How Precious Was That While, page 15
The book was published first in hardcover, well before the movie. The publisher had obtained the novelization rights in part with the promise of doing a good job of promotion. But not much promotion was apparent, and the print order was a medium 15,000 copies. The movie folk, disturbed by this, sent a man to New York to remonstrate with the publisher, and I understand even paid money to facilitate promotion and a larger printing. Okay, the print order was doubled, to 30,000, which is respectable but not big. Only when the time came, only 15,000 copies were printed. It seemed that the doubled figure was only if enough orders came in, and they didn’t. Why should they, with no extra promotion? I understand the movie folk were disgusted, and so was I; it smelled like reneging.
As they made the movie, there kept being changes. So the editor said they would hire someone to splice those changes into the text of the novel, so that the paperback edition would match the movie. They did so, and showed me the revisions, which consisted mainly of deleting certain scenes and paragraphs of mine and substituting larger passages matching the movie scenes. I checked them and approved them. But when the paperback was published, some idiot had left the original paragraphs in, so that in four places things happened twice. This perplexed readers, who wondered whether I didn’t proofread my material. It’s the writer who gets the blame for the editor’s mistakes. Then the movie itself had further changes. Thus there were three versions: the hardcover, the paperback, and the movie. I did learn from the experience though. For one thing, I found that it isn’t just good books the scriptwriters maul, it’s their own original scripts. There was a lovely scene in the original that wasn’t in the paperback or movie: Arnold, at work as a construction worker, takes a lunch break. Several men are watching a lovely nude dancing girl, there in the middle of the construction site. He walks right through her. Oil—she’s a girlie holograph! He knew it; we didn’t, until then. The men have a lot of fun with that kind of entertainment, even changing her size so she’s forty feet tall, so they can stand directly below and look up. Men will be men. But all that was gone from the finished movie. So did they correct the erring science while they were at it? No; it was apparent that they paid no attention to my corrections. Too bad; I think it would have been a better movie if they had.
The movie Total Recall was one of the blockbusters of 1990. How about the novel? Novelizations are sneered at by critics, but of course it seems that everything that’s interesting is panned by critics. Books based on best-selling movies commonly do make the best-seller lists. How many copies of the tie-in paperback would Avon print? Oh, a million, for this one, the editor said. That was great; my largest prior paperback printing had been 450,000. Morrow had printed only half the indicated number of hardcover copies, but the paperback was where the big promise was, for this one. But as the time grew near, the editor backed off somewhat. Only 600,000 would be printed. Well, that was a comedown, but still a good size, easily enough to make a good showing on the best-seller lists. But it didn’t make those lists. What had happened? We checked—and learned that they had printed only 300,000 copies. They had to rush back to press as the book sold out in the stores, but of course it was too late; by the time the replacement orders reached the stores, the tide had ebbed. An almost sure best-seller had been denied in the only way possible: by printing too few copies to allow it to happen.
Why had they done it? If they were going to print 300,00, why did they tell us 600,000? Well, as I encountered this phenomenon repeatedly, always to my cost, I slowly realized that there is in place an unwritten policy in Parnassus: they inflate their figures to double what they actually intend to print. It’s routine; they don’t consider it lying. Why? Because they want to appear to be bigger players than they are. In hardcover, you aren’t considered to be a contender for a best-seller unless your printing is at least 100,000. So they announce that, then print 50,000. Everyone knows it—except, it seems, folk like me, who deal in straight figures. So when I asked the size of a coming print order, and was given a figure, I believed it. And then was confounded when it turned out to be only half that. The trouble was, I knew how many copies had to be out there to make the best-seller lists, and sometimes I sold novels based on publishers’ promises—which then turned out to be double what they actually intended to do. They don’t consider it lying, but I do, and I don’t like doing business with liars.
But that was just one book, and not exactly great literature. What about more serious material? Well, Morrow/Avon was eager for my future novels, and in a conference call with me and my agent they said: however many hardcover copies of the final Incarnations novel And Eternity they sold, they would double it with my provocative singleton mainstream sex-abuse novel Firefly, and double it again with the major novel of my career, the historical Tatham Mound. No hard figures there, but relative ones—so the fudge factor shouldn’t apply. So did they do it?
Well, they printed 47,500 hardcover copies of And Eternity, and it sold well, even making the Publishers Weekly hardcover best-seller list. It just kept selling, so it seemed that returns would be negligible. In the end there were some; it sold about 36,000. So that meant 72,000 for Firefly. They actually printed 52,000. But they insisted on marketing the novel as horror, which meant that the genre horror readers would be disappointed because it had nothing to do with vampires or werewolves or ghosts and not much to do with really mean people, and its real market would not know it existed. Sure enough, tacit censorship caused many stores not to put it on their shelves or to tell readers they had it. Those who found it and read it were mostly very positive; a typical female comment was “It’s about time this was brought out into the open!” But the return rate was 50 percent, which was a disaster for a hardcover edition. Because it had been marketed as a genre novel, in a genre that doesn’t get into the realities of sexual abuse the way Firefly does.
The next was Tatham Mound, a 200,000-word story of the American Indians who encountered the Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto. It was based on the bones found in a burial mound discovered about ten miles from where we live. I had contributed $75,000 to the University of Florida and a related project to enable them to excavate it, and I believe that project helped define our knowledge of the people who lived here at the time the Europeans discovered America. So this was THE novel, for me, finally getting seriously into the type of writing I had wanted to do for a quarter century. By the publisher’s original promise, made at the time of purchase, the hardcover printing should have been 144,000—enough to make it a significant best-seller. Now of course it isn’t enough just to print copies; there has to be promotion and distribution geared to it, so that the stores and the public know what’s coming. When they spoke of a printing, I thought they were actually promising that whole major effort. So how many did they actually print? They were cagey about figures, but they did not promote it as one of their 50,000+ efforts, despite telling me that they did plan to print that many. Not 144,000? Why weren’t they promoting as they had promised? Well, the word came back, Anthony wasn’t a big enough name to justify their doing any real promotion. They only promoted the names who didn’t need it? Something was weird here.
I swung into action. I had been working with others to set up Hi Piers, a marketing operation for my books. We arranged for me to attend the 1991 ABA convention being held in New York City, so I could promote the novel there. Morrow protested that a book-signing couldn’t be arranged. Yes it could; we had cleared it with the ABA personnel, and they were waiting for Morrow’s call. So finally, reluctantly, they made the call and it was scheduled. What about books to send out for review? Morrow’s effort was so inadequate that I bought 600 copies of the bound galleys at $5 each, and we sent them out for review, and garnered a number of favorable reviews. I paid my own way and rented my own booth at ABA. The signing was a success; many bookstore personnel were interested. We made up and handed out Tatham Mound T-shirts. We did the whole bit. It’s hard to be precise on figures, not knowing what should be counted for what, but my wife estimates that the promotional effort cost us about $50,000. All because the publisher wouldn’t do it. But the worst was still to come. Morrow had dragged its heels throughout, and finally trumped our best efforts: apparently they actually printed about 20,000 copies. That made it impossible to do well, no matter how many readers wanted it. They had to go immediately back to press, so it nudged up to about 25,000—or half the amount they had told me when I queried, and perhaps a sixth what they had originally promised. When I tried to reach the editor he was always out of the office. He did forward me what he said was a favorable blurb comment on it—but the envelope was empty except for his letter. Later Morrow sent me only the indifferent reviews of it, really rubbing it in.
Why did they do it? Why did they so determinedly renege, doing just about everything possible to torpedo their own book? I finally figured that out. After they had so badly blown Firefly, they decided that my next novel would never sell. Never mind that it was a completely different type of book, in a different genre; if they promoted it well and it sold well, it would prove them wrong. I suspect at this point they wanted to demonstrate that Anthony was not a good-selling writer. And some editors would rather torpedo their writers and publishers than admit significant error. Covering his own wretched ass. Crazy? You bet. But it happened. If there was some other reason, I’d like to know it. One evidence of their inadequacy is the returns. There are always some returns, as some stores change their minds or fail to put books on the shelves, as happened massively with Firefly. But when Hi Piers then sought to buy leftover hardcovers to fill its requests, it could not: there were none. There were no copies of the hardcover edition of Tatham Mound remaining. So further orders for the novel could not be filled. Morrow had made absolutely sure the novel would fail, despite its market.
Yet I understand that Avon was astounded to learn that I was leaving that publisher, and taking Xanth elsewhere. Carolyn Reidy, president of Avon, who had not been at fault in this instance, because Avon is the paperback arm, called me, and I explained how I felt about reneging on a promise made to obtain an important novel. “That just isn’t done, with me; it just isn’t done,” I concluded. She listened and did not comment. Then she resigned her position at Avon. So how was this received by the publisher? Did the errant hardcover editor pay any penalty for what he had done? No; they promoted him. Later he left Morrow and was involved in the notorious four-and-a-half-million-dollar Newt Gingrich deal. The odor was par for the course.
In due course it became apparent that Morrow/Avon was in trouble, and it was put up for sale. But even as offers came in, it was losing writers—guess why!—and its value was declining. Finally, a sale to Putnam fell through, so it continued on its own, not the publisher it had been. I wonder if the matter of integrity ever came up in its board meetings, or the likely consequence of stiffing its writers. Avon had for years been my best publisher, and I had not expected to leave it, but with Morrow’s considerable help it demonstrated that it had the ability to alienate me. I say this with regret; I had not wished to be alienated, but I think this capsule history shows that there was little point in remaining there.
So where was I to go with Xanth? This was a matter of deep concern. I considered each of the other publishers with whom I had done business carefully, because I prefer to stay with the known than risk the unknown. These were Berkley, Del Rey, Baen, and TOR. There were others, but these were more significant or current, so warranted first consideration.
My history with Berkley was mixed. My first sale there was Hasan, in 1969—but then the editor changed, and the new one wrote it off unpublished. Par for the course, but not the best beginning. My next sale there was Prostho Plus, after a hassle which included the report of the manuscript being lost; only when I got a copy of the galley proofs from the about-to-be-published British edition, so it was clear that I was ready to remarket it elsewhere, did Berkley manage to find its own copy and make an offer. It seems that manuscripts can be lost and found at publishers’ convenience. I accepted, and in another two years it was published. My next sale there was Kiai!, a collaborative martial arts novel with Roberto Fuentes. Berkley had rejected it before, but when Kung Fu was a hit on TV, the editor asked for it back, because of the sudden martial arts craze, and bought it, and published it in only seven months. It continued with four sequels. Then Chthon, which I had taken from Ballantine during the blacklisting there, together with its sequel Phthor. Their first edition was okay, but their later reissue was missing ten pages. I didn’t know of this, because they didn’t send me an author’s copy; I learned of it only when a reader wrote from Australia to ask a number of stupid questions—which turned out to be not stupid at all. He had in fact been paying attention, and discovered the missing pages by comparing editions. “Dump Berkley!” I told my agent, furious. But he was wiser than I, and put me in touch with their hardcover arm, Putnam, which was to do quite well for a time with my revived Adept series.
Except for that underprinting syndrome. Berkley paid good money, had a good contract, and good (i.e., minimal) editing, but that business of printing fewer copies each time drove me crazy. However, that was the tail end of a series inherited from another publisher; maybe Berkley would do better with its own series. So I generated Mode, featuring cute, smart, suicidally depressive Colene, her ideal man Darius, her telepathic horse Seqiro, and a grand multiuniverse adventure. This would put me on the hardcover best-seller list, the catalog said. Since it generally takes at least 50,000 copies printed to do that, I was really interested. So what happened? The readers loved it, but they printed only about 25,000 hardcover copies, and had to go back to press twice in a hurry, but of course had ruined its potential. We checked with a store: how was it selling? “You mean Virtual Mode has been published?” the bookseller asked, amazed. “I’ve been waiting for it!” The salesman had never come, so the store had not known of it, and so not ordered any copies. No wonder the initial orders were small! So how about the big chain stores, which know what they want and get it at reduced prices, and keep computer track of sales? One woman reported checking eighteen Waldenbooks stores before she found a copy on sale. Obviously they felt no urgency about keeping that title in stock. They must have sent out something like two copies per store, sold out immediately, and not noticed. That says something more about the type of promotion and follow-up the publisher had done, not to mention the chain store. Suddenly I knew what had happened—too late. They applied the lower printing rule to the sequels, of course, and didn’t do anything special with the paperback editions, which tend to be pegged on the hardcover performances. So there was nothing to do but shut down the series, which was going nowhere despite the avid response from those readers who had found it on sale. Berkley had many big ideas about marketing, but somehow never carried them through very well. For example, they sent me on a promotional tour to California—where I had a phone interview which could have been done at my home in Florida, autographed at two stores, and was interviewed personally for a radio broadcast by Richard Lupoff, himself one of the more talented and lesser-known genre writers. He mentioned that he had a project at Berkley with no report for a year and a half. So when I got home I mentioned the matter to Susan Allison of Berkley, with this innocent surely-this-can’t-be-true? attitude, and she got on it and contacted Lupoff. I think he never knew who had jogged her into action at last, but I was glad to help. He thought I was one of his un-friends, having been cautioned by Robert Silverberg, whose malign influences on my relations were described in part in BiOgre. I had been scheduled to stop in Los Angeles, but I said I didn’t want to be interviewed by Harlan Ellison, so they simply cut LA out of the tour, leaving the local Dalton in the lurch. Another reader told me how the Dalton store still had signs up for the autographing, not knowing that the publisher had pulled the rug out from under. Apparently they were afraid to tell Ellison no, though I was ready to do so. More on that in Chapter 10. Taken as a whole, the tour was a waste of time; the publisher simply had nothing worth the effort. But it was typical of its inability to carry through an idea effectively. Had the editors told me how little they had, I would have declined the trip, but naturally they concealed the relevant information.
There was one more thing. That publisher was the distributor for Richard and Wendy Pini’s graphic adaptation of Xanth #13, Isle of View. The ElfQuest folk did a nice job on the first half, finding an artist whose drawings were a delight. The first half of the novel was rendered into pictures as Return to Centaur. They planned to print 30,000 copies, but early reports were so good that Berkley required them to double it to 60,000. That last-minute change caused a delay while they got the extra printing done. The copies went out—and suddenly, it seemed like a week later but must have been longer, things slammed into reverse, and two-thirds of the copies were back on their hands. I have not been able to find out exactly what happened, but my impression is some character came along and said, “This stuff won’t sell” and swept it off the shelves before the readers had much of a chance to see it. Thus it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Parnassus is great on that sort of thing. And of course Berkley said it would take only one-third as many of the sequel, applying that sell-through ratio. The ratio that had occurred because they doubled the print order, then wouldn’t let the copies be sold. I call it holding and hitting. Of course the Pinis took a financial beating, when they would have had a nice success, had they been allowed to market it their own way. They knew the nature of their market, as the big publisher did not. The big publishers are like bullies in the schoolyard, pushing around anyone they can, imposing their sometimes stupid rules, heedless of their own ignorance, and thus making commercial disasters of potential winners.
