'Once an Eagle' Flies High Once Again
A bestseller in 1968, Myrer's Army saga soars as military press reprint, snags new HarperCollins deal
Three decades AFTER the novel was first published, a 25,000-copy shipment of the U.S. Army War College Foundation Press's paperback reprint of Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle has landed at distributor Stackpole Books to meet backorder demand. And in a rumored six-figure deal, HarperCollins has just acquired world rights to the book and is planning a new hardcover edition for Father's Day. HC is also contemplating bringing other Myrer books back into print, among them his classic The Last Convertible.
All this activity is thanks to an Aug. 16 article in the New York Times that described the military's enduring love for the 800-page novel-which follows two very different Army officers, honorable role model Sam Damon vs. self-serving Courtney Massengale, from World War I up through the early stages of the Vietnam War. The article quoted General Henry H. Shelton, the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying it is the only book he ever read twice.
For HarperPerennial v-p Susan Weinberg, that "handselling," along with the current reader interest in WWII, amounted to attractive inducements to pursue the book. "I think this is an important book that can reach a whole new generation of readers," she said. "We're planning a very ambitious relaunch of the book."
The Times story immediately catapulted the book onto Amazon.com's bestseller list, at one point sending it as high as #3. The Carlisle, Pa.-based Army War College Foundation Press soon found it was out of stock on the 15,000-copy shipment that it had bought when it acquired the reprint rights in 1997; new shipment was ordered.
The Press came by the book when Patricia Myrer, around the time of her husband's death in 1996, approached the organization with the offer of giving rights to the book, but only on the condition that it would never go out of print. The book previously had been published in hardcover by Holt, then in paperback by Dell. A subsequent Putnam Berkley paperback was published in 1976, to tie into the book's TV miniseries adaptation, but it had gone out of print, despite being required reading on many military school curriculums.
The Press agreed to the deal, and its current trade paperback edition has a new introduction by Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who writes that the novel ranks with The Red Badge of Courage and All Quiet on the Western Front as great war novels.
In the new deal, Stackpole will be allowed to get the advantage of the boom in Eagle interest and fulfill all orders until the end of the month. And if HarperCollins, which plans a hardcover, then mass market then trade paperback program, ever lets the book go out of print, the Press will pick fulfill its promise to keep the book in print. "It wouldn't be very gentlemanly to go back on our agreements," says Zane Finkelstein, the Foundation lawyer who's been handling all the negotiations surrounding the book."It's not something Sam Damon would do."
PRE-PUB BUZZ
Beacon's Shining Season
Boston-based independent house Beacon Press has more than just a 145th anniversary to celebrate; it's also getting particularly good word of mouth and publicity build for two just-about-to-be-released memoirs: Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors by house author and Children's Defense Fund president Marian Wright Edelman and All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by first-time-author Michael Patrick MacDonald.
Shining brightest is Lanterns, with Beacon just accepting a $350,000 floor bid for paperback rights to the book. After a three-day auction for book club rights, the Literary Guild won it for its new Black Expressions Book Club.
"We wanted Marian to write an autobiography for a long time," says Beacon executive editor Deanne Urmy, who edited all three of Edelman's books, including The Measure of Our Success, which sold a quarter of a million copies, making it Beacon's all-time bestselling hardcover. Edelman's new book is the story of her growing up black in the South at the dawn of the civil rights movement, and includes personal reminiscences about the many people who helped her along the way, including Fannie Lou Hamer, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Lanterns is being published with an initial 65,000-copy printing, more than triple a typical Beacon first print, and will be supported by an 15-city tour, the largest ever for the house, with stops at the Mid-South and NCIBA regional conventions. Parade magazine is planning a two-part excerpt close to the October 15 pub date; second serial rights have been sold to Child magazine.
And the Boston Globe has already run an amazing four-part, prepub excerpt of All Souls, a coming-of-age tale set in South Boston, Boston's impoverished Irish-Catholic neighborhood (known locally as Southie). In the book, which is officially released today but already a Globe bestseller, 32-year local activist Michael Patrick MacDonald breaks the community's long-held code of silence to lay the blame for the tragic death of his young brothers--and of hundreds of other white teens--squarely on the Irish mob led by James "Whitey" Bulger, who was recently named one of America's 10 most wanted fugitives, and on the FBI, for which Bulger was an informant. Urmy also calls MacDonald's account of forced busing, which started 25 years ago and which he witnessed first-hand as an 8-year-old in the projects, as one of the best to date.
Although Urmy acknowledges MacDonald was a bit frightened to reveal all about drugs and crime in Southie, he is not letting fear keep him from promoting the book there. As part of Beacon's community outreach program, cosponsored by the Boston Public Library, the Boston Globe and selected booksellers, MacDonald will bring his message about race, class and hope to some of Boston's toughest neighborhoods. With funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Beacon has created a discussion guide that is available at the BPL, area bookstores, and online at Beacon's Web site (www.beacon.org).
Nor are these issues just a Boston affair. All Souls already got its first national media hit when it was previewed earlier this summer in Time magazine, along with works by Frank McCourt, Roddy Doyle and Thomas Keneally. Beacon is also planning a three-city tour to New York, Washington and Chicago close to publication.
--Judith Rosen
