Is King’s English Customer the Next Turow?

By Kevin Howell -- Publishers Weekly, 6/21/2007 10:30:00 AM

Every writer’s dream is to send an unsolicited manuscript to a publisher and have them buy it within a week. That dream is Gordon Campbell’s reality. Campbell will turn 65 the week before William Morrow publishes Missing Witness on September 25, a literary legal thriller he began in 1979 and sold without an agent.

"This story is like a fairy tale," said Betsy Burton, owner of the King’s English in Salt Lake City, Utah, who remembers the day Campbell, a good customer, came into her store with a massive manuscript. "This happens with alarming frequency—that customers will come in with a 20-pound novel they want me to read. I usually tell them I’ll read 50 pages, because my general rule is if you don’t like it in 50 pages, you’re not going to like it." Burton not only liked the first 50 pages, she loved the entire manuscript, which Campbell, a trial lawyer by day, titled Missing Witness.

After consulting with longtime friend and HarperCollins sales rep John Zeck, she mailed the manuscript to Carolyn Marino, executive editor at William Morrow. "I thought I’d never hear from her, but three days later she called me."

"I’ve been at HarperCollins for 17 years and there have only been a handful of times that a bookseller or sales rep has sent me a manuscript," said Marino. "I didn’t know Betsy, but our publisher knows her, so I was intrigued." She took it home and read it straight through. "I was hooked. I was completely caught up in the story. It reminded me of early Scott Turow."

Marino wasted no time contacting Campbell, who flew to New York last summer with his daughter but without an agent to discuss the sale. "It was like something out of a story," said Campbell. "I felt vindicated. I thought maybe I won’t have to view myself as a failed novelist. I’ve been recognized." Campbell left New York with a letter of intent to publish and the name of the agent who now represents him.

"I worked on this book so long and as my experience as a trial lawyer expanded, I kept going back to the book in my spare time to keep changing things," said Campbell. "Since the galleys have come out, some very experienced trial lawyers have given me positive feedback and have pronounced it legally sound." Campbell also got blurbs from Tony Hillerman and James Patterson.

Campbell is committed to six weeks of touring and visits to some of the fall regional bookselling shows. His first signing will be at the King’s English. "Betsy promised to put my picture up on the wall of her bookstore, and that’s swinging big timber in Salt Lake City." He’s already at work on a second novel, but warns, "Don’t ask me for a timetable. If it’s as slow as the last one, we’re in deep trouble."