geisha. "You just don't mix those things up," said Campbell. "You say to yourself, this is either going to be really interesting or it is going to be awful. There's nothing in between."
While handicapping books, booksellers rely on instinct and a knowledge of their customer base. At the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge, Mass., buyer Chuck Pacheco told PW that he had a good feeling about Rimbaud, A Biography by Graham Robb (Norton). "He's a biographer with a good track record," Pacheco said of Robb, who previously wrote about Hugo and Balzac. The Harvard Bookstore caters to a serious reader market, and Pacheco's picks reflect that. Other titles he said he had hopes for include Holt's second part of the W.E.B. DuBois biography by David Levering Lewis, Mary Karr's sequel to TheLiar's Club from Viking and Gore Vidal's historical novel The Golden Age from Doubleday. He said he is also excited about the new editions to Houghton Mifflin's Best American Series which will feature Travel and Science in the fall. Also expected is the Best American Essays of the Century edited by Joyce Carol Oates.
Several booksellers mentioned Taking Lottie Home by Terry Kay (Morrow) and The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin (HarperCollins) as much-awaited titles this fall. "It will be huge, huge, huge for us," said Robert McDonald of Unabridged Bookstore in Chicago about the Maupin. "It's been a long time since we've had a major gay novel by a gay author of his stature." He was also looking forward to the final book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy from Knopf. "Before Harry Potter, The Golden Compass was the biggest thing going in 12-16 children's literature," he said. The third title is called The Amber Spyglass and it comes three years after the second title was released.
"It's long, long awaited," said Jennifer Sheridan, McDonald's former colleague at Unabridged and now the children's buyer for Bookazine, the wholesaler based in Bayonne, N.J. "They won't have galleys, but Pullman will be at BEA," she added. Like other buyers, Sheridan had not yet seen the fall catalogues from all the publishers, but she pointed to a couple of children's titles that "might take off." Among her picks is a book for 4th-6th grade readers about the Irish potato famine called Nory Ryan's Song by Patricia Reilly Giff (Delacorte.) "It's historical, which is very hot for that age group."
From Golden Books Sheridan said that the tie-ins for the PBS Between the Lions series looked promising. Of course the ultimate tie-in, she said, will be anything that has to do with the Universal Studio's remake of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, starring Jim Carrey. "Harper's Stuart Little stuff sold like crazy," said Sheridan. "And this is even bigger because it's The Grinch, because it's Christmas and because everyone loves Jim Carrey." On the other end of the spectrum, from small publisher Mountain Watch Press, Sheridan said she thinks a younger children's title Spriggles, part of a motivational series for children, authored by Jeffery A., Martha and Alexander Gottlieb, looked interesting. "It's about self-esteem, but the rhymes are really cute."
Just the sheer quantity of giveaway galleys at BEA is enough to overwhelm any bookseller, and The Regulator's Campbell told PW that he lugs as few galleys as he can back to North Carolina. "As I've gotten to know people in the business and they have gotten to know me and my store, they begin to tell me, 'Here's a book for your store,' and not, 'Here's the five books we are pushing.' " Matching the right book to the right bookseller is the first step to matching the right title to the right buyer.
Galleys are a form of insider information. And like dabbling in the stock market, or handicapping horse races for that matter, picking the winners early on involves an alchemy of taste, savvy and luck.
The Little Golf Novel That Could
Golf publishers just love Father's Day for, along with Christmas, it is a holiday that was made to sell their books. One publisher, Brian Lewis of Sleeping Bear Press in Chelsea, Mich., is especially looking forward to June 18th, because of the phenomenal success of The Greatest Player Who Never Lived, the new novel by J. Michael Veron.This novel, a survivor of the infamous slush pile, has suddenly found its game. It was published in April, and within a week, Lewis sold its paperback rights to Doubleday for six-figures, contracted with Michael Ovitz of Artists Management Group to develop a movie, and went back-to-press for a third printing of 20,000 copies. The press is now planning another "hurry-up" printing of 50,000, which will bring the total in-print figure to 155,000 copies. On top of that, Greatest Player recently received a rave review from Dave Anderson in the New York Times, which helped push the book into the #1 spot on Amazon.com's "Movers & Shakers." Coupled with the previous sale of audio rights to Brilliance and 175 replies for reading copies in just three days from Booksense, Greatest Player seems to be heading directly for the bestseller lists.
All of this happened without much help from the author, a Louisiana-based trial lawyer trapped in a publisher's ultimate nightmare. "The author is caught in a trial and he can't even promote the book," said Lewis, breathless from his week on the run. "So in a day where things receive a lot of hype, this book's momentum is clearly being driven by the quality of writing and the quality of the story."
The Greatest Player Who Never Was is the story of the fictitious Beau Stedman, friend of golf immortal Bobby Jones, who plays as if touched by God, but harbors a dark secret--he's on the lam for a murder he didn't commit. After months sitting in the Sleeping Bear slush pile, it was finally rescued by Lewis's assistant who urged him to read it. Lewis read it on a weekend, couldn't put it down, and Veron found himself under contract within days. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it "dual parts John Grisham and John Feinstein," and the Miami Herald compared it to Harper Lee's classic, To Kill a Mockingbird.
--Dermot McEvoy
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