It doesn't matter whether you're talking to a publisher, a distributor or a bookseller. Everyone is saying the same thing: "There are too many books."
Whether publishers are motivated by plucky optimism or cannibal instincts, they are pushing an astonishing number of September 11—related books into the market. Estimates for the fall season range from 65 titles (a number floated at BookExpo America) to 150 (the number calculated by Ingram)—clearly a high-water mark for book tie-ins to a single news event. And that's not counting the scores of instant books and six-month-anniversary tie-ins that have already come and gone.
One book reproduces watercolors of Ground Zero painted by an artist in the lower Manhattan neighborhood of TriBeCa (Out of the Ruins by Jean Holabird, Gingko, Sept.). Another presents quilts inspired by the World Trade Center (America from the Heart, edited by Karey Bresenhan, C&T, July). A children's book by Christine Kole MacLean declares that Even Firefighters Hug Their Moms (Dutton, Aug.). There are books about September 11 and immigration, September 11 and the environment, the effects of September 11 in Newfoundland. All these, in addition to the expected deluge of stories about heroes, survivors and villains, are leaving booksellers wondering when it will end and who's going to read all these books.
Retailers are approaching the question based largely on the regional appeal of each title. Though Borders is planning a "Remembrance of 9/11" display in stores throughout the nation, the chain's divisional merchandise manager, Susan Yeager, noted that "not all of the books will get national distribution; some will get regional positioning only, mostly the very specific New York area titles."
At Atlanta's Chapter 11 bookstore chain, buyer Frazer Dobson is trying to stock a wide selection, but isn't certain that readers are still interested enough to justify serious commitment to more than just a few titles. "Six months ago, I definitely would have bought more. Now I'm more cautious, trying to stay lean," he said.
In Seattle, Jay Weaver, buyer for the University Bookstore, is simply "hoping that it all calms down. Not being on the East Coast, I don't know—maybe these publishers are selling a lot back there. But I don't see that we'll sell much here." Last year, Weaver added, the store had a reading list and a prominent table for September 11 books. But this fall it will be downsized significantly. "It would be overkill to do anything big again," said Weaver, reflecting the experiences of many West Coast booksellers who reported being underwhelmed by sales for such titles.
"It's going to be a real challenge for bookstores to represent all the books that are out there," said Nancy Stewart, senior buyer at Ingram Book Group. "They're going to have to make some tough decisions. No other [single event] has had so many tie-ins," she said. "In a sense, it was a very comprehensive kind of disaster. It hit us in many different areas."
The array of titles is, of course, only part of the 9/11 phenomenon. Network and cable TV outlets are already planning marathon, nonstop news coverage around September 11. The media intensity is likely to exceed anything seen before—bigger than the Olympics, the JFK assassination, the O.J. Simpson trial, Princess Diana's death or the election debacle of 2000.
Publishers are adding to the frenzy. In the days following the attacks, most approached the media tentatively, eschewing any hint of exploiting the tragedy and often donating book proceeds to victim funds. But now, many are aiming squarely for September 11 pub dates and pitching hard for anniversary media coverage. Many are also wrestling with the ethics of profiting from the anniversary, trying to determine how much, if any, of their proceeds they will donate to September 11 charities. Whatever they may decide in the next few weeks, at this point, one thing is certain: the books are coming. Will the readers come with them?
A Crowded Market
"We went at this knowing we were going to face a crowded market," acknowledged Susan Weinberg, editor-in-chief at HarperCollins, perhaps the most aggressive of the big publishers in pursuing 9/11 titles. "So we only selected books that had a strong, compelling reason for being published."
Chief among these, said Weinberg, is On Top of the World by Howard Lutnick and Tom Barbash (Sept., 250,000 printing). Lutnick is CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, the firm that lost more than 600 employees in the World Trade Center. "It's a staggering tragedy, obviously, and totally unique," said Weinberg. "No one else can tell a story like this one." She's also trusting its uniqueness to distinguish Jere Longman's Among the Heroes (Aug., 75,000 printing). So far, it's the only book that attempts to tell the story of United Flight 93, the hijacked airliner that crashed in Pennsylvania. First serial rights have been sold to People and Reader's Digest.
Under the ReganBooks imprint, HarperCollins is also publishing New York Fire Commissioner Thomas von Essen's memoir, Strong of Heart (Sept., 125,000 printing), as well as The Day the World Came to Town by James DeFede (Sept., 40,000 printing), which chronicles how the residents of Gander, Newfoundland, responded when international flights were stranded in their tiny town for several days following September 11.
Other publishers are jumping in with their own entries in the hero sweepstakes. Basic Books is releasing So Others Might Live (Nov., 100,000 printing), the first history of the New York Fire Department in more than half a century. Author Terry Golway is an Irish-American whose father, father-in-law and several uncles were all firefighters. Continuing the firefighter theme is Father Mike by New York Daily News columnist Michael Daly (St. Martin's Press, Nov.; 50,000), which tells the story of the popular NYFD chaplain who was one of the first ground casualties of the WTC disaster. Simon & Schuster's The Heart of a Soldier by James Stewart (Sept., 100,000) offers another casualty hero: Rick Rescorla, the Morgan Stanley chief of security who perished when he went back up into Tower 2 to look for stragglers. (In a rather morbid synergistic twist, Rescorla, a Vietnam veteran, was also the subject of the recent We Were Soldiers biopic starring Mel Gibson.)
Even Marvel Comics, which had a million-copy seller last fall with its Heroes comic book about the NYFD, is hoping that the "hero angle" still has play. In July, the house is launching a six-issue comic series called The Call of Duty: The Precinct by Bruce Jones (of Incredible Hulk fame), focusing on the NYPD.
The prospects for these "survivor/casualty" titles are promising, if we can read anything into the success of Richard Picciotto's Last Man Down (Berkeley, Apr.) and David Halberstam's Firehouse (Hyperion, May), both of which tell personal stories about firefighters at Ground Zero and reached the Publishers Weekly bestseller list by early May and June, respectively. But the big question remains: Have people moved on? "Nobody knows the answer," admitted Ingram's Stewart. For her part, Stewart said, "We've been looking at the books that did well last year, and at the surprises, and focusing on books similar to those."
Lessons Learned
For many months after September 11, academic and small press titles led the way. Books such as Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong? (Oxford), Noam Chomsky's 9-11 (Seven Stories) and Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace (Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books)—along with backlist reliables like Karen Armstrong's Islam: A Short History (Vintage) and Thomas Friedman's From Beirut to Jerusalem (Anchor)—gave readers the in-depth background they needed to make sense of events. Yet not everyone is convinced that these titles, or similar titles coming this fall, will continue to have legs. "That boom may be over," said Debi Morris, buyer for Barbara's Bookstore in Chicago. "I'm representing those the way I would have before September 11. I think people have pretty much already found the resources they need."
Carla Cohen, owner of Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., is taking the opposite tack. "The world is still in such a precarious state, the Middle East is so terrible, that I think people will continue to want information," she said. "Our customers still want serious books."
Borders's Susan Yeager also anticipates continued commercial performance from the more scholarly books. "The kind of quality, thought-provoking titles that routinely come from small/academic presses are of more interest to the general reader than they were a year ago," she said.
Two of the more notable offerings from smaller publishers are Silencing PoliticalDissent by Nancy Chang (Seven Stories, July) and It's a Free Country, edited by Robert Greenwald et al. (RDV Books/ Akashic, Oct.), both of which focus on free speech and civil liberties amid the war on terrorism. Greenwald's compilation includes essays by Michael Moore, Cornel West and Patti Smith. Chang's biggest competition may come from her own house; Seven Stories publisher Dan Simon reports that he's releasing (and, in some cases, reissuing) a wave of pamphlet-sized books this summer and fall, including several by Chomsky. "Our whole list has been buoyed by September 11," said Simon, who has sold 180,000 copies of 9-11 so far, from an 8,000 initial printing. Among his upcoming titles are Israel/Palestine from Tel Aviv University professor Tanya Reinhart (July), and a "post—September 11 edition" of Chomsky's Media Control (July), which was Seven Stories' all-time top seller prior to 9-11.
In the realm of academic publishers, Oxford, which scored big last winter with Bernard Lewis, is turning to its other resident expert on the Middle East. John Esposito has two books coming this November: What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (40,000 printing) and The Dictionary of Islam (10,000). The latter is organized in a quick-and-dirty Q&A format to answer such basic questions as "What is jihad?" and "Does the Koran advocate terrorism?" "John was finding that after lectures, on call-in shows, people were asking him the most basic kinds of questions," says Oxford v-p Ellen Chodosh. Esposito has become a "go-to guy" for networks and newspapers on issues relating to Islam, she explained, and she's counting on that to bolster sales. But Esposito, evidently a very busy man, may be flooding his own market: Oxford published his Unholy War just last March.
Meanwhile, Yale, which had its own breakout hit with Ahmed Rashid's Taliban, is releasing Why Terrorism Works by Alan Dershowitz (Sept., 50,000 printing). The book grew out of Dershowitz's notorious November op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, which defended the limited use of torture when interrogating terrorist suspects. "It's a very good, serious book about finding a balance between security and civil liberties," said Yale publishing director Tina Weiner, who had just finished reading the galleys when PW called. "[It's about] what we may have to give up in order to be safe."
Like other publishers, Weiner is hyperaware that her book is just one voice among a clamoring multitude. "I'm sure everybody is saying 'our book is different,' " Weiner said. "But our book really is. I think Alan's name on the cover gives us that." Dershowitz's controversial stance on torture may not hurt, either.
Not Why, but How
As the reaction to September 11 continues to evolve, publishers are changing tack to keep up with the public's shifting interests. If the question of the first six months was "Why did this happen?" the questions for the next six may be "How did it happen?" and "Who's to blame?"
Regnery, no stranger to controversy, is at the head of the pack pointing fingers. Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11 by Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz (Sept., 100,000 printing) and Invasion: How America Lets Terrorists, Torturers, and Other Foreign Criminals Right Through the Front Door by syndicated columnist and first-generation American Michelle Malkin (Sept., 100,000 printing), take the U.S. intelligence community and the INS, respectively, to task for failing to detect and stop the terrorists. Random House is also playing the blame game, with The Age of Sacred Terror by Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon (Oct., 100,000). The authors, both former members of President Clinton's National Security Council, detail how the government failed to recognize the growing threat posed by radical Islam during the 1990s.
Perhaps the most prominent contender in this category is Hyperion's The Cell: Inside the 9/11 Plot and Why the FBI and CIA Failed to Stop It by John Miller, Michael Stone and Chris Mitchell (Aug., 150,00o printing). Miller, the first American journalist ever to interview Osama bin Laden, will be the beneficiary of some happy synergism: he's a correspondent for ABC News, which shares a corporate parent—Disney—with Hyperion. On August 16 and 19, respectively, ABC's 20/20 and Good Morning America will devote segments to the issues raised by The Cell.
Regnery's other foray into the 9/11 arena is Bill Sammon's Let's Roll: Inside the White House's War on Terrorism (Oct., 75,000 printing). The White House correspondent for the Washington Times, Sammon will be competing head to head against the 600-pound gorilla in this category, Bob Woodward, whose similarly themed Bush at War comes out in November (S&S, 600,000 printing). "We're not worried about it," proclaimed Alfred Regnery Jr., the company's publisher. "The books will probably be reviewed together, but they have different perspectives and offer very different things to the reader." Nevertheless, Woodward has the edge on experience and access: his behind-the-curtain peek at the current president's father, The Commanders, was a huge bestseller in 1991.
On the bioterrorism front, Richard Preston wades into Judith Miller (Germs) territory with his The Demon in the Freezer (Random House, Oct.; 250,000 printing). Preston, author of the bestselling The Hot Zone, is sure to induce nightmares, if not sales, with his dire warnings about superviruses, "the biological equivalent of the nuclear bomb."
Finally, FSG is shooting for a more reflective approach with three-time Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes: America in the Age of Terrorism (Aug.), a collection of Friedman's post-September 11 columns from the New York Times, plus a selection from his personal diaries.
Reliving 9/11
And then there's September 11 itself: the one-year anniversary and the memories that go with it. Publishers are betting that the public will still have an appetite for anything and everything having to do with the actual "day of infamy," especially anything having to do with the World Trade Center. Some species of 9/11 books that some booksellers say are extinct—photography books, eyewitness accounts and reporter diaries—will be trying for a comeback this fall.
Among booksellers, one of the most highly anticipated WTC books is American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by longtime war correspondent William Langewiesche (North Point, Oct.). The result of Langewiesche's five-month vigil at Ground Zero, American Ground will run first as a three-part series in the Atlantic Monthly beginning in July and then will be slightly expanded into book form for fall publication. Less grandly conceived is Thunder's Mouth/Nation Books' At Ground Zero, edited by Chris Bull and Sam Erman (Sept.), a collection of eyewitness accounts of the attack from young reporters with NPR, the New York Daily News, New York Newsday and other publications. Both publishers are hoping that readers are hungry for more after Dennis Smith's similar March entry, Report from Ground Zero (Putnam).
Several books take a Studs Terkel approach to disaster and memory. Both Doubleday's September 11 by Dean Murphy (Aug., 50,000 printing) and ReganBooks' Never Forget by Mitchell Fink and Lois Mathias (Aug., 75,000) are oral histories that give people involved in the attack the chance to speak for themselves. Contributors range from such quotable notables as Rudy Giuliani and Fire Commissioner Thomas von Essen to firefighters, survivors and relatives of the victims. New York University Press takes a different approach, offering a collection of literary fiction, poetry and short nonfiction by diverse writers—including Paul Auster, Vivan Gornick, Edwidge Danticat, Amitav Ghosh and Art Spiegelman—in 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11, edited by NYU professor Ulrich Baer (Sept.).
And then we get the photography books. Though Life's One Nation and the Magnum photographers' New York, September 11 were blockbusters a few months after the attacks, conventional wisdom says that photo books won't have legs a year or more later. But at least three publishers are gambling that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The biggest buzz, according to several booksellers interviewed for this article, is swirling around Above Hallowed Ground by the photographers of the New York Police Department (Viking Studio, Aug., 150,000 first print). The NYPD photographers were the only ones allowed in the air immediately after the tragedy, and from their helicopter, they took "absolutely amazing, stunning," pictures, said Viking's Gretchen Moss. "There's nothing else like them anywhere." Most people who have seen the book agree; Viking is supporting the book with a 150,000 printing.
Among the other photo books, you can never dismiss the New York Times, which is flexing its Pulitzer muscle with A Nation Challenged: A Visual History of 9/11 and Its Aftermath (Callaway, July). But the big kid on this particular block comes from S&S, which is teaming up with CBS News to produce What We Saw: The Events of September 11, 2001 in Words, Pictures, and Video (Aug., 250,000 printing). Buoyed by a foreword from Dan Rather, the book comes packaged with a DVD providing documentary and news footage from September 11.
And the Winner Is...
Obviously, no one can predict what titles will come up big in the fall. But Yeager, from Borders, said the chain has identified six key titles that are as close to "sure things" as anything can be: CBS's What We Saw; Howard Lutnick and Tom Barbash's On Top of the World; Thomas Friedman's Longitudes and Attitudes; Bill Gertz's Breakdown; the NYPD photographers' Above Hallowed Ground; and Thomas Van Essen's Strong of Heart. "Each of these books has a unique, compelling or timely element that will make them of particular interest to readers, and will likely garner more media attention," said Yeager.
Such prognostications aside, there is still considerable uncertainty in the nation's bookstores. But at least one publisher thinks interest will continue well past this year. Random House recently announced that it had signed New Yorker architecture critic Paul Goldberger for a book about the rebuilding of Ground Zero and the future of the World Trade Center site. Scheduled publication date: September 2003.
