Is it the food connection? Is it the fact that we're a nation that likes its info in quick, easily digested morsels (there's that food thing again)? Could it be that Putnam's Who Moved My Cheese? (66 weeks on our list, 54 at #1) has a challenger? Fish!, published by Hyperion just over a year ago (March 8, 2000) lands on our nonfiction list today, with 337,500 copies in print after 13 trips to press. (Not bad for a title that started out at 40,000.) With its go-get-'em subtitle—A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve Results—this brief parable (115 pages, compared to Cheese's 94) is the work of Stephen C. Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen, in which motivation and inspiration come from an unlikely source—the friendly fishmongers at Seattle's noted Pike Place Market. Hyperion's publicity mill has been working steadily over the past 12 months, with print coverage that includes author interviews (New York Times, USA Today) and features (Forbes, San Diego Business Journal, Minneapolis Star-Tribune); personal appearances and seminars at such venues at Denver's Tattered Cover, a PNBA seminar, a Leaders Management Forum in Las Vegas, etc.; and TV coverage (CBS Evening News, CBS Sunday Morning, ABC News One and CNN's Business Unusual). As Hyperion publicity director Katie Long put it, "This book is amazing. It's clearly gone way past its core audience and is now spreading like crazy through that best sales tool of all, word of mouth."
With reporting by Dick Donahue.
