Chatting with God Pays Off Again
-- Publishers Weekly, 5/26/1997
Neale Donald Walsch is in the enviable position of having two books on the bestseller charts at the same time. His first book,
Conversations with God (Putnam), has been on the lists for 19 weeks; more than 600,000 copies are in print. His second,
Conversations with God, Book 2, was published early this month and has been on the national charts for the past two weeks. Its publisher, Hampton Roads, printed 250,000 copies and went back to press around pub date for an additional 50,000. Back on August 12, Book News reported some of the reasons why these books found such disparate publishers. In short, Walsch found a home for his first book at Hampton Roads after several rejections by small publishers. This Charlottesville, Va., house had great success with it and, when sales began to approach the 100,000 mark (the title began life in May 1995 with a 5000-copy printing), publisher Bob Friedman began to entertain offers from publishers with more capital and muscle. Putnam's Susan J. Peterson bought it for a reported seven figures and the rest is bestselling history. Or not quite history. Thanks to Putnam's generosity -- that is, the capital from the first book's sale to Peterson coupled with Putnam's marketing savvy -- Hampton Roads now has sufficient muscle of its own to publish not only the second book but a third still to come.
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