Nobody said it publicly, but one of the many upsides, for HarperCollins, of canceling the O.J. Simpson “confession” was that the house could now concentrate its considerable energies upon another of its major projects, scheduled, as usual, for release just at the beginning of the year's biggest shopping season. Michael Crichton's Next, with a laydown date of November 28, joins other blockbusters in the holiday big-book sweepstakes that began unofficially about a month ago.
But even without O.J., Crichton has plenty of competition. Despite publishers' repeated assurances that they will not place all their bets on fourth-quarter—specifically November and December—titles, they can't seem to help themselves. On the current PW fiction bestseller list, for example, at least eight of the 10 top titles are less than a month old; other lists show much the same character. So when Crichton's first weeks' numbers are added to the mix (probably in about two weeks) you can expect he'll be duking it out with his fellow-blockbusterites James Patterson, Nelson DeMille and Mary Higgins Clark, among others.
Obviously there is wisdom in publishers backloading their lists toward year's end; now that the day after Thanksgiving has an official name (Black Friday)—which always sounds more sinister than positive to me (have we all forgotten Black Tuesday?)—publishers can hardly ignore the big gift-giving season. But as everybody in the business knows, timing is just about everything in would-be blockbusterland: you're far more likely to land on a list with fewer copies sold (even just a few thousand) during a quiet week than make it to the top during a heavy sales period that offers a greater number of options, and there's something to be said for hitting the list, even if in a weak season. "The first three rules of publishing are timing, timing, timing," says one prominent editor. "We've occasionally changed a pub date because we heard somebody else was coming out with big book the same week. I think it happens all the time."
Over the years, publishers have taken a stab at creating other book-frenzy times, which is why, for example, earnest family-friendly titles from Tim Russert tend to appear around Father's Day. But if early fall is the time for literary lights—Richard Ford, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Frazier—these late November days are the time for the Sparkses, the Kings and the Baldaccis. (How exactly you'd classify Carl Hiaasen, whose hilarious books are a bit off the traditional thriller-blockbuster grid, is unclear; his Nature Girl, which pubbed November 14, landed at #5 in its first week.) And while there's certainly nothing wrong with putting your biggest titles out there when the most people are in the stores, spreading them out makes sense, too. Wouldn't it be great if there were some "lesser" titles getting more play—me, I'd vote for William Boyd's Restless—so that maybe, just maybe, consumers might by accident stumble on something new?
Besides, releasing some important consumer-friendly books at a time when there aren't so many to choose from might help drive traffic into the stores when the stores most need it. The way we do it now practically guarantees traffic tieups and book casualties.
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