For One Rodale Book, Looks Aren't Everything—But They Count for a Lot

By Lynn Andriani -- Publishers Weekly, 10/8/2007 1:18:00 PM

There’s no doubt the editorial concept of The Intellectual Devotional is catchy. Give readers a page a day with vital, digestible information from the fields of history, literature, visual arts, science, music, philosophy and religion. Book buyers took the bait, snatching up 203,000 copies of the Modern Times/Rodale book since its October 2006 publication, according to Nielsen BookScan. Steven Spielberg bought 2,000 copies to distribute as holiday gifts, and the book wound up launching a series (the second book in the series, The Intellectual Devotional: American History, pubs next week). But there’s more to The Intellectual Devotional’s success than sheer ingenuity in content.

The book’s coauthors—David S. Kidder, who recently launched his third Internet company, Clickable; and Noah D. Oppenheim, a Today show senior producer—are the kinds of people who throw around terms like “cross-pollinating brands” and aren’t afraid to call books “products.” They’re clearly terrific writers, but more than that, they’re good conceptualizers. They think about how a book will feel in a reader’s hands. What’s the right shape? What’s the perfect weight? Is a book jacket necessary? Oppenheim acknowledges content is critical, but says “in this day and age when you’re competing for people’s attention with a million different TV shows, Web sites and movies, sometimes having great content isn’t enough. We wanted a physical product that would grab people’s attention and that people could get attached to.”

The success of The Intellectual Devotional books are examples of the power of packaging. The authors didn't just want to give readers explanations of the Irish Potato Famine, “Howl,” Mary Cassatt, radiocarbon dating, Beethoven, Nietzsche, and the Eastern Orthodox church—they wanted to give them a reading experience. And so, at 5 ½" x 8 ¼", the trim size is smaller than the average hardcover book, because the authors wanted people to easily carry the books around with them or curl up with them at night. The books have no jackets; instead, the hardcover boards present a mix of matte and glossy finishes, with the spine and a portion of the cover done in a shiny bright color (red with shadowed red stars on American History) and the rest of the cover in an almost pulpy tan, akin to a brown paper bag. The fusion of old and new was intentional, Kidder says, as was the design of the book’s pages, edges torn but with a modern font. And then there’s the ribbon marker. “We really fought for that,” says Oppenheim. The ribbon doesn’t just serve a practical purpose as a placeholder. It also contributes to the feeling of The Intellectual Devotional as being a throwback to the kinds of books people tend to develop personal attachments to, such as Bibles and missals. Plus, says Kidder, the action of moving the ribbon forward each day gives readers a small sense of accomplishment.

There are also subliminal cues. The subtitle suggests that readers are already smart, but that perhaps they just need to be reminded of a few facts: “Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Converse Confidently about Our Nation’s Past.” And each entry shares a few “additional facts” in fine print at the end, which Kidder explains are bits of information meant to help link the information you just learned to your memory. For instance, the entry on the Pequot War in American History includes the “additional fact” that descendants of the Pequots eventually opened the world’s largest casino, Foxwoods. The entry on John Steinbeck says the author’s first wife chose the title of The Grapes of Wrath. As Kidder says, “Those additional facts anchor what you read.”

Everyone involved in the books, including the authors; their agent, Joy Tutela of David Black Literary; and their editor, Leigh Haber, are banking on repeat success with book two. “The success of the first book seems to indicate that for as technologically advanced as readers are, at the end of the day they respond to good old fashioned useful information presented in a nice format,” says Oppenheim.