The "Quickie" Phenomenon

Written in captivity, printed in a hurry

"All books are divisible into two classes," noted John Ruskin in 1865, "the books of the hour, and the books of all time." He would have been surprised to find his declaration taken literally. Only eleven days after the ghastly events in Guyana had been disclosed to the world, two paperbacks with $2.50 price tags hit the stands: Bantam's The Suicide Cult and Berkley's Guyana Massacre. Produced by teams of journalists, the "instant" books, as they are known in the trade, feature photographs, background chapters on the Peoples Temple and firsthand accounts by reporters who had accompanied Representative Leo Ryan on his fatal journey.

For Bantam, the production of a paperback original in just over a week was nothing new; The Suicide Cult was its 64th extra (among others: The Pentagon Papers, 90 Minutes at Entebbe, The Pope's Journey to the United States). No sooner had a Bantam senior editor learned of the murderous assault on Ryan and his party, via a 2 a.m. phone call from Bantam's publicity representative in San Francisco, than the wheels were set in motion. By Monday, Bantam's Editor in Chief Marc Jaffe was on the phone with San Francisco Chronicle Managing Editor William German, even then beginning to piece together the eyewitness story described by Chronicle Correspondent Ron Javers, who was wounded at the scene.

Javers had filed his initial report to the Chronicle from San Juan, P.R. A day later, while he was recovering from surgery at the Andrews Air Force Base hospital outside Washington, a Bantam editor was on the phone proposing a deal. Within hours, the Chronicle had assembled a team of 15 reporters to work with Javers and Co-Author Marshall Kilduff, who had been investigating Peoples Temple activities in California for two years.

In New York, meanwhile, at least two dozen staffers were collecting photographs and readying the machinery of production. The book was written in roughly four days, arrived in New York by courier on a Sunday, was copy-edited and flown to a Nashville plant to be set, and then rushed to Chicago, where the first 650,000 bound copies rolled off the presses at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Said Co-Author Javers: "It was like writing a book by remote control."

Charles A. Krause, the Washington Post's South American correspondent who had escaped from the Port Kai-tuma ambush with a superficial bullet wound, managed to join the pool of reporters that returned to the Jonestown site with Guyanese authorities. He was filing from his hotel room in Georgetown when Post Executive Editor Benjamin C. Bradlee recalled him to Washington. There Krause holed up in a suite at the Madison Hotel and began working. "It was sort of like Georgetown," Krause recalled. "I was being held captive." At first dictating his recollections and later doing his own typing, Krause assembled his account in five days, while Post Editors Laurence Stern and Richard Harwood filled in the background. Their book went on sale the same day as Bantam's.

The question remains: Are these "quickies" merely commercial ventures for publishers, or do they represent responsible efforts to record and interpret dramatic world events? Profits, it so happens, are likely to be marginal, given the extra shipping, printing and overtime costs that result from speeding up production. In the case of Bantam's Guyana special, these costs amounted to a high five figures. A majority of instant books break even, but some--notably The President's Trip to China and The White House Transcripts--were financial failures, with returns as high as 60%. The Pentagon Papers was their biggest success, with 1.66 million in print. "It is a high-risk venture," admits Stuart Applebaum, Bantam's publicity manager. Rena Wolner of Berkley is more blunt. Says she: "It's crap shooting."

Nor does money appear to be the main incentive for authors--though CBS has already made a deal with the Washington Post team. Advances are modest by paperback standards; Krause received some $40,000 up front, to be divided among three collaborators.

Considering the journalistic haste with which they were assembled, Guyana Massacre and The Suicide Cult are solid documentaries. "It isn't War and Peace," admits Harwood, co-author of the Berkley book. Krause and his co-authors offer more sophisticated speculation about the psychological motives for Jonestown. One of the chapters is entitled "Scoop," a reference to Evelyn Waugh's satiric novel about journalists who cover an elusive crisis in a backward country. "A friend told me I would never write a book without a gun to my head," said Krause. Perhaps more editors and publishers should arm themselves.

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