Lucky 13 for Brassey's
by Daisy Maryles -- Publishers Weekly, 7/26/2004
It's always fun to welcome a new publishing player to the national bestseller charts—an event that happens very rarely, especially these days. Brassey's, based in Dulles, Va., lands its first chart hit at #13, Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Anonymous, who is reported to be a high-level U.S. intelligence official involved in security issues related to Afghanistan and South Asia. So how did the July book achieve bestsellerdom? The British press was the catalyst. According to associate acquisitions editor Christina Davidson, the house knew that it is very difficult to get U.S. media attention for "an anonymous author on such a serious subject. So, the 'plan' was to get a Brit interested in writing a piece, since American media does not like getting scooped by the other side of the pond." That tactic was right on the mark. First printing was 10,000, and the U.K. Guardian leaked a story on the book on June 19; three days later, the New York Times ran a story and a U.S. media frenzy began, with the author appearing (as a silhouette) on NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN (PW NewsLine ran stories on June 23 and 24). All that attention quickly resulted in a second printing of 40,000. The frenzy continued, with orders flooding in to Brassey's; a 50,000 third printing was ordered. Davidson noted, "The initial pop happened a little too soon, and we wanted to prevent overexposure before we actually had enough books in the stores, so we curtailed Anon's radio and TV appearances." The house did respond to every print media interview request over the next few weeks and garnered dozens of stories and mentions in the L.A. Times, AP, Reuters, Knight-Ridder, Newsweek, Time, the Christian Science Monitor and others. Davidson continued, "During this period, we were also responding to all foreign media requests, with the view of raising the book's profile and helping our sub-rights sales." Rights have been sold in Japan, Greece and Turkey and are pending in at least a half dozen more countries. Michiko Kakutani's review in the New York Times on July 9 spurred another wave of reorders, and Brassey's is set for a fourth printing of an additional 100,000. Half will hit the accounts at the beginning of the week of July 26, and the rest will be shipped at the end of the week.
