As booksellers watched summer reading tables sell down and unpacked the first boxes of new fall books, sales reps across the country flew to the steamy Eastern Seaboard—Manhattan, Baltimore, St. Petersburg, Fla.—looking ahead to spring. In search of early word of the most talked-about titles, PW scanned the lists and caught up with publishers, publicists and sales reps from HarperCollins, Penguin Putnam, Perseus Books Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster. On the phone in their hotel rooms, on breaks between sessions and even calling from Baltimore's Union Station, executives hailed new books from old friends (Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark, Tom Clancy, Gary Zukav) along with a strong lineup of first fiction. Focusing on books whose printings were bumped up from the 30,000- to 60,000-copy range, whose ARC quantities increased and whose authors got expanded tours, PW uncovered some key titles with the vibrant aura that only good buzz can create.
New Year, New Resolutions
It wouldn't be January without a cascade of self-help and healthy lifestyle titles to ease the path to self-renewal. Two juggernauts, each co-written by two bestselling authors, open and close the season and will cast long shadows. In January, Putnam will publish God and the Evolving Universe: The Next Step in Personal Evolution by James Redfield—who dominated the New York Times bestseller list for more than three years with The Celestine Prophecy and The Tenth Insight— and Michael Murphy, cofounder of the Esalen Institute and author of the classic golf novel, Golf in the Kingdom. Also joined at the spine are integrative medicine guru Andrew Weil and Oprah Winfrey's former chef, Rosie Daly, who are out to demonstrate to America that healthy food can taste great. Tying in with the authors' 26-part PBS cooking series that will begin in April and run throughout the year, and barreling into stores with a projected 750,000-copy first printing, their cookbook, The Healthy Kitchen, emphasizes easy recipes with fresh, organic foods. Paul Bogaards, Knopf's executive director of publicity, who conceived the book and helped interest PBS in the series, finds Rosie Daly reminiscent of Julia Child in her attitude that it's okay to make a mistake in the kitchen. The book and TV series will be virtually inescapable, since Knopf has been besieged by requests for multiple appearances on every major morning talk show and for magazine serials, and Weil will write a column for a host of Rodale periodicals including Prevention.
Among the season's "make books" is Loving What Is by Byron Katie, a charismatic workshop leader and frequent lecturer on "self-awakening," who Harmony Books hopes to build in the same way it did Caroline Myss. The Crown Group's publicity director, Tina Constable, reported a spirited discussion on the title (written with National Book Award—winner Stephen Mitchell) following a video clip of the author in action. Meanwhile, Random House's trade field sales divisional director for the northeast, Duncan DeGraff, is fired up about Clarkson Potter's Potluck at Midnight Farm: Celebrating Food, Family, and Friends on Martha's Vineyard by Tamara Weiss, who co-owns a gift and home store with Vineyard icon Carly Simon. Inspired by the book's recipes and early four-color blads, he's betting that potluck entertaining could become a national trend. Along with several other reps who marketing director Alison Gross describes as "cookbook fanatics," DeGraff has been brainstorming ways to help the April hardcover perform as well as Potter's Barefoot Contessa entertaining series, which originated from a store in East Hampton, N.Y., and has sold more than 300,000 copies.
Paperback imprint Fireside, in an uncharacteristic gambit, will apply its expertise in publishing fitness books to the May hardcover publication of Barron Baptiste's yoga-based program for body, mind and spirit, Journey into Power. "Fireside's associate publisher Chris Lloreda went undercover to his classes, and gave an impassioned presentation on Barron's ability to inspire readers to make room in their lives for themselves," explained Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group president Carolyn Reidy. "He's sold millions of tapes on QVC, and we're pulling out every stop with ads, radio giveaways and an 11-city tour," she told PW, noting the aggressive 150,000-copy goal for sales.
And in time for Valentine's Day, cultural critic bell hooks returns with the third installment of her exploration of love's transformative power, Communion: The Female Search for Love (William Morrow, Jan.), accompanied by the paperback of her national bestseller Salvation: Black People and Love (HarperPerennial). Mining a similar cultural studies/self-help vein, Counterpoint's lead title, Labyrinth of Desire: Women, Passion and Romantic Obsession by Rosemary Sullivan (Jan.), examines the many stories from history, film and literature on which women base their conceptions of romantic love, in a book that was a Canadian bestseller.
Handseller's Delight
"It used to be that January and August were barren months for fiction—a perfect time to introduce new voices who could captivate reviewers and booksellers looking for a discovery," Riverhead's co-editorial director, Julie Grau, told PW. Though editors may lament the increasingly crowded winter fiction field, booksellers can take heart in a wide range of offerings from familiar names and enticing newcomers.
Many of the usual suspects in commercial fiction make their return. Familiar faces include Elmore Leonard (Tishomingo Blues , Morrow, Feb.), Carl Hiassen (Basket Case, Knopf, Jan.), Nevada Barr (Hunting Season: An Anna Pigeon Mystery, Putnam, Feb.), and Nora Roberts (Three Fates, Putnam, Apr.).
Several authors who were bookseller discoveries in previous years are back with much-anticipated new books. Fans of Susan Vreeland's Girl in Hyacinth Blue will encounter another historical heroine in The Passion of Artemesia (Viking, Feb.). One of the first female painters to gain acclaim in the male-dominated world of 17th-century baroque Italian art, Artemesia Gentileschi's life was shaped by several powerful dramas, including the court trial in which, at age seventeen, she accused her artist father's best friend of rape. Happily, publication will coincide with an exhibit of Gentileschi's paintings at the Metropolitan Museum that will travel to St. Louis in June. Given Vreeland's 250,000-copy sales track, her book is bound to surpass Alexandra Lapierre's similar novel, Artemesia, published in the U.S. by Grove Press in September 2000.
Also coming in February is the hotly anticipated fiction debut of James McBride, author of one of Riverhead's most successful homegrown bestsellers, The Color of Water. Set in Italy in WWII and based on the famed Buffalo Soldiers of the 92nd Infantry, Miracle at Saint Ana focuses on four American Negro men, a band of partisans and an Italian boy who find redemption in the aftermath of a massacre.
Meanwhile, hand-sell favorite Chris Bohjalian returns in March withThe Buffalo Soldier. Hailed by some Random House reps as "his best yet," it features a white couple who adopts a 10-year-old African-American boy after the tragic death of their twin daughters. Having zoomed to the top of the lists when Oprah chose Midwives for her book club, Bohjalian faced the inevitable post-Oprah sales decline for his next two novels. But Harmony "still feels strongly that we can grow him and increase his sales significantly," reports Tina Constable. Preceded by "tons" of ARCs, Bohjalian will tour in March, though he will barely have cooled his heels from a 10-city tour in October for the Vintage paperback of Trans-sister Radio.
For what will undoubtedly be one of the season's most sought-after events, Susan Minot and Richard Ford will tour together for Knopf in February. Both authors address relationships between men and women: Minot in a short novel, Rapture, and Ford in a collection of stories, A Multitude of Sins. According to Random's Ruth Liebmann, Minot's is a novel to be read in one night, curled up in bed with a glass of wine. "The whole book is about what some at our meeting politely called a single sexual interlude. It will be delicious to sell," she declares, slyly admitting, "there will be some vocabulary choices to be made" in presenting its delicate subject to customers.
Other returning literary lions include William Kennedy with Roscoe (Viking, Jan.). Associate publisher Paul Slovak describes it as the "big, ambitious political novel" the author of Ironweed has always wanted to write, about "an unscrupulous, Falstaffian lawyer who runs the political machine in Albany, N.Y., between the wars." British authors Sebastian Faulks and Doris Lessing also deliver new novels in January and February. Faulks's On Green Dolphin Street from Random House is his first to be set in the U.S., while Lessing's Sweetest Dream, which takes place in London in the 1960s, marks her return to realistic fiction "at the top of her form," according to one excited HarperCollins rep.
For first novels, the surest sign of a good read is the enthusiasm of reps who aren't personally involved in selling the book. Over at Random House, two of the most talked-about galleys revolve around themes of family and self-discovery: Crow Lake by Canadian Mary Lawson (Dial) and Ann Packer's April debut from Knopf, The Dive from Clausen's Pier. Slated for a 75,000-copy first printing, Packer's novel delivers an emotional wallop every few pages, according to Paul Bogaards, reminding early readers of Sue Miller.
At Penguin Putnam, reps on both sides of the adult sales force are buzzing about two Viking titles. The first, Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, introduces a motherless white girl whose only real companion is her black "stand-in mother." The two set off on a feel-good Southern spree that ends in the care of three black bee-keeping sisters and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. Replete with endorsements from Anita Shreve, Christina Schwarz and Ursula Hegi, this January title has an anticipated 60,000-copy first printing. The second is British author Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, set in a dystopian Great Britain circa 1985—a virtual police state, where time travel is routine and fiction can trump fact. Heroine Thursday Next is a special operative in literary detection, trailing a kidnapper who has plucked Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel. Rep discussions yielded a dizzying array of comparisons: Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Adams, Lewis Carroll and the films Brazil and Pleasantville. Most unusual is the author's Web site, thursdaynext.com, which Slovak believes could generate Blair Witch Project—level buzz that will help move the anticipated 50,000-copy first printing and pave the way for a sequel slated for 2003. In a radical show of commitment, Viking will bring Fforde across the Atlantic to meet select booksellers in January, and again in March for a six-city author tour.
A handful of first novels dealing with South Asian themes have also captivated early readers. Crown is uncharacteristically leading its list in January with a work of fiction, When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe. Liz Wilner, Random's district sales manager for Northern California (where the author lives) has compared her voice to Amy Tan's in The Joy Luck Club, making it her personal mission to jumpstart this novel set in the final week of the Japanese-American battle for the Philippines during WWII. Two Indian authors also make their debuts this season. At Pocket, reps are "raving" about The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan, Reidy told PW. She describes it as an adaptation of a 16th-century epic about Mehrunnisa, the "sun of women." Meanwhile, in March, Harper will bring over the publisher of Penguin India, David Davidar, whose own first novel, The House of Blue Mangoes, is a tale of three generations of a southern Indian family that opens in 1899. (In an amusing twist, Davidar's author Vikram Seth was the first reader on his manuscript.)
Though there are notably fewer this season than in the past, at least one of Bridget Jones's progeny should thrive: Bantam's original trade paperback Shopaholic Takes Manhattan is Sophie Kinsella's sequel to Confessions of a Shopaholic, which has shipped more than 100,000 copies.
Sticking to the Facts
Almost in a class by itself is the long awaited third volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon B. Johnson, Master of the Senate, which will surely tower above most of the season's nonfiction and—despite its 1,152-page girth—rise to the top of critics' reading piles and April bestseller lists. In addition to touting a first serial sale to the New Yorker, Paul Bogaards reports that Knopf's Web site has logged more queries about the publication date of this volume (the last one was 10 years ago) than they have received for their other titles combined.
In memoir, Random has a lock on some of the season's biggest titles: Sandra Day O'Connor's account of her childhood at Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest, co-written with her brother Alan Day (Feb.); Willie Nelson's Facts of Life and Other Dirty Jokes (Apr.) and Maya Angelou's Song Flung Up to Heaven (Apr.), the culmination of the six-volume autobiography she began more than 30 years ago with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Among the first-timers ripe for discovery are Don't Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood by Alexandra Fuller, a white woman who tells of growing up on a farm in Rhodesia in a family that survived land mines and civil war, despite a father who fought on the losing side. Those who've read it have loved her "fresh, funny, pitiless voice," said Random House's executive director of publicity, Carol Schneider. Several Random House reps with a reputation for picking winners early also loved Breaking Clean (Feb.), Judy Blunt's memoir of survival in the man's world of the Montana plains that, according to Ruth Liebmann, arrived from Knopf without hype, but has stirred powerful reactions.
Two of the season's most intriguing political books come from extraordinarily accomplished, mediagenic young women. Dubbed a "diva" of the conservative movement by Bill Maher of Politically Incorrect and dissed by David Brock, Ann Coulter charges that the national debate is more bitter than it should be in Loathing on the Left: The Liberal Compulsion to Hate Conservatives. A legal affairs correspondent and the bestselling author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors, she is "one of the most well-positioned media folks for this type of book," according to Carie Friemuth, HarperCollins' associate publisher, who notes an anticipated 100,000-copy first printing. And in a work that Matty Goldberg, Perseus Books Group sales and marketing v-p calls "the quintessential Basic book," Samantha Power tackles "A Problem from Hell": America's Failure to Prevent Genocide (Mar.). Not yet 30, Power was a reporter in the former Yugoslavia for U.S. News & World Report before becoming executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Her probing study of the confluence of holocaust remembrance in America and our diplomatic and military policy of nonengagement has already won passionate praise from Doris Kearns Goodwin. Rep enthusiasm helped boost the sales target from 30,000 to 40,000 copies. In a more personal exploration of international politics, Laura Blumenfeld traveled to Israel to find a Palestinian terrorist who shot seven tourists, including her father (who survived the attack), 10 years before. In Revenge: A Love Story (S&S, Apr.), she relates not only her interior journey but also the terrorist's life story, based on her visits to his family. Citing a 75,000-copy first printing, Reidy calls it a book of "phenomenal depth." Though she admits, "this story is not necessarily an easy sell," she reports that "we all came away convinced that the reviews will sell it."
For those reps whose enthusiasm for the pieties of corporate life may have waned just a tiny bit by sales conference's end, perhaps Mike Daisy's 21 Dog Years: Doing Time at Amazon.com (Free Press, Apr.), based on his hit one-man show, will be a refreshing antidote: at least most reps don't have stock options to worry about.
