Flogging It

Nora Ephron, magazine columnist and author of Crazy Salad, a collection of vinegary essays on women in America, found herself one day last year in a Fort Worth television studio at dawn. She was a guest on KXAS-TV'S Good Morning show, one of dozens of promotional outlets she had been plugged into while touring the country to sell her book. "I watched it for about ten minutes," she recalls, "and I realized that the reason I was on this show was that they thought Crazy Salad was a book about lettuce. It was a farm-news show, and it was me and a cattle rancher and a catfish farmer, and we were all supposed to make wonderful conversation together, and it was just insane."

Judging from the number of writers who take to the promotion road, it is mandatory madness. The latest issue of the American Booksellers Association Newsletter lists dozens of authors who are currently hopping--or dragging --from city to city to hustle their books. The stops include talk shows, newspaper interviews, luncheons and appearances in department stores to autograph hundreds of copies. "You find out just how many ways there are to spell Arlene," says Christopher Porterfield, co-author with Dick Cavett of Cavett.

In a more genteel era, publishers rarely spoke bluntly about a book as a piece of property. The literary soft-sell continued into the heydey of radio on such programs as Author Meets the Critics. Television changed all that. A striking early example of the medium's effect on book sales was provided during the late 1950s by Alexander King. An erstwhile adman and former drug addict, he was the author of a scurrilously amusing book of reminiscences titled Mine Enemy Grows Older. Each time King appeared on Jack Paar's show, the sales figures of his book soared.

Greeting Drivers. One of the first and flashiest publishers to seize on the new promotional opportunities was Bernard Geis. He advanced the concept of the book as property into the book as package deal, and he Svengalied willing authors into writing potboilers and racy romans `a clef. Incorporated in the Geis Zeit was Jacqueline Susann, whose Valley of the Dolls (1966) was launched with an advertising budget of $130,000.

Susann split with Geis after a dispute over money. She and her husband Irving Mansfield then went on to demonstrate that they understood the new hustle better than anyone. As old show-business hands, they appreciated the value of contacts and details. It was not uncommon to find Susann at a distributor's warehouse greeting the truck drivers who would deliver her books to the store. In fact, the Mansfields practically wrote the book on modern literary promotion. The color of a Susann dust jacket was carefully chosen for television appeal. Once on, Jackie, who died in 1974, quickly realized what many touring novelists have yet to accept: talk-show hosts rarely want to talk about a novel as a work of fiction. They want gossip, one-liners, jokes and, above all, a hot subject.

Jerzy Kosinski, Polish-born author (The Painted Bird, Steps, Cockpit) and a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's Tonight show, detects a basic paradox for the novelist and television. "Bear in mind," he says, "that in this country people watch the conversation." To David Halberstam (The Best and the Brightest), spreading the word is like being a political candidate. Says he: "I call it the Nixonization of self. You turn yourself into a human cassette." There is also the nearly hopeless task of trying to explain an idea or complex subject without commercial interruption. South Viet Nam's former Premier Nguyen Cao Ky was on a Midwestern show panel when the host finally turned to him and, asking about the war in Viet Nam, said: "We still have a minute left. Could you tell us what went wrong?"

New authors soon discover that the tour is a grinding, unglamorous ordeal. What should be a time to savor the satisfaction of having completed months, even years of solitary work turns into an odyssey of bad food, jet lag, little sleep and the sort of snafus that used to be found in Olsen and Johnson movies. Peter Maas (King of the Gypsies) ran into a familiar problem when pushing an earlier book, Valachi Papers: he was on time for an autograph session but his books were not. A complaint to his publishers brought promises of action. Indeed, a stack of his books awaited him at other stops. Only later did Maas learn that it was the same stack of books that his publishers kept shipping one step ahead of him.

Refusing to go on tour can create a dilemma. Says A.E. Hotchner (Doris Day: Her Own Story): "The publisher gets a pained look on his face and says, 'Well, we wanted to cooperate with you on this and give you some supportive advertising, but this presents a difficult problem.' " Translation: no tour, no ads in the New York Times Book Review.

Despite writers' complaints, TV appearances undoubtedly increase sales. Ten minutes on the Today show, for example, may sell as many as 5,000 copies. But authors of novels that do not have mass appeal usually find the cost in energy greater than the returns. Some writers flop so badly on radio and television that they may even hurt sales. Irv Kupcinet, who conducts the Chicago-based Kup's Show, will even call publishers to suggest they cut short tours that he believes will be unproductive. He explains: "Some authors give this backward projection, and I tell the publisher they are only hurting themselves." Promotional travel usually gives the biggest boost to the biggest books. According to Esther Margolis, vice president for publicity of Bantam Books, the paperback sales of Peter Benchley's Jaws doubled, from 4 million to 8 million, after the author made the rounds.

Campaigning for one's own prose requires the stamina of a yak, the organizational ability of an ant colony and the indiscriminate digestion of a sewage trunk line. Says Barbara Howar, recalling her "airplane luggage carnival" to hype her first book Laughing All the Way (1974): "I grew to hate lamb chops, but it was the only thing you could count on the hotel not ruining." Between stops for Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Author Susan Brownmiller remembers looking at her publisher's schedule and reading "Eat sandwich now!" They were right. It was the only chance she had.

Like Childbirth. On amenities at the average TV or radio studio, Canadian Novelist Mordecai Richler wrote recently that the best you can hope for "is something brown, reminiscent of coffee, poured into a Styrofoam cup that, in most cases, you are advised to hold onto as it must also serve as your on-camera ashtray." Authors sometimes deserve no better. When Gore Vidal appeared to do New York's Casper Citron radio show, recalls Citron, "he walked in and said, 'Cash my check for $50, get me a drink, and what's your name?' " Vidal admits that he does TV interviews in a complete haze: "I have no memory of it when it's over. It's like childbirth--you do it and don't remember it but you can do it again."

Writers often carp that most interviewers have seldom read their books. One guest on the Mike Douglas show was ready to accept the fact that his book had only been thumbed, but was surprised to see that the host's cue cards read: "That's interesting. Tell me about it." There are gaffs on even the largest, most thoroughly prepared programs. Interviewing Guy Lombardo about his book Auld Acquaintance, Jim Hartz of the Today show wanted to know how Brother Carmen was doing. "He passed away three years ago," answered Guy.

Gay Talese (Honor Thy Father), on the other hand, believes it is beneficial if the interviewer has not read the book. "The fewer questions the better, the less he says the better, the less he knows the better. I want to talk about what's serious, not sit through the awkward moments of introduction. A monologue is more interesting than interrupted dialogue." Talese, one of the best organized touring authors, seems to have it all figured out. He has even gone on the air to talk about his work in progress, a massive study of American sex habits. Flogging a book before it is written may have its advantages, but it also has its dangers. The writer could get so intoxicated with publicity that he might forget he has to write.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.