Movie Hype Is No Fantasy

It may seem silly to talk about word-of-mouth for a 50-year-old book, but that's exactly what's happening with J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series, whose first volume was published in the U.S. in 1954. The impending opening of New Line Cinema's $300 million trio of movies directed by Peter Jackson (one for each of the three volumes of the novel), in tandem with the film debut of a young wizard named Harry, is bringing a new generation of readers to Tolkien's magnum opus. (Tolkien originally wrote The Lord of the Rings in 1954 as a one-volume followup to 1937's The Hobbit. His publisher feared no one would read 1,200-page manuscript, so the book was broken into three separate volumes and published in 1954 and 1955. Houghton's recently repackaging The Lord of the Rings back into its original single volume would no doubt please the late author, who used to bristle at the books being labeled a "trilogy.").

So far Houghton Mifflin—which has 50 Tolkien books in print in various editions and has been his U.S. publisher since The Hobbit first came out in 1938—has reaped most of the benefits of the hype surrounding the first movie, Fellowship of the Ring, to be released on December 19. "Last year, Tolkien sales were in the mid-seven figures," Clay Harper, Houghton's director of Tolkien projects, told PW. "I think this year—and this is speculative—we could be selling four or five times as much." To put that into perspective, he added, "And last year's sales were three times more than they were in 1999."

Two years ago, Houghton published its first one-volume trade paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings as part of an effort to keep the books fresh. "I would be remiss to say our strategy isn't to sell as many copies of Tolkien's work before the box office results are in," Harper said. In June, Houghton reissued the one-volume edition with movie art and has already seen sales for it quintuple those for 2000. "We ordered a sixth printing [in late July]," said Harper, "which brings us to one million copies and covers us until early October." At about the same time, Houghton published Tom Shippey's authorized biography, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century. According to Harper, that book is already in a second printing, and Houghton has decided to hold off on a paperback edition until at least fall 2002.

In addition to rejacketing the Tolkien backlist, Houghton has been working with booksellers to boost sales through a carefully timed series of promotions. "Of course," Bridget Marmion, Houghton's director of marketing for the trade and reference division noted, "a big part of a project of this sort is displays." For the next big push, September 22, the fictional birthday of Bilbo Baggins and Froddo Baggins, Houghton plans to ship a point-of-purchase display featuring a six-foot cutout of Gandalf. At the same time, Houghton will release tie-in editions of each volume in the Lord of the Rings, as well as a boxed set, and Tolkien's Unfinished Tales, edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien. In-store events kits will be available to make this a very happy birthday indeed. Buttons harking back to those of the '70s with the slogan "Frodo Lives" will be sent to booksellers, as will magnets with art from the one-volume tie-in.

A few weeks later, November 6, will be the laydown date for Jude Fisher's The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Visual Companion and Brian Sibley's The Lord of the Rings Official Movie Guide. The former, a full-color oversize hardcover about the people and places in Middle-earth based on footage from the film, includes an eight-page gatefold. Sibley's book, which will be published simultaneously in cloth and paper, has production stills, biographies of the stars and other behind-the-scenes material from the movie shot in New Zealand.

Book Sense is partnering with Houghton Mifflin and New Line Cinema with what Len Vlahos, director of BookSense.com, described as "Book Sense's largest to date custom-specific promotion. I believe strongly that this movie, like Harry Potter, is going to encourage a lot of eight to 18-year-olds to pick up a book and read." Plans call for a consumer sweepstakes to be conducted through participating Book Sense stores. (See the companion article in Bookselling for more on Houghton's partnership with Book Sense.)

At Ballantine, which has been the authorized mass market publisher of Tolkien in the U.S. since the mid-'60s, Tolkien's books are also a hot property. "For the last 14 months, sales have increased every month," Ballantine associate publisher Kuo-Yu Liang told PW. "We've never seen anything like this—so big and so far in advance. In the last 12 months, Ballantine has 1.7 million copies of the four books—The Hobbit and the three volumes of the Lord of the Rings—in print. The average in years past was 400,000 a year. So in-print figures have basically tripled five months before the movie."

Like Book Sense, Ballantine's strategy has been to reach out directly to consumers, many of whom are readily accessible through fan Web sites like www.theonering.com and sci-fi conferences and conventions. "A lot of Tolkien fans are rereading the book," said Liang, "and they're actively campaigning for people to reread it." So, too, are actors like Elijah Wood, who plays Frodo, and director Jackson. In October, Ballantine's Del Rey imprint is reissuing The Hobbit with new cover art and all three volumes in the Lord of the Rings with movie art, as well as a movie tie-in boxed set.

While it may seem as if Ballantine and Houghton have a monopoly on Tolkien titles, a number of other publishers have related books due out this fall as well as calendars and journals from HarperEntertainment, CEDCO and Landmark. Given the complexity of the world Tolkien imagined and that the Lord of the Rings is taught on some college campuses, it is no surprise that many books have a decidedly academic cast. Michael N. Stanton, who teaches Tolkien at the University of Vermont, wrote Hobbits, Elves, and Wizards: The Wonders and Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" (Palgrave, Nov.) as a rebuke to those who think of the Harry Potter books as fantasy epics. "For Stanton," noted Dori Weintraub, associate director of publicity for St. Martin's, "there is only one fantasy epic in the English language and that is Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings." St. Martin's is also issuing a collection of essays on Tolkien by fantasy writers such as Orson Scott Card, Terry Pratchett and Ursula Le Guin, Meditations on Middle-earth (Nov.), edited by Karen Haber with illustrations by John Howe, who is a consultant to the movie.

At the University Press of Kentucky, where, as sales manager Wyn Morris puts it, "We're always treading that fine line between academic and trade," two Tolkien books by Jane Chance on the fall list "hit that rare happy medium." The Lord of the Rings: The Mythology of Power (Oct.) examines 20th-century parallels to the world of Middle-earth, while Tolkien's Art: A Mythology for England (Nov.) outlines the sources and influences on Tolkien's work. Both books have been substantially revised since they were first published in the 1990s.

Similarly, International Publishers Marketing will distribute Colin Duriez's Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings (Dec.) from Azure, an imprint of the British-based Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. The book, which explores the ideas and spiritual overtones in the Lord of the Rings, is getting a lot of attention for a small distributor with only 12 clients. Publicity manager Kristen Gustafson noted, "We're planning to do some advertising and a large campaign with reviewers and Tolkien societies."

Watson-Guptill Publications got a jump on Tolkien-related art books with an August release of Greg and Tim Hildebrandt: The Tolkien Years by Gregory Hildebrandt Jr., who posed for many of the original paintings used in his father and uncle's calendars in the '70s. This heavily illustrated book, which Watson-Guptill plans to advertise from now through Christmas, includes a pull-out poster of a new painting made especially for it.

The Hobbit Poster Collection, with six paintings by Alan Lee, and a collection of Tolkien-related postcard books with paintings by Lee, Ted Nasmith and John Howe, published by HarperCollins UK a year ago, will be distributed by Trafalgar this fall. "We recatalogued them this year, and the uptake is quadrupled," said managing director Paul Feldstein. He is also excited about Ian Lowson, Peter MacKenzie and Keith Marshall's The Guide to Middle Earth: The Unauthorized Guide to the Work of J.R.R. Tolkien (Oct.). "I actually think we have something very special in that it doesn't tie into the film," Feldstein noted.

Given some notable movie disappointments this summer, such as Jerry Bruckheimer's Pearl Harbor, it's anyone's guess how Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring will do at the box office. But given the staying power of J.R.R. Tolkien's best-known works, it seems certain that these books will continue to sell long after the front-of-store displays are a distant memory and the books are back to spine-out in the fantasy section.