BESTSELLERS & BEST FRIENDS
My book publishing blog, with murder mysteries woven through it.
If this is your first visit, be sure to start with “1. Let’s do it!”
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In 1982, at Little Brown, we published Blue Highways, by William Least Heat-Moon.
I loved everything about that book. Its clean, tight, reflective, nearly poetic writing. Its clever title (travel the blue lines on a map, not the heartless interstates). And the author’s name.
Everybody on the publishing team felt likewise. It was our passion project.
The market soon agreed with us. Great reviews. Booksellers joyfully handselling it. The word-of-mouth among excited readers nearly tangible.
Least Heat-Moon wasn’t literary elite, he was unknown and unproven. His writing didn’t come out of pretentious New York or California. His was of the heart and the heartland.
The book’s weekly sales were just under the rate needed to place it on the New York Times bestseller list. Each week we fell just short of the list by a slot or two.
It was late October. Peter Davison (book’s editor), David Goehring (sales director), and I (marketing guy) gathered in Little Brown’s first floor conference room at 34 Beacon Street.
(By the way, Peter was a brilliant editor and writer. In his day, he hung out with Robert Lowell, Robert Frost, Anne Sexton, Richard Wilbur, and Donald Hall. And he slept with Sylvia Plath which really pissed off Ted Hughes. But that’s a story for another day.)
If we were going to get Blue Highways onto the Times bestseller list, we were about out of time. Back then, 60% of all the books sold in a year, were sold in the 40 days prior to Christmas. The big holiday commercial books were now publishing. The bestseller challenge was only going to get a hell of a lot more difficult.
Peter Davison
We talked about how Blue Highways was the perfect gift. Everybody liked it, a delightful discovery. Perfect to give to anyone.
How could we make it the season’s obvious gift book? Place advertisements saying so? Nah, too expensive. And anyway, there were so many ads that time of the year, nobody would even notice. That’s just pissing cash away.
Convince bookstores to feature it as “the” gift book of the season? But how? Do what? Hire a thousand interns to stand in a thousand bookstores yelling, “Blue Highways is the perfect gift book!” Nah.
We thought about gifts at birthday parties and under Christmas trees.
They’re wrapped. That’s how you know it’s a gift.
Hold on! So what if Blue Highways was sold already gift-wrapped?
Unlike any other book in the bookstore.
You mean, actually gift-wrap the books?
But nobody’s ever done that before.
Exactly!
Now we were getting excited.
And we had a reprint of 15,000 due at the warehouse that day.
David ran to the production department where they wrapped a copy of Blue Highways with newspaper. They now knew how much wrapping paper was needed per book. They called suppliers.
Peter ran over to the book’s designer. She’d have a wrapping paper design in an hour.
We needed a sleeve on the book. For price, ISBN, etc. I called the designer back. Told her we also needed a sleeve by end of day. “No problem.” Like all of us, she loved the book and enjoyed the thrill of a cool idea.
I called the warehouse manager. She called Goodwill Industries. 30 minutes later, Goodwill confirmed it could put together a team of their residents to gift-wrap the books. It was a perfect task for them. And much-needed funding.
20 minutes later manufacturing called. “We can have wrapping paper and sleeves to warehouse by end of Tuesday.”
I called the warehouse manager back. Goodwill had meanwhile determined the time it took per-book-wrap, and confirmed that the warehouse could start shipping gift-wrapped Blue Highways on Friday. And they could get the remainder of the 15,000 reprint onto trucks by end of next Tuesday.
David got on the phone in his office. He called Waldenbooks. And Dalton. Then Barnes and Noble. 25 minutes later, with a big grin on his face (he just loved moments like this), David updated us, “Walden’s in for 3,000. Dalton for 4,000. B&N for 7,900. And Barbara at Grapes of Wrath took 100, figuring she can sell them along with all those autographed books of hers,” David kept smiling, “Gentlemen, we just sold out the 15,000 printing.”
And that’s why Barbara’s death reminds me of Blue Highways. Sigh.
Anyway, it all worked! Two weeks later after those gift-wrapped books hit stores and sold (like crazy), Blue Highways went onto the bestseller list. And stayed on the list for the next 42 weeks.
Gift-wrapped Blue Highways
God, but I loved doing stuff like that! Best feeling in the world (at least my world).
And we could do stuff like that back then. The money to do it was mine to manage, the accounts were David’s, the book was Peter’s. No calling together big meetings for a shared covering-of-asses, or checking with some overlord, just do it! Nowadays, the motivation to work seems to be fear, not the thrill of causing success. When I was at Pearson (for 23 years) its CEO, Marjorie Scardino, was a great believer in “just do it, ask forgiveness later.” And she didn’t just say it, she truly had your back. I got more done working for her than at any other stretch in my career. It was the most freeing, empowering, liberating, make-a-real-difference way to do your life’s work. I miss that!
Thanks, David, thanks Marjorie, and here’s to Peter (miss you!).
Oh, and when I recently compiled a collection of quotations, The Truth About Writing, Bill kindly gave a tip of the hat to the good old times, and provided the book's foreword.
Tomorrow: Hoping for the Vanessa and Jim calls