Given the eye-popping sales Jack Welch's memoir must draw, one might expect Warner to send him on a gut-wrenchingly long book tour. But Welch, whose Straight from the Gut comes out next Tuesday, will do few in-store appearances, choosing instead business-school symposia and TV outlets as his main points of promotion. "I guess if Mick Jagger doesn't do small clubs, Jack Welch doesn't do bookstores," groused one person whose bid to host a Welch event was rejected, even though he guaranteed Warner the sale of hundreds of books.
A tour of such venues as Wharton and Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management is but one cog in Warner's unusual efforts. Others include two first serials, a strict embargo on all reviews, a launch-day press conference, a $30 price tag and publicity hits as varied as Lou Dobbs and Jay Leno. But whether all the activity will turn the Warner higherups into profit-making geniuses or a late-night punchline is a complicated and consequential question.
CEO Larry Kirshbaum has acknowledged the house must sell about one million copies to justify its investment. With the house's first printing of two million, it's safe to argue he hopes for more. Warner, which had a weak first half of 2001 and faced criticism for Welch's $7 million advance, needs a runaway hit. Nor are the implications limited to one house. In a time of escalating returns, the success of a high-volume title like Gut could have a disproportionate impact on the health of the industry.
To promote the book, Welch will appear on Charlie Rose, Today, the Tonight Show and others. He will also visit a number of business schools, often in closed events. "He likes the one-on-one banter," said Warner spokeswoman Emi Battaglia. But the decision to turn down most stores (he will appear at a Manhattan Barnes & Noble as well as an offsite event hosted by Just Books' Warren Cassell in Connecticut) reflects Warner's broad and possibly contradictory goals. The house must garner wide consumer sales while still receiving bulk buys from business students and corporations. It also needs a big opening weekend à la a Hollywood release but also must sustain interest through the holidays.
Indeed, Warner will send Welch on a media tour that will continue until the end of October, running the risk of Welch overload. "Hopefully, you won't be able to turn on a TV or open a paper and not know about the book," Battaglia said. And an embargo, intended to generate an improbably large amount of press over a very short time, can sometimes work against a house. For example, because no pre-pub copy is available, PW will not review it. Readers did get a glimpse of the title this week in a Daily News story that cited a Vanity Fair excerpt. Fortune, deemed to have a sufficiently different readership, will also run a serial. So far, early signs are encouraging. The book has risen into Amazon's Top 50 and Ingram, better known for reorders, has reported demand for about 1,000 copies.
As Warner's Welch party gets underway, other houses have already been hanging out the banners; DK, Dearborn, McGraw-Hill, Wiley and others have all released books on Welch recently. Over the next few weeks, Warner will find out whether its own sales will come to life or whether it's time to turn out the lights.
