18. Let’s try this again — Robert Parker, his dog Pearl, Freeman, and me

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Weird thing is that what I was going to blog about yesterday, before learning that Freeman died, is maybe an even better thing to write about now that Freeman’s died.

Being fans of Robert Parker’s Spenser books, Freeman and I got a special kick out of Spenser’s dog, Pearl.  And smiled that Parker’s own dogs had the same name.

Years ago, a friend invited me to Parker’s house in Cambridge for drinks and a tour of the house.  Cool! 

My friend had bought that chance in a fund-raising auction. I phoned Freeman immediately.  He was as excited as I was.

Parker, and a Pearl

Parker’s house, the room with the window to the left of the door was his office

Then Freeman said, “You gotta grab something for me.  You know, like an ashtray or a pen.” That hardly aligned with Parker’s charitable intent, but hey, I do like a challenge.

I was curious to see the house because Parker and his wife, Joan, had an intriguing arrangement.  He lived on the first floor, she on the third.  On the second floor is where they met for meals and entertained. 

Otherwise, they stayed out of each other’s hair.  Brilliant.  And it had made for a long marriage.

Five of us showed up, had a drink with the Parkers in their garden, then Joan gave us a tour of the house. 

In the front door and to the left was Parker’s small office.  (He would die at the office’s desk within the year.)  A door from the office opened to his bedroom. And there on his bed were too large black dogs.  Pearl One and Pearl Two.  They wagged their tails. 

And in that moment, I knew exactly what to do. 

 A door opened from the bedroom to a living room.  Joan led the way. I allowed her and the others to go first. Then I quickly stepped back to Parker’s bed, grabbed a handful of fur from Pearl Two’s neck, and shoved it into my pocket.  The perfect Parker item for Freeman. 

The next day I mailed Pearl’s stolen chunk of fur to Freeman.

Bob and Joan Parker in garden of their home

Sigh.  Freeman’s gone, Parker’s gone, Joan Parker’s gone, and I gotta assume Pearl Two is long gone.  I’m in a funk.

Oh, and BillyF100 posted this comment on yesterday’s blog:  “Einstein’s dead.  Heinz’s dead.  You’re next!”

Hey loser, I’m not in the mood.  Whoever you are, I know you’re reading this, so here — FUCK YOU!

Tomorrow: Saying good-bye

17. Robert Parker, his dog Pearl, Freeman, and me

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SHIT!

Damn it!

Freeman died yesterday. 

Matt called me.

I can’t believe it.  I’m heartbroken.  I’m shocked.  He was such a good guy.  Truly a best buddy.

Matt was leaving his Pitt Law School class when he saw the ambulance outside of Freeman’s apartment building. Freeman’s son, Joey, had found his dad when he came home from a class.

Joey’s enrolled in CMU’s (Carnegie Mellon University) Creative Writing Program.  If Joey is half the writer his dad....  

Matt said Freeman died at his desk (just like Robert Parker), next to a typewriter, a hubcap full of cigarette butts, and stacks of empty beer cans.

Matt said, “I got in there and saw him, Jess.  He had gotten so heavy. The EMT looked at the hubcap, the beer cans, and Freeman.  Then shook her head, ‘Cause of death’s going to be a no-brainer.  This guy smoked and drank himself to death.’”

Freeman.  Gone. Such a good guy and such a great writer, the best of all of us.

Yet he’ll never have his bestseller like Matt and Rich did.

Tomorrow:  Robert Parker, his dog Pearl, Freeman, and me.

16. Crisis Management – Round Two

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Old buddy/roommate Rich was in New York City to see one of his clients.  We had drinks.

He said he’d like to do a revised edition of his crisis management book.  “Social media changed anything.  I gotta update it.” 

I thought it was a good idea.  I reminded him that one, I was no longer with his original publisher, and two, the cheat that got his first edition onto the bestseller list was no longer possible.

Along about the second drink I convinced him that he ought to self-publish it.  Rich could still use the “National Bestseller” line on a second volume. His past, current, and potential clients could afford a hefty price for the book.  He had all their email addresses.  The margins for him as author and publisher on a high-priced book would be terrific.  He’d make a lot of money. 

I promised to connect him with a few folks who knew the ins-and-outs of self-publishing.

At the start of our third round of drinks Rich told me about how his firm was doing more global work, working with some “tough amigos,” and how his firm was helping the CIA by placing agents in his firm’s global offices.  Those offices provided perfect coverage for the agents. 

“But it’s funny,” Rich said.  “I get to know some of these guys.  We talk, we have some good times and then one day they’re just not there.  They fail to show up at the office. Gone!  Poof!  I don’t know if they’re dead or have moved onto a new identity or territory or operation. It does cause me to appreciate the darker side of all that goes on out there.  You know, the stuff that’s gotta be done for the greater good.” 

I told him he should use all of that to write a thriller, “Assuming you can still write like you once did, I’d be first in line to try and publish it.”  (See that?  I’m always looking for the next book.  It’s annoying and exhausting.)

We talked about the newspaper biz, the book publishing biz, and TV. Rich said, “It’s easy these days, for a guy like me to manage the media.  Other than the Times [New York] and the Post [Washington] what’s left of newspapers is owned by a few flawed guys.  All of them have gotten in trouble along the way, and I’ve bailed them out.  So now I call them up, and issues are, well, taken care of. 

“Same with TV. One TV network—owned by a guy I’ve got on a monthly retainer he fucks up so much—controls the sanity, or lack of,” Rich smiled, “of half the country.  They do whatever I ask.”

“What about book publishing, isn’t that—”

Rich burst out laughing. Then after a minute (maybe three) he quieted and just shook his head.

“Sorry, buddy, but nobody gives a fuck about book publishing.  It’s slow, it’s old, it publishes history, annoyingly high-brow literature, and celebrities who come and go in the time it takes you guys to make a book and find a couple of readers.

“Whereas with TV I can click my fingers and the whole country is on board overnight.  Click my fingers again and newspapers follow suit and there’s just something about words in a newspaper that makes the bullshit on TV seem legit.  But book publishers, nah, I don’t waste my time.  You book sorts have no impact on me or the real world.”

Depressing.

Then with the last few sips of our third round of drinks, he said, “Matt’s thinking about running for senator.  The Heinz seat.” 

I nearly choked on my olive. 

And the gin urged me to share the weird Heinz/Brallier Hot Dog Cookbook story (the one Freeman made possible) with Rich, but I kept my mouth shut. 

“You good with that,” he asked.

“With what?”

“With Matt running for Heinz’s seat.   The election for a full-term senator comes up in six months.”  Rich paused, looked me in the eye, then continued, “Nothing in Matt’s past that you know of that might cause you pause?”

This is weird, I thought. 

“No, not at all.  It would be very cool for our old roomie and buddy to be a senator. And I gotta admit, I’m not surprised.  Matt and I talk a couple of times per month, and he’s been busy as hell in Pittsburgh and Harrisburg, on more committees than anybody I know.”

“Good,” Rich nodded.

I headed back to the apartment. The doorman handed me a long box labeled “FRESH FLOWERS.” How sweet.  Probably from somebody I helped out with a publishing issue of some sort. 

Sally was asleep, I locked our door, and opened the box.  It was filled with dead flowers and a note:  “I want MY royalties.”  That pissed-off Einstein guy.  Feels like he’s getting closer.

I fell asleep, thinking, that was a weird Rich conversation, especially the are-you-OK-with-Matt-running-for-senator question.   

Tomorrow: Robert Parker, his dog Pearl, Freeman, and me

15. My favorite agent joke

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A writer returns home after a long evening’s work of waiting tables, only to find his house a pile of smoldering rubble.

Policemen and firemen poke grimly through the remains. The writer leaps out of his car and runs over to a detective.“Oh God!  My house!  What happened?  Where are my wife and children?”

The cop says, “I’m sorry sir.  I’m afraid your agent came to your house, slaughtered your family, burned your home to the ground, and then danced on the rubble in hobnailed boots.”

The writer looks at the detective, eyes wide, excited, and says, “Really?  My agent came to my house?”

—Michael A. Kahn

Tomorrow: Crisis Management – Round Two

14. Hold on! Heinz is killed!

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This just happened (per The New York Times):

Holy shit!  A damn good senator is suddenly dead.  As is the guy who actually wrote the hot dog cookbook I pretended to write.  Now what? 

Because no reporter knew Heinz better, Freeman’s reporting was all over today’s newspapers.  It’s weird how college buddies keep showing up on the front pages at my local newsstand.

One of my first thoughts is, “What about a biography of Heinz?  Freeman’s the perfect author.  He could write 300 pages just from what’s in his head, without a bit of research or notebook flipping.  We’d be first to market, it could be a bestseller.  Or maybe we pair Freeman with Heinz’s widow?  The two could write it together.  Or maybe that co-authored version could even be a second book.  A two-book deal.  Smart!

See that?  How messed up I am to have this book publisher instinct kick in, shoving aside the humanity that ought to kick in.  A father, son, husband, brother is dead.   As are his two staffers.  My god, their poor families.  And here I am thinking within seconds about a book or two, playing around with titles and cover designs in my head. 

Yet what about The Hotdog Cookbook?  Should I reveal the truth about who really wrote it?  I’d sound nuts.  We have no written agreement, just an over-the-phone handshake. A great senator is dead and there I’d be in the media talking about who’s the actual author of the stupid and totally-not-needed Hot Dog Cookbook. 

I’d look like a wacko!  It’s better just to keep my mouth shut.

But what about the royalties it was going to make for charity when Heinz finally decided to reveal the truth? 

I got paid $10,000 for the book. I’ll somehow pull $10,000 out of my checkbook over the next three years and donate it to a charity.  Freeman will know which charities Heinz favored.

TEN wieners, EIGHT buns. Argh!

More importantly, with Heinz dead, there’s little chance of the bun and wiener companies getting together to put the same number of buns and wieners in their packaging.  Damn it!

It was a shitty and shocking day.

Tomorrow: The agent joke (let’s try again, I desperately need a laugh)

13. What the hell did I just see?

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I write this blog late at night.  (It’s 1:34 a.m. right now.) 

When I need a pause from yapping about book publishing, instead of having a smoke like in the old days, I click on Twitter or look at the webcam in my hometown of Ligonier (PA).

The webcam points at where East Main Street meets Ligonier’s “The Diamond” (it’s called “The Town Square” everywhere else).

I walked, stood at, and even marched that corner a thousand times.  As a kid, my daily paper route started at a newsstand to the left.  As a member of the high school band, I marched through that corner in a dozen parades.  And when dad got older, I joined him for walks around the Diamond as he shared all he had learned of life before he no longer could.

Last night, taking a break, I watched the webcam.  A man stood on that corner.  A car pulled up.  Two guys got out, grabbed the man, and shoved him into the car’s back seat.  And the car took off. 

What the hell?!  

There was nobody else, and no other car, around.  Was anybody else anywhere else in the world looking at the Ligonier webcam for those same few seconds?

Was it a couple of buddies goofing off?  Rotary Club hijinks?  Should I call somebody? Was Ligonier’s police department even open at night?

Did I really see what I thought I saw?  If so, it had to be guys just messing around, right?

And what the hell can I do?  I’m in New York City. 

Tomorrow:  That agent joke

12. A Writer Writing a Joke about Writers

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So this writer walks into a bar.  No, make that a writer walks into a dark, smoky bar.  No, let’s try a writer, looking furtively around the bar, walks into it.  That doesn’t work, how about a lanky, tanned writer with a prominent chin walks into…nope. The bar beckoned to the writer and finally he…not that either.  OK, the writer, a blank look on his gaunt face, stumbles into….   Let me get back to you, this may take a while.

—David Wagner

Joe’s Bar, Ligonier (PA)

Tomorrow:  My favorite agent joke (I still need a laugh)

11. Death and book publishing

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Well, this is weird.  Today I was going to write about death and book publishing.  And then this morning I was threatened with death.

In my mail was a small box.  And in that box, an Albert Einstein doll.  A little toy knife stuck through Albert’s heart pinned a Post-It note to him.  The note said, “You’re next.”

I once wrote a biography of Albert Einstein for kids—Who Was Albert Einstein?  It’s by far my bestselling book.  Over 400,000 copies sold, and it’s been translated into fourteen languages.

At some point, a guy showed up on social media saying I stole the idea for an Einstein biography from him.  (Even though there must be at least 40 in print.  And even though the publisher reached out to me to ask if I might write it.  It wasn’t even my idea!)

The pissed-off-Einstein guy wants any money I’ve made off the book. 

He claims to have told the police all about me.  And that I’ll soon be arrested.

Clearly this is not a stable person.  It happens.  Every publisher has had its bomb threat moment (or many moments) just because the publisher did not publish somebody’s manuscript, or they did but failed to market it to the author’s expectations.

Not long into my marketing job at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (HBJ) an author got REALLY pissed and this happened:

Robert Boudin, pissed-off author of Confessions of a Promiscuous Pornographer, not only threatened us, his publisher, but all of Manhattan.

Under the headline, “Disgruntled Pilot-Author Buzzes Midtown 3 Hours,” the New York Times reported, “A disgruntled 61-year-old author buzzed midtown Manhattan in a small rented plane for more than three hours, prompting the evacuation of the United Nations complex and the offices of the publishing company that had incurred his wrath.”

My boss and I skipped the evacuation and joined HBJ’s CEO, William Jovanovich, in his office. We learned that Baudin had delivered a tape-recorded message to the New York Post warning that if his demands were not met, “I just might fly straight into the top man’s office window and attempt a short landing on his desk.”

I took a seat next to that desk and kept an eye on the window.

A New York City police officer was on speaker phone. The cop had a second phone connected to an air traffic controller. And the air traffic controller was talking with Baudin.

Our job was to come up with a marketing plan that Boudin approved of.  Then, in theory, he’d land his plane and the threat to Manhattan would be over.

We started brainstorming a marketing plan.  (Every two minutes or so, the plane—low over the city—passed Jovanovich’s window, as Boudin circled our building.  Oh boy!)

Me:  Instead of a full page NYTBR, we could do two one-column ads in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and the Washington Post.  They’re offering some good rates right now—

Jovanovich:  Jeff!  We’re not actually doing this, we’re just making up something so he’ll land!

Me: Oh, right.

I was strangely enjoying the exercise.  There was no limit to my budget. A marketing guy’s dream.

I proposed running ads in newspapers and magazines, on radio and TV, local and national, day after day, week after week.  The cop shared those plans with the controller who shared them with Baudin.

But Baudin didn’t go for it.  I looked out the window. He kept circling.

I added $100,000 of subway and bus advertising. The cop told the controller who told Bouldin. That didn’t help.  Baudin kept circling.

Come on, Jess. Think. What is it about this guy? Think!

Me:  I got it!

I told the cop my idea and he told the controller who told Boudin.

Cop:  That did it!  He’s coming down.

We all smiled.  Jovanovich shook my hand, “Nicely done, Jeff.”

What had I added? A plane pulling a sign with an image of Baudin’s book on it.  Three hours on Saturday and Sunday, next two weeks.  Over New Jersey and Long Island beaches.

Baudin was arrested upon landing.

And I threw my greatest marketing plan ever into the trash. Heartbreaking.

A month later, Baudin was charged with a three-count indictment of extortion against his publisher and released on $25,000 cash bail.  He died in 1983.

Anyway, back to today and my pissed-off-Einstein guy.  He constantly slams me on social media.  It’s annoying, it’s embarrassing. It’s impossible to stop.  You ever try to talk to Twitter or Facebook about being harassed?  Ha!

At some point my pissed-off-Einstein guy got hold of my email address.  That seemed closer to home. Then my mobile phone number—crazed texts started showing up.  Holy shit.   I swung by a police station.  And was quickly laughed out of the place. 

The cop said, “Let me get this straight, you wrote a kiddie’s book and—"

“Tween,” I corrected him, “a tween book, not a kiddies book. You see there are board books and picture books and chapter books and early reader books and tween books and--”

“Shut up!”  he yelled. 

I did.

He continued, “and somebody is being mean to you.  Right?”

I nodded “yes.”

“Maybe it’s something to be taken up with the principal’s office,” he laughed and walked away.   My pissed-off-Einstein guy problem clearly doesn’t rank in a city with a skyrocketing murder rate.

Then today that doll shows up in my mailbox in the lobby of our apartment building.  My pissed-off-Einstein guy now knows where I live.  Damn it. 

I’ll start looking out for strange guys outside my apartment building, lurking around, maybe wearing an Albert Einstein sweatshirt.  Yet I live in Manhattan where most everybody looks dangerously strange.  Caution isn’t going to help.

I’m not going to sleep so deeply tonight.

Tomorrow: A Writer Writing a Joke about Writers (I need a laugh)

10. Getting a book publisher

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1.     By some miracle, you first get an agent.

2.     The agent then submits your manuscript to editors at various publishing houses.

3.     If an editor is interested, she/he takes the proposal to a “Pub Board” meeting where sales, marketing, rights, and manufacturing staffs discuss the project’s likely costs and income.

4.     A P&L is then built for the book and the publisher either passes or gives the green light.

I luckily had an agent.  He submitted the wiener manuscript and quickly got interest from an editor at Simon & Schuster. She was taking The Hot Dog Cookbook to a Pub Board meeting.  This was critical!  Simon & Schuster was a great house with terrific authors.  Just imagine:  Stephen King, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Bob Woodward, and Jess Brallier (even though it was really Senator John Heinz, but hey, that was the deal). 

I was excited.  Fingers crossed.  Tuesday at 11 a.m. in a conference room at the Simon & Schuster offices in Rockefeller Center a publishing team would consider my (our) manuscript and decide the future of hot dogs and me. (I re-typed Heinz’s manuscript to make it look like something I’d do. See photo.)

If there was only something I could do to help it along….

Which is when my colleague and friend, David Goehring, suggested I have hot dogs delivered to the Pub Board meeting. That would shake things up.  Brilliant! 

I phoned a hot dog joint and ordered 30 hot dogs to be delivered. 

Just imagine, a mysterious delivery of hot dogs arrives to a pub board meeting at a prestigious New York publishing house.

Surely this was a first!

And probably a last.

They loved the hot dogs, but not my book.  Simon & Schuster passed.

My agent ended up selling my (our) book to Globe Pequot.

Nine months later, in May, I’m in Chicago, working for Addison-Wesley at the annual ABA convention (in those days, the book industry’s BIG meeting).  All the publishers had booths to promote the books they’d publish in the Fall.  I walked over to the Globe Pequot booth which featured my (our) hot dog cookbook.

As I neared, I spotted two guys off to the side checking out the booth.  Their name tags said they were with Simon & Schuster.  I edged closer to them, so I could overhear.

One nodded at my book, “Remember that pub board meeting?”

The other laughed, “Yep.  Best ever.”

I had to smile.

Tomorrow:  Death and book publishing

9. I’m asked to write a book

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Freeman called me.  “Senator Heinz is looking for somebody who knows book publishing.  And also writes books. I thought of you.”

I was immediately curious.  A powerful senator.  An up-and-comer, with a hell of name. “What is he—”

“I have no idea.  I’ve told you everything.  I’ll have him get in touch.”

My favorite school trip as a child was the tour of the H.J. Heinz factory in Pittsburgh. We walked hallways with large glass windows and watched ketchup, relish, mustard, and another 54 things being made. Then we went to the Heinz cafeteria where each of us were served two hot dogs. And a choice of 57 condiments. Then, before we got back on the school bus, we each got a green pickle pin.

Anyway, my phone soon rang, and I got a “please hold for Senator Heinz.”

He seemed like a nice guy.  But he had the oddest request.  Which I’m revealing here for the first time ever.

He had a manuscript.  Great!

For a hot dog cookbook. WTF?

That’s right.  He loved hot dogs.  And was proud of how his family had made hot dogs even better.  He had favorite recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  He called his book, “The Hot Dog Cookbook.”  And, to quote Heinz, “I have the greatest subtitle ever—'The Wiener Work the World Awaited.’”

But it gets crazier.

He didn’t want his name on the book.  He said, “a book about wieners doesn’t seem senatorial.  But it should be out there.  For the good of America and the hot dog.” 

Now get ready...he then said, “Could you pretend to be its author?  You write books.  You know the biz, you could find a publisher.  And maybe after I retire from the Senate, we can reveal the secret and start donating royalties to a charity.”

He said he trusted me.  Just like he trusted Freeman. 

I hesitated.

Then he promised that once he retired and went public about his authorship, he’d do everything he could to cause big bun and big wiener companies to put the same number of buns and hot dogs in their packaging. 

That did it!  I was in!

Traditional package of TEN hot dogs and traditional package of EIGHT hot dog buns. Argh!

We did not have a written agreement.

He sent me the manuscript.

Tomorrow:  Getting a book publisher

8. It should have been Freeman’s book

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Early in my career, Macmillan published Murder by Contract: The people vs. “Tough Tony” Boyle by Arthur H. Lewis.

It should have been Freeman’s book.  He broke the story about the corrupt mine workers union.  He was the reporter who pissed off Tony Boyle and got Jock Yablonski killed.

But this Murder by Contract book, I swear I know what happened. 

An agent with a writer up his sleeve had picked up on Freeman’s reporting. The agent got together with a acquisition editor over drinks in Manhattan. 

And by the third round of martinis, they decided to go with the agent’s older, supposedly proven, author. That shit happens all the time to young writers, more so to female writers, and even more so to writers of color.

Freeman’s book would have been better sourced, better written, and not so formulaic. Freeman broke the story, his dog was dead, his car was torched, and his wife and son gone. The book and its royalties should have been his.

Meanwhile, his reporting continued to get national attention. He exposed the Pittsburgh coroner—an expert defense witness in many celebrity trails—for using government facilities for his private business.  Again, I smiled to see Freeman’s reporting showing up in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Financial Times, etc.  But just like when Freeman’s reporting on a corrupt mine workers union once got three people (Yablonski, his wife, and daughter) and a dog killed, a car burned, and a marriage destroyed, when his reporting on a corrupt coroner caused prison sentences to be suspended and convicts released, the corrupt cops who first put those guys in prison via false medical testimony, vowed to get their revenge on Freeman. 

Rich, who had reported on the worst of federal corruption, told me that if he were in Freeman’s situation, “I’d flee the country.  Seriously.  But Freeman’s too damn drunk to know better.”

Tomorrow: Nothing planned, who knows what might happen?

7. How to be a little shit and make a bestseller

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Over lunch, I told Rich that I could make him a bestselling author but he could never, never, never tell anybody how it happened.  That I would deny, deny, deny.  That’s why the lunch, and not a phone call or email.  I needed my deniability moment. 

(And now with this blog post these many years later, out the window goes my deniability.)

I explained to Rich how the New York Times surveyed a specific selection of 100 bookstores every week to determine its bestsellers.  The list of stores changed a bit from time to time, but essentially, we had the store list.

The first NYT bestseller list.  Sure, long before my day but in reality, similar to those in my day.  If you knew what bookstores were reporting in Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Atlanta, etc. one could orchestra buys at those stores and end up with a bestseller.  I (and Rich) caught the last days of the NYT’s flawed methodology.

Quite simply, if Rich orchestrated what looked like a random buy of, say, 25 copies of his book at each of those bookstores, he’d go on the bestseller list.  “Looked like” did not mean one person buying 25 books at one time.  It meant 13 or 25 different individuals purposely going into each store at a random time within a targeted week and buying one or two books.

“Who’s buying the books,” Rich asked.

“Your clients. They owe you, right?  And because you had to bail them out on some sleazy thing they did, they’re the sorts to do this, uh, well, sleazy thing.  You have lots of clients, they’re all over the country, they can make this happen.” 

I explained that the shit may hit the fan.  Bookstores might spot what you’re up to.  Or the Times, or another book publisher might.  I said, “If that happens you handle it, you keep your publisher out of it!”

Pub date came, I got the list of reporting bookstores to Rich and he launched the orchestrated buy.  And as I knew would happen, the book went onto the Times bestseller list.

Which caused stores to re-order more copies of Rich’s book.  And display them front-of-store at a discounted price just like they do all bestsellers.  Plus, making the bestseller list always caused a fresh round of media exposure.   

We got away with the scam. No grief from anybody.  We stole ourselves a bestseller.  Another publisher got caught doing the same thing six months later and oh boy, they took a lot of grief.  Publishing media and The New York Times ripped into them.  And, get a load of this, they hired Rich and his firm to manage the crisis. Oh, the irony!

I was relieved that the scam was exposed, and the Times fixed the flaw in their system.  This scam stuff wasn’t me.  It’s not how I published. 

Tomorrow:  It should have been Freeman’s book

6. Crisis Management

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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A couple of years after Rich’s headline-stealing resignation from the Washington Times, he gave up on journalism for good.  Done.  Enough.  Over.

He had covered Three Mile Island, the U.S. Supreme Court, Strom Thurmond, and the Reagan White House (he nearly fell out of the press helicopter—seriously—as it followed Reagan’s helicopter out of London and over to Heathrow).  He had a young family, he worked too hard, his hours were too long, and his paychecks too small.

Worst of all, to my great disappointment, Rich grew cynical.   Washington does that to its best members of Congress, its once hopeful legislative staffs, and its dedicated journalists who watch and write of the circus.  “Fuck it,” Rich explained, “I’m cashing in.”

Rich partnered with a big-shot attorney to open a crisis management firm.  Their strategy was simple.  Suppose you or your company screws up.  If you only respond with a legal strategy, you’ll lose the public debate carried out in the media. Yet if you only respond with a media strategy, you risk a fatal legal misstep. Instead, a crisis is best managed with a two-headed legal and media strategy working in concert.  And you pay the people getting you out of that crisis—which may be embarrassing, personal, and/or deadly to your business—a LOT of money.

So Rich opened up an office on Duke Street in Alexandria, Virginia, and was quickly rolling in the cash. 

And like so many, he wanted to add a bestselling book to his trophy case.

We talked. 

“Crisis management book?  Yep, good idea, market needs one,” I said.

“Could I be the guy to write it?”

“Sure.”

“Can it be a bestseller?” 

“Absolutely.”

“How?” 

I said that the bestseller conversation had to be off-line.

We scheduled lunch. 

Meanwhile, I saw that Freeman was breaking any of the news coming out of the office of Pennsylvania U.S. Senator John Heinz.  Something was clicking there.

Tomorrow:  How to be a little shit and make a bestseller

U.S. Senator John Heinz

5. New Hampshire, hotel bars, and a bestseller

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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Six months later it’s pub date for Matt’s book, Reinventing Justice.  The cover wasn’t a winner, Matt was an unproven author with no sales records, and the title was a wee bit of a yawn.

Yet Matt and his colleagues (mostly from Harvard) were well-connected to influential policy makers.  You could sense a buzz.  The sort of thing that could take one by surprise.

If “reinventing justice” was to be the next big thing, current and wishful office holders, and those in the business of local, state, and federal governments would have to read Matt’s book. We’re talking hundreds of thousands of books!

If we could put Matt and his unexpected book onto the bestseller list, we’d have the thrill of catching our competitors completely off-guard…plus a year-end bonus. Cool!

But geez, how does one make this unknown author’s book—when shelved in bookstores among thousands of exciting and proven books—be one that goes to the cash register?

The book’s not literary, so reviews in the New York Times Book Review and New York Review of Books were out.

The content was serious, thoughtful, and complex. It’s not the exciting stuff of morning talk shows that’s going to make someone, downing their coffee, pause to scribble down the title.

And the cover was not going to cause an impulse buy for the bookstore customer wandering around looking for beach reading.

Instead, it was a book that needed to be called out, introduced to the curious, and debated via op-ed pieces in national newspapers and respected magazines. 

Our publicity director said, “We’ll mail copies to political writers—”

“To their offices?” I interrupted.

“Of course, we’ll—”

“Nope, not this time,” I interrupted, “That won’t work.  They’re not at their offices.  The New Hampshire presidential primary is next week.  They’re all in Manchester (NH).  You mail the book to their offices, and they’ll never see it until they’re home and the Presidential campaign is over. We gotta get the book to them now.  For the next five months, they’re on buses and planes, in hotel rooms and at hotel bars.  And they need to file a story every damn day.  If they have this book, some late night when stumped for material, they’re going to write about it.  We gotta get books to them right now.”

“How?” 

“Think about it.  Everybody we need to trumpet this book is in Manchester.  At essentially four hotels, or in the bars next door.  Just a 40-minute drive from here.”

“So?”

“We drive up there and give each of them a copy of the book.”

Luckily, we had two adventurous assistants on staff.  I asked them.

“Sure, we’d love to do that.” 

We loaded 200 copies of Reinventing Justice into the rental car. 

They asked, “How do we know which people in the hotel lobby or bar are journalists?

“Trust me, you’ll know.  They won’t look like New Hampshire locals.”

It went well.  They simply walked up to people who “looked like” political writers and offered a book.  They got it right nearly every time.

Now we waited. 

Within a week, a column about Reinventing Justice showed up in the Baltimore Sun.  Then on February 5, David Broder did a piece in the Washington Post.  “I recognize him!” said one of the assistants who drove to Manchester, “He was in the Holiday Inn lobby.  He took the book but didn’t smile.”  The next day, columns showed up in Seattle and Denver.  Of course, Freeman did a great piece in the Pittsburgh Press. Then the AP and UPI released articles.  And then the articles came like a flood.  Within three weeks, a hundred columns about Reinventing Justice were published (100 articles out of 200 books given away—not bad!).

David Broder and Holiday Inn lobby

Reinventing Justice soon went onto all the bestseller lists and stayed there for months.  Matt was a New York Times bestseller author!  Cool!  Rich and Freeman were surely jealous.  But not me—remember I’m the guy who wanted to be a publisher, not the lousy writer I mostly was.

The lesson?  When in doubt, load up a rented car and head for a hotel bar.  No, seriously, the market for any one book is unique and fluid and unexpected.  Templated marketing plans are deadly.  And just why the hell anybody would want to make a career of doing templated marketing plans is beyond me.  What’s the thrill in that?

Tomorrow: Crisis Management

4. Matt and I end up in Boston

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!”

______________________________________________________________________

For several years, Matt and I were both in the Boston area.  He went to Harvard Law School and got deeply involved in an initiative known as “Reinventing Justice.”  And I was Director of Marketing for Addison Wesley’s trade division. That trade operation was small but when it came to top-notch nonfiction, we traded punches with the best of them—Random House, Harper, Simon & Schuster, etc.

“Reinventing Justice” was all about a bunch of smart people—from those on the front lines of the judicial system to those hanging out behind the ivy walls of academia—who had a plan for faster trials, less judicial bureaucracy, and a reduced prison population. 

Upcoming presidential candidate at the time, Michael Dukakis, was all over the subject and the country was starting to take notice.

And Matt had written the “Reinventing Justice” book. The book’s title was, well, Reinventing Justice.

Matt sent me the manuscript.  It was a hell of a subject that was also a hell of a read.  My old Pitt writing buddy still had the writing chops. 

Addison-Wesley acquired the book.  Cool! I was going to publish a book by my old roommate. Amazing. 

But just as amazing that day was that the front pages of major newspapers featured another old roommate, Rich Wilson:

Washington Post:  Wilson Quits Washington Times

Boston Globe: Washington Times Editor Resigns in Protest

New York Post:  Major Newspaper Has a Major Headache

Wall Street Journal:  Wilson Resignation Hits Market

New York Times:  What’s Next for D.C.’s Powerful Editor

And on, and on.

           The Los Angeles Times lead.

It turned out that the Washington Times publisher told Rich to lie. 

And Rich told him to go to hell. 

That a boy!

It was a busy week for the old crew.

• Rich’s resignation shook up D.C. and journalism.

• Matt signed a book deal with my publishing team.

• And at the Pittsburgh Press, Freeman exposed massive corruption in the coal miners union.  His articles ran on the newswires and in national newspapers, and threats against his life poured in.   

Yep, Freeman’s car was torched and his dog killed and gutted. (It’s not a good idea to piss-off coal miners.) Freeman went into hiding and his wife grabbed their little boy and left her marriage behind.  And Freeman increasingly drank his way through the threats and losses.

Tomorrow:  New Hampshire, hotel bars, and a bestseller

3. So many writers!

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!”

______________________________________________________________________

There were about 40 of us in Pitt’s writing program, some focused on journalism, some on creative writing.  We all hung out together, drank together, and worked together on the school newspaper, The Pitt News.

All of our writing buddies hung out at 113 Chesterfield. There was lots of beer and smoking. The place stunk.  It hosted all-night arguments about most anything—the Kinks vs the Beatles, Herman Hesse vs Richard Brautigan, the Steelers, Pirates, and Tony Dorsett.

There was a klepto among us. Stuff disappeared, including my blue-and-white letterman’s jacket (track-and-field, I ran the two-mile) with my initials sewn across the left chest.  Damn it!  I loved that jacket.

My writing buddies amazed me.  We'd be assigned to write 800 words about such and such.  And the next day they'd come back with 800 words arranged as never before.  When that writing made me smile, or think, or feel, it was as if my buddies performed magic. 

Freeman was the best of the crew. We were once assigned to write a scene two different ways.  One with narrative and dialog, the other dialog-only.  Freeman titled his assignment, “The Happy Mechanic.”  The narrative-and-dialog version was about a guy working on his car’s engine.  When the narrative was removed, so that only the dialog was left, it was a sex scene.  The professor and class loved it.  Brilliant. 

But hold on!  Better yet, what everybody missed (Freeman pointed it out to me later) was that in the narrative version of his story, the second word in each sentence also told a story.  I don’t remember Freeman’s version, but imagine something like this:

You had to love Freeman. 

It was obvious that all my fellow students could write far better than me. Which was a frightening reality.  Pitt graduated about 40 writers a year.  There were 200 similar writing programs around the country.  Which meant that 8,000 writers entered the market annually.  In four years, I’d be 32,000th in line.

I was so screwed.

But hey, if I couldn't be the writer, maybe I could be the person who connects good writers with readers.  That way, people could enjoy that “magic” like I did whenever a buddy wrote something amazing.

That connective person seemed to be what they called a “publisher.” So at that moment, I decided to become a publisher.   

The publisher thing worked.  Wonderfully so. I had a lot of fun, met good people, traveled much of the world, and got paid enough. And in the halls of a New York publisher, I bumped into the love of my life.

Tomorrow: Matt and I end up in Boston

2. Pool tables, puppy love, and I end up being a writer

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!”

______________________________________________________________________

I entered the University of Pittsburgh (aka Pitt) as an industrial engineering major because in high school I got good grades in math and physics, and lousy grades in English. Also, the engineers I knew took family vacations to the Maryland shore, had two cars, and a paneled room with a pool table in their basement.  I could not imagine a more perfect life.

During freshman year, six of us lived in a three-bedroom suite. My roommate, Ray, looked like James Taylor. He was a philosophy major, smoked a lot of pot, and slept with many beautiful women.  While I slept on the floor in our tiny common room.

Rich Wilson and Matt Gibson shared the second room.  And Ace Valentine and David Freeman had the third room.  (Freeman always went by his last name.)

Rich, Matt, and Freeman were journalism majors.  Ace was pre-dental.

Second semester I met a pretty girl who liked poetry.  So, I switched from industrial engineering to creative writing.  Note the mature consideration I put into that life-changing decision.

See how Ace is now the obvious outlier?  Not a writer, but pre-dental. And that name — Ace. You gotta be cool to pull off a name like Ace, and he wasn’t.  Ace was overweight, couldn’t hold his beer, name-dropped, exaggerated, bragged, well, you know the type.

Ace told us his girlfriend from high school was going to visit.  He needed his room to himself. It was Freeman’s turn to sleep on the floor. 

Ace bought condoms.  We laughed.  No way that loser would be having sex. Matt then got way too drunk and when Ace wasn’t around, Matt poked a pin through the condoms. 

When Ace’s girlfriend, Kathy, showed up, she was pretty and adored Ace. What the heck?

Anyway, she got pregnant that weekend.  They quickly married.

113 Chesterfield Road, Pittsburgh, PA

The next year, we four writers—Rich, Matt, Freeman, and I—rented a house near Pitt at 113 Chesterfield Road.  I went on to become a book publisher.  Among my bestsellers were books by both Rich and Matt.  And Freeman became Pittsburgh’s best ever investigative journalist.

Ace, Kathy, and their son had an apartment.  We swung by.  It was awful.  They were just two kids with a kid.  They looked bewildered and sad.  Was it all because of the pin Matt stuck in that condom package?  Did the two of them somehow mess up otherwise?  Stuff happens.  We’d never know for sure.

Tomorrow: So many writers!

1. Let’s do it!

In 2021, I blogged here about book publishing for 134 consecutive days.  Then ended the postings on June 24th.  In that final post (image below) I hinted at possibly returning with something “mysterious.”

Well, I’m back!  And hoping most of you are still there.

Recall that what I most enjoyed about publishing was doing the unexpected.  Which is why a book with fake vomit on its cover, a children’s book in journal format, stories told via gaming literacy, etc. — all that contrarian publishing — showed up.

In that spirit, I now want to use blogging as a genre to tell a story.  Seriously. Can a narrative somehow be interwoven through a blog?  To my knowledge, it’s never been done.

In a way it’s simply classic serialization.  Seems to me that a blog could do that just as magazines did in their glory days.  Everything new is old, right?

So what follows for the next so many days is a blog about book publishing in which a story (a bit of a mystery) shows up.  What will be fact and what will be fiction?  At times I don’t even know.  The two blend nicely.  Along with a bit of deliberately altered history.

That’s it.  Enough with the yapping. 

Here’s hoping you’ll come along for the ride.

Thank you,

Jess