In the middle of The Fabulous Trashwagon, a novel that will be published in October by car-racing enthusiast Burt "B.S." Levy, readers will find an odd thing: a 40-page, full-color racing program from a 1955 road race at Elkhart Lake, Wisc., in which Levy's protagonist competes at the novel's climax. The race is imaginary, and so, in a sense, is the program. But not entirely, since its advertisements represent the goods and services of real businesses. In fact, the ads are underwriting the publication of 12,000 copies of the novel.
It's all part of the innovative business strategy that Levy has devised for his self-published trilogy of novels focusing on the "golden age" of road racing in the 1950s. Levy hit upon the idea of creating an ad insert for his novel in 1999, after a disappointing experience with St. Martin's, which published his first novel, The Last Open Road. "It just sort of died there," said Levy. "So I figured I'd be better off doing everything myself."
For his second novel, Montezuma's Ferrari, Levy raised $55,000 by selling quarter-, half- and full-page ads for an insert that masqueraded as a racing magazine. The effort won Levy a 2000 Benjamin Franklin Book of the Year award from the Publisher's Marketing Association. For The Fabulous Trashwagon, Levy was able to raise $68,000—more than enough to cover the initial printing.
"Motor racing is sponsor-driven, so it's only natural that a novel about motor racing would have sponsors, too," said Jack Webster, owner of Classic Impressions Automotive Art (a retailer of car memorabilia). "Especially because of the way Burt has done it, incorporating the ads into the storyline, I think it actually adds to the book."
Webster is one of Levy's key advertisers, but he's also a distributor and bookseller—one of dozens of motorsport vendors around the country who sell Levy's books through their stores, catalogues and Web sites. For Levy, the arrangement is advantageous: he takes 40% of the $30 cover price of his hardcovers, far more than he receives from other channels.
Since he finished his first novel in 1994, Levy has printed 58,000 hardcover copies of his books (three novels plus The Potside Companion, a collection of his journalism for various motorsport magazines) and claims close to $1 million in gross sales. He estimates that only 3,000— 4,000 copies have been sold through Amazon.com. Even fewer have been sold through conventional bricks-and-mortar bookstores, which usually stock his novels in the fiction section, "somewhere between Doris Lessing and Sinclair Lewis," he told PW, adding, "that's not where my readers look. I belong in the auto section." Though sales through the book trade are less lucrative for Levy, he is trying to increase them, and has signed with Ingram.
Familiarity with his audience may be Levy's greatest strength. A longtime vintage auto racer, Levy makes frequent appearances at racetracks all over the country for booksignings and other promotional stunts. This summer, he sold more than 1,000 copies of his books at the larger events (the biggest, like the annual endurance race at Sebring, Fla., can draw more than 100,000 people).
Levy plans to write another racing trilogy, focusing on secondary characters from the first series. Barring unforeseen interest from a major publisher, he will use the same approach, selling ads to finance production. He's confident that his readership will continue to expand. "They like my books, and they've got money to burn," said Levy. "Sports cars and vintage car racing are expensive hobbies. Nascar this is not."
