Booknews
Edited by Judy Quinn -- 7/17/00
A Business Revolution?
Harvard Business School Press rethinks the way
a business book is designed and marketed
Putting the words "Harvard" and "School" together in the name of a publishing house might conjure up images of a stodgy academic publisher, but the 16-year-old Harvard Business School Press is proving to be anything but boring.
 | | Hamel leads the fall list at HBSP. |
Take, for example, its pre-publication campaign for Gary Hamel's second book, Leading the Revolution, which will kick off its 150,000 first printing next month with promotions featuring the headless statue of Lenin that symbolizes the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the words "The Revolution Starts Here." The campaign's juxtaposition of words and image seemed just the right fit for what HBSP director Carol Franco said the publisher wants to be: a place for "idea-seekers."
The interior design of the book strikes a revolutionary pose, as well, which befits a volume that warns about complacency in the face of innovators like Amazon.com. "The barbarians are no longer banging at the gate, they're eating off your china," writes Hamel. To match his incendiary prose, and to meet his personal challenge for the press to find an innovative way to publish his book, HBSP rethought the way a business book should look. As a result, Leading the Revolution is the first business book to be printed in four-color throughout, with art and pull quotes on every spread. According to Franco, when "Gary saw the layout of the book, he said we had exceeded his expectations."
Given the success of Hamel's first book, the 1994 bestseller Competing for the Future, cowritten with C. K. Prahalad, which sold a half-million copies, Hamel could have gone to a large trade house with its sequel. Instead, he chose to stick with Harvard. "They are willing to experiment, and they share my passion for producing books that make a difference," he said. "They want to produce books that change the very basis of management thought and action."
So far, Harvard has continued to live up to Hamel's expectations. By the end of June, it had sold foreign rights in 10 languages, including German, Japanese and Korean, for $350,000 total. In addition, an excerpt from Leading the Revolution was featured last month in a cover story in Fortune magazine, which plans to run a second excerpt and an author interview in September. A Business Week interview is also scheduled close to pub date, and Hamel will do a 20-city radio satellite tour in mid-September. His media appearances include all the usual business-oriented suspects, including CNBC and CNNfn, and he will be featured in more general outlets as well, like the New Yorker and Rolling Stone.
HBSP's stepped-up treatment for Hamel's titles reflects the company aim to change itself into a home for more trade-centric business books--and booksellers have noticed. Based on the success of Competing for the Future and The Innovator's Dilemma (by Clay Christensen, 180,000 copies sold), Jack Covert, president and founder of 800-CEO-READ, a division of Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops in Milwaukee, described HBSP as "a real success story." He told PW he has supported the press for years. "They buy good books, and package them beautifully."
Even a more general retailer like Roberta Rubin, owner of The Book Stall (Winnetka, Ill.), who just recently added business books to her inventory, said that when she saw the fall catalogue, she was surprised by how trade-oriented HBSP titles were. "I haven't bought much from them in the past," she said, "but now I find that there are lots of books that my customers want."
Given that many Harvard books deal with e-marketing and e-strategy, it's no surprise that online retailers also do well with HBSP. So well, in fact, that two years ago Amazon.com gave the press one of its first online boutiques. A disproportionate number of HBSP books dominate Amazon's Top 50 business list, given the press's relatively small size. At the beginning of the month, it had seven books on the list, including, at #20, The Monk and the Riddle: The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur by Randy Komisar, and, at #45, The Balanced Scorecard (1996) by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton. Kaplan and Norton have a new title coming out from HBSP in September.
"Business is one of the most successful categoriesat Amazon," said Harry Edwards, Amazon's business and investing editor, "and Harvard's books do extremely well. Five years ago, they made a conscious decision to be the best business publisher. I can't say that they're there yet," he continued, "but books like The Innovator's Dilemma and Leading the Revolution are no accident. I would say Leading the Revolution is going to be one of our lead titles going into the fall."
Taking Hamel's message to heart, HBSP is already looking at ways to stay ahead of the business book curve. "What we want to do is think very carefully about what our readers want, what kind of forms or distribution we'll develop for the future," said Franco.
--Judith Rosen
Warner Publishes Black SF AnthologyLingering among the crowd after a reading by African-American science fiction writer Octavia Butler, Warner Books editor Betsy Mitchell happened to overhear a young woman talking about plans for an anthology of science fiction by African diasporan writers. "I went right up to her," said Mitchell, who is Butler's editor at Warner. "I had been looking for a book like that. It was perfect."
The result of that serendipitous encounter, released this week by Warner Books, is Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, edited by Sheree R. Thomas, a freelance writer, editor and voracious reader of science fiction and speculative fiction." Speculative fiction, Thomasexplained, is "an umbrella term that includes science or technological fiction as well as magical writing, folklore, fantasy and alternative history." Mitchell said the term allowed the editors to "broaden the definition of science fiction," to include a wider range of writers. "We nixed a few things for size," said Mitchell, "but it includes all the major writers. It's an excellent cross section of black speculative writing."
And to the best of their knowledge, it is the only anthology of its kind, bringing together many different writers and varieties of black science fiction and fantasy. In addition to stories by SF authors Butler, Samuel Delany and Steven Barnes and newcomer Nalo Hopkinson, the book also includes "The Goophered Grapevine" (1887), a turn-of-the-century ghost story by pioneering black author Charles Chestnutt; a new take on black "invisibility" in the story "Rhythm Travel" by p t and novelist Amiri Baraka; and stories by the great black historian W.E.B. Dubois and by contemporary comic novelist Ishmael Reed. Thomas has even resurrected the eerie fiction of the nearly forgotten Henry Dumas, an accomplished short story writer who died under mysterious circumstances in 1968. There are also original essays on science fiction and race by Delany, Butler, Walter Mosley and hip-hop aesthetician Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky.
Thomas told PW that she began collecting material for the book in the summer of 1998. "I had read all of Delaney and Butler and I was looking for something else to read," she explained. She wanted to collect "something different. Black science fiction writers work with certain traditions in black literature that are recognizable, and they also provide a context for a future that includes black people"
The first printing was 12,000 copies and Warner has done several promotional mailings to booksellers and the media. Mitchell said the book has received a good response from booksellers and noted that there are bookstore appearances and readings planned, as well as a panel on black science fiction at the Harlem Book Fair in New York City, July 22.
Mitchell hopes the anthology is just the beginning. "Warner did the paperback for Walter Mosely's Blue Light; we introduced Hopkinson; and we've published LeVar Burton's novels. We're looking for more black science fiction writers."
--Calvin Reid
A Hard Sell, But a Handsell
 | | Fiction built on fact that's already strange. |
According to media as varied as Salon, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and Mademoiselle, among the picks for this year's summer reading lists is Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss (Dutton), the fictionalized story of the 19th-century brothers for whom the phrase "Siamese Twins" was coined. Just a month after publication, Strauss's debut novel had received rave reviews across the country and, according to Dutton publicist Lisa Johnson, with more than 31,000 copies in print so far, is on the verge of going back to press again. "For a first, literary novel, that's substantial," she added.
Though the book is a media darling (see PW's feature onFirst Fiction, Jan. 10), some readers are a little put off by Strauss's chosen subject. "It's a wonderful book, but we're having trouble convincing customers to buy it," said Cathy Keibler, inventory general manager of Hawley-Cooke Booksellers in Louisville, Ky. The story is based on the lives of the real Chang and Eng Bunker, who fled their native Siam and were exploited in a P.T. Barnum freak show. They eventually settled down as farmers in North Carolina, married sisters and fathered 21 children.
Keibler characterized Chang and Eng as a steady seller, moving about three copies a week in her three stores, and expects the title will "kick in" when it is named a staff pick next month. "I've been talking it up with all of the booksellers, to get them to read it," she told PW. "It takes no time at all to be totally taken into this book and to want to keep turning the pages."
Jill Lamar, manager and editor of Barnes and Noble's Discover New Writers Program, compared the out-of-the-gate sales for Chang and Eng with another successful historical first novel from Dutton, Girl with Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. Selected for the Discover Summer Selection program, Chang and Eng is getting prominent placement at B&N. "I can't wait to see what Darin Strauss d s for an encore," Lamar added.
--Bridget Kinsella
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