Can a Hitman Sell Shaman Titles?

by Judith Rosen -- Publishers Weekly, 2/27/2006

In a case of déjà vu all over again, Inner Traditions/Bear & Company in Rochester, Vt., is looking to reap sales from the back-end story of a bestseller. In 2003, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code helped bump up sales for Margaret Starbird's The Woman with the Alabaster Jar, to 35,000 copies for the year—more than it sold between its publication in 1993 and 2002. Continuing strong sales for Starbird's book, as well as other alternative Christian titles like Jean-Yves Leloup's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, gave Inner Traditions a strong sales boost over the last three years.

Now the company has another bestseller connection, albeit a tenuous one. Inner Traditions published the five mind/body/spirit titles that preceded writer John Perkins's bestselling book from Plume, Confessions of an Economic Hitman. Perkins's journey from hitman to shaman is reflected in books like Shapeshifting: Techniques for Global and Personal Transformation and The World Is as You Dream It: Teachings from the Amazon and Andes.

To help guide readers to its Perkins books, Inner Traditions repackaged three titles last month, making Perkins's name bigger, and clearly identifying him as the author of Hitman. Still, the connection has not been an easy sell, even in-house. "When I first had the idea of repackaging them, almost everybody said, What do these books have to do with one another? There was quite a bit of resistance," recalled Inner Traditions president and publisher Ehud Sperling. "However, if you look a little deeper, you'll find not all people will be interested in John's life as a shaman and a teacher, but a vast majority will."

Inner Traditions is already starting to see an uptick in sales at Barnes & Noble after Shapeshiftingwas put on the front tables at the chain; sales increased five times at Amazon after the e-tailer linked Shapeshifting to Hitman through its Better Together program. The repackaged Shapeshifting had a first printing of 10,000 copies; it sold 24,000 copies between 1997 and 2005.

At Boulder Book Store in Boulder, Colo., which has a strong metaphysical section and has done well with Perkins's books, head buyer Arsen Cascassian said that he was unaware that the two John Perkins were, in fact, one and the same. But knowing that, he plans to have some Inner Traditions titles on hand for a Perkins event in April at the store.