On April 30, 2002, Jean Auel's 12-year silence will be broken with the publication of Shelters of Stone, the fifth novel in the Earth Children series about prehistoric life, which began more than 20 years ago with Clan of the Cave Bear. Despite, or perhaps because of, the long hiatus, Auel fans are ready and waiting for the new installment. "I don't know why it's taken her 12 years to write this book, but it was a smart move, given the level of anticipation that's out there," observed the Tattered Cover's Margaret Maupin. "It might be argued that some of her readers have left her, but she is a great storyteller and no one has replaced her for her readers, despite many wannabes."
It's easy to see why Auel has so many imitators: her previous four books have sold more than 34 million copies worldwide in 26 languages, including more than 3.5 million hardcovers and 12 million paperbacks in the U.S. alone. For Shelters of Stone, Crown plans an initial print run of approximately 1.3 million (including 2,448 eight-copy displays), based on advance orders for 1.1 million copies of the $28.95 hardcover.
Booksellers are looking forward to the book as much as readers. "This is going to be one of the biggest books of the summer season," declared Ingram senior product manager Nancy Stewart. "It doesn't look like it will have a lot of competition until July." Added Borders fiction buyer Robert Teicher, "We're looking at this as a year-long promotion; we're ramping up for Shelters of Stone right now, and we'll continue to promote it throughout summer and come back with it big time next Christmas. We think this will be one of bigger novels of the 2002 holiday season."
So far, the book has been marked by extraordinary early reader interest. At Amazon.com, bestseller editor Tim Appelo reported that "advance orders were creeping up before last Christmas, even though the new book's cover wasn't yet on the site." Shelters of Stone has already hit #60 on the Amazon list. "That's the kind of performance you usually see with Stephen King, whose new book is now ranked at 152, though it's coming out a month earlier than Auel's and he's on everyone's minds with the ABC miniseries Rose Red," explained Appelo. Libraries have also logged an unusually high number of reader reserve requests. According to Library Journal, the book is already on track to rival the popularity of the last Harry Potter book at the Multnomah Country Library, which serves Auel's hometown of Portland, Ore.
An Iconoclastic Career
In 1979, The Clan of the Cave Bear garnered one of the highest advances then paid for North American rights to a first book by an unknown author, in one of the rare auctions for such a title. (Newly arrived editor-in-chief Carole Baron had to talk fast to convince Crown owner Nat Wartels to buy it for $130,000.) A bestseller in hardcover, Clan hit #1 in paperback, a success that has been matched by the hardcover and paperback editions of her three subsequent novels.
Auel set a major record with her third book, The Mammoth Hunters (1985), which became the first hardcover novel to achieve a first printing of more than a million copies, and this well before the emergence of major chains made that level of distribution more easily attainable for top authors. Her fourth, Plains of Passage (1990), surpassed that record with a first printing of 1.6 million copies and a debut at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, selling a whopping 100,000 copies in its first two days on sale.
In 1989, Auel signed separate hardcover and paperback deals, with Crown and Bantam (before Bantam was a part of Random House), for the series' last three books, with a rumored price tag of $8 million—$10 million per title for North American rights only. Since last June, her agent, Jean Naggar, has raked in nearly $8 million for translation rights to Shelters of Stone—a sum that's believed to be a record for a fiction work—from more than 20 foreign publishers. On the audio front, Shelters drew five bidders, ending in a deal with Brilliance Corporation that ran well into six —figures, when most audio deals fetch far less than $100,000. "As astronomical as her advances have been, she has earned out on every book so far," observed Naggar, whose interest was piqued originally by a "very, very good" query letter from Auel after they met at a writers conference in Willamette, Wash., in the late '70s.
What's the source of Auel's enduring appeal? As Tim Appelo put it, "Auel is unique in combining elements from so many genres—the books are historical novels, with elements of romance and fantasy. She builds an encyclopedically comprehensive alternative world in the way Tolkien built his, with bricks of scholarship." Praised by archeologists for its accuracy, the series has met with wild success despite literary critics' objections to anachronistic dialogue, "his-loins-ached-with-need" sex scenes and long, detailed passages about ice age flora, fauna, weather and even soil conditions. Not even the campy 1986 movie of Clan, adapted by John Sayles, directed by Michael Chapman and starring Darryl Hannah, could take the wind out of Auel's sales, though it did prompt her to sue the production company and reclaim the rights to two of her other books after it was made.
'Pre-heat and Repromote'
Calling Shelters of Stone "potentially our biggest book of the decade," Crown v-p and associate publisher Andrew Martin admitted, "There's definitely marketing that has to take place, especially after 12 years. It's a matter of alerting the faithful, reminding people about the series and finding new readers. The goal of our unified publishing program with Bantam and Brilliance Audio is to preheat the market, repromote when Shelters of Stone comes out in April, and keep the momentum going through Christmas."
Crown's first step was to issue repackaged hardcover editions of Auel's backlist, based on the substantial demand that emerged the last two times a new book came out. This time, Crown made its move more than five months before the publication of Auel's latest. In November, it shipped an eye-popping 84,000 hardcover copies (including 1,800 eight-copy displays) of The Clan of the Cave Bear—which includes two teaser chapters from Shelters of Stone. Each of the three other books shipped 15,000 copies (including about 450 mixed displays). Though sales to date have been moderate, both Borders and independent booksellers reported that front-of-store placement and special displays have helped nurture anticipation for Shelters of Stone.
On the paperback side, Bantam will stagger the release of the updated mass market editions, each of which carries a 14-page "preview" of Shelters of Stone. The first two novels go on sale March 5; the second two on April 2, backed by print advertising. The accompanying floor display—illuminated by a (battery-operated) fire in a cave—is the kind of extravagant dump rarely seen since the '80s. Later in the season, on June 25, Bantam will issue trade paperback editions.
As for how Auel's backlist is likely to perform, the Tolkien comparison remains apt for many booksellers. Cathy Kirby, purchasing and publishing relations manager at Powell's in Portland, predicted that the sales will look a lot like Tolkien's leading up to the release of Lord of the Rings: "We sold about two or three times more mass market copies than we did in hardcover and trade paper. Still, there's always a hardcover customer because of the collectibility factor."
To alert Auel's faithful readers, Crown has produced pre- and post-pub merchandising kits for bookstores and libraries that include posters announcing the publication date for Shelters. In addition to setting up a new Web site (sheltersofstone.com), which features streaming video interviews with Auel that can be transmitted via e-mail, Crown is also working directly with ecfans.com, a portal to scores of sites related to the series. To tap into the most actively engaged fan base, the house has launched The Great Search for Ayla, an online contest that will culminate before Mother's Day. Young women named after the series' main character (or their parents) can participate by sending a birth certificate and a photo to Crown to enter a drawing for a framed personal letter from Auel, and a leather-bound edition of Shelters of Stone (there have been 34 entries since January). There's also a bookstore display contest this spring, for which the prize is an appearance by Auel at the winning store.
On the audio front, Brilliance's unabridged version will be available in a 20-cassette set for $59.95 and in a 28-CD set for $79.95, along with reissues of Auel's entire backlist. (Auel doesn't allow condensed versions.) Brilliance's Eileen Hutton maintains that despite the hefty price tag, the CD set is a good value, compared to audiobooks with fewer CDs that often sell for the same price. To back up the biggest first printing they've ever done, Brilliance will promote the audiobooks all year with special co-op and display materials.
Just before Shelters of Stone goes on-sale, Auel's publishers from around the world will join her at the Lascaux caves in France's Dordogne Valley (where the book is set) for the book's worldwide launch, with international media in attendance. In early May, she will appear as a breakfast speaker at BEA in New York City, before kicking off her month-long tour with a Today Show appearance and heading to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Kansas City, Minneapolis, Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco amid a massive TV and radio ad blitz.
Although it's an open question whether Crown's efforts will draw in readers who have come of age since Plains of Passage was published in 1990—let alone the Gen-Xers for whom Darryl Hannah's onscreen grunts have become legendary—booksellers across the board are bullish. As Borders's Teicher points out, "The strength of Auel's backlist sales is a sign that younger readers are attracted to the series; they have been discovering her even without a new book. And this book isn't just for the women's market. I think we're going to see male readers buying it, too." For her part, Powell's Cathy Kirby predicted that the massive hype around Shelters of Stone will intrigue the uninitiated: "When the new book comes out and the buzz builds, it will bring in a whole generation of new readers." Added the Tattered Cover's Margaret Maupin, "Even the youngest bookseller knows about Jean Auel, because they've already seen her backlist march out of the store."
For booksellers, the bigger question may be, how long until the next book? Though Crown isn't saying, it's no doubt a relief to all concerned that Auel wrote a rough draft of the final book in the series before finishing Shelters of Stone.
