Rick Simonson

A Stroke of Add-on Hindsight
July 24, 2008

For those of us that do buying for bookstores, no week now goes by without some form of message coming along with added titles for a publisher's season. The messages are usually plural these days, sometimes coming repeatedly within the week, from the same sales rep/publisher.

Say what must be said about the necessity for this practice in 'today's market environment' it tends, more than anything, to blur actual discussion about a book's possible import. The rep is in a scramble - interrupted from whatever else was going on - just trying to get a number and p.o., perhaps imparting some deadline-driven drama to the quest. That's usually media - this show or that. 

The buyer is on a somewhat parallel track - reached to give a number, there's the matter of making sure it gets into the store's buying files.

The numbers given for such orders vary. It tends to be less about long-range merits (or lack of) for the book(s) in question, and more about what show this book gets aired on, what disclosures are possible, and some assessing over how fast the book might sell. Forget how many copies over a longer span. This is velocity. (Scott McClellan, anyone? Now?) 

A key factor in gauging how many to actually order is to know there is coverage with wholesalers (especially as some publishers more than do their job to solicit orders, then drop the ball on getting books to stores by street date, especially with these add-ons). In the West, we're generally very fortunate in this regard with how Partners West keeps on top of things.

My own tendency is on the curmudgeonly, grumbly side of things with regard to most of ths  - grudgingly I'll give the numbers, the po ... if it looks as though there are 'real' books in there, I'll lament the chance to really ponder those .. but generally it's done, and on with the day. Short of having printed out an e-mail-generated piece of paper with the isbn, price and release date (or jotting same down), there's no trace that this book, or books, may soon exist, no catalog trail as it were.

Sometime last spring - late April? - there was one of these solicitings which at the time I thought memorable only because of the incredibly short turnaround involved. Penguin was literally having to hustle orders for its publication of a memoir (previously self-published) it wanted to crash out in a week's time. The author, of a book on having lived through a stroke and recovered to tell her tale, would be on Oprah.

Fine and well and the usual, numbers-driven reasons could be discerned, but doing the presto-voila thing in a week? From order to unpacking the box and displaying?

Penguin (the Viking imprint here) is not a big 'offender' in this area. It felt easier to jump in a bit. And so, on the higher side of a number than usual for one of these (with Oprah it can be hit and/or miss), we went with 24 copies.

As the person who tracks the daily sales for the section where Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight is placed for us at Elliott Bay, it was only seeing the very slow trickle of initial sales that I remembered the book was even here - and the circumstances by which it had appeared. Whenever the airing (initial ... have there been more?) with Oprah occurred, it didn't do much to quickly spike sales. By the end of May, a few good weeks along, I think we had sold three copies. Yes, too early to mark some for returns - a little shaking of the head at the roll of the dice: this one wasn't working - and on, that day, to the next title.

Then something seemed to happen. More copies sold in June, and more now, have gone into people's hands in July. We've had reorders come in, have more to come. Whether it's been more media, or word-of-mouth (Dr. Taylor's self-published edition first came out in late 2006, and definitely got to people) that has built from earlier on and is now aided by the rest, this has become a very strong, 'regular' book, from what can be seen here, one that should be a steady-selling fixture for years to come.

Maybe it's too big a leap - some of it's the inspiring nature of the story, and that stroke was involved in both cases - but it put me in mind a little with the publication, over a decade ago, of Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

I still remember it being mid-season - this a time when add-ons were any publisher's exception, rather than a rule, and the reasons (newsmaking) usually quite apparent. Knopf was suddenly out pushing this new add-on. Some French journalist and a book he'd written by blinking, the book a huge success in France, and then he just died? Come on, this can't wait for next season? This is a reason to publish a book as an add-on? 

Then, I remember (o rarely given reason now) being told that those involved with the book felt so passionate and keenly about it, as a story, as one with bearing on how one approaches and lives life, and all done so extraordinarily - that they just couldn't wait. That reason proved more than justified.

Time will tell with My Stroke of Insight, but it is nice to see a book, first launched our way because of its getting placed on a tv show, showing itself to be on bookstore shelves and in readers' hands because it is a real book.

Posted by Rick Simonson on July 24, 2008 | Comments (1)