Warner Books' list now includes Robert James Waller. In 1993, novelist Waller set a best-selling record. His Bridges of Madison County was number one on the hardcover fiction list with more than 4.3 million copies sold, making it the best-selling novel of all time. In 1994, Bridges added 1.3 million in hardcover sales. By mid-1995 the book had been on the best-seller list for 145 weeks. Also in 1993, Waller's Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend sold almost two million copies. At one point, the author's two novels were number one and number two on the fiction hardcover best-seller list simultaneously. What is even more significant about Waller's achievement is that Bridges was a first novel.
In an interview in American Bookseller, Laurence Kirshbaum, head of Warner Books and Waller's publisher, told how Warner pulled off this noteworthy achievement.
With The Bridges of Madison County Warner faced the challenge of a first novel by an unknown author. If the book was to succeed, it would need word of mouth among readers and booksellers to propel it above the mass of new novels published each year.
Warner also had a strong hunch that with careful promotion and marketing, Bridges could make it. It was a beautifully written love story and had appeal to both male and female readers. Warner took a gamble and sent five thousand free copies of the book to retailers, confident that if they saw it, felt it, read it, that they would get very excited about it.
The first printing for Bridges was twenty-nine thousand, a formidable number, yet far short of the press run Warner typically produced for one of its star authors. By comparison, after the success of Bridges, Warner had a first printing of 1.5 million for Waller's second novel, Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend.
The word of mouth for Bridges spread and its sales zoomed. "It was the right book at the right time," claimed Kirshbaum. "It was a book that touched the dreams and fantasies of millions of people in a very intimate and personal and meaningful way. It demonstrates the importance of not giving up on a book in the first couple of weeks Too often there is an expectation that if [a book] doesn't work in the first couple of weeks then it must be dead...get it into the back of the stores, send it back."
After the initial success, Warner kept promoting and publicizing the book, aided by the author's ubiquitous traveling around the country. The publisher continued sending the book out to prominent individuals in order to build up an inventory of positive quotes. It called hundreds of bookstores with encouraging news of big sales. Warner Books never decelerated its aggressive tactics, even after Bridges was an established success.
Warner's achievement with Waller's books is unique, particularly in an industry that publishes fifty thousand titles a year, and where less than 1 percent sell more than a hundred thousand copies. Ninety- nine percent sell imperceptible amounts, and even a best-selling book has revenues totaling less than 20 percent of a major movie.
Of course, the making of a best-seller by an established good- read author is considerably easier than Warner's efforts on behalf of Robert James Waller's books. In 1990, Dell/Delacorte, a major publisher, signed Danielle Steel to a five-novel contract for an advance of $60 million. What may seem like madness is actually sound publishing economics. At the time Dell made the deal, Steel had more than 150 million copies of her books in print. In 1992, two of her books made the top ten hardcover best-seller lists. One of these books, Jewels, had a first printing of 1.2 million copies.
When a chain bookstore receives a new book from Steel, it is instantly placed at the entrance, usually in a twelve-copy floor display. It can't be missed. As a result of such exposure in the stores, in addition to television and print advertising campaigns, and the author's publicity efforts, the book rapidly rises to the top of the best-seller lists, thus enabling the chain to build more superstores, and the publisher to give multimillion-dollar advances to others in the charmed circle of best-selling authors of popular fiction.
Purists decry the diminished concern for the written word in bestselling fiction, proclaiming that once a tweedy haven for men and women of letters, publishing has become a noisy casino of chance, glamour, and high-risk investment.
Respected literary agent Andrew Wylie adds that many titles on best-seller lists seem more like literary versions of prime-time television programs than original fiction. And, in fact, many of these novels are made into TV or theatrical movies. But we must face reality. Best-seller publishing is show business. These publishers make huge investments in their output and must retrieve a profit at the bookstore box office.
Hollywood purchases movie rights to novels by best-selling authors for huge sums for two basic reasons. First, these popular authors write books that often read like movies. But more important, when a book reaches best-seller status and becomes a movie, millions of potential moviegoers have already read the novel in hardcover or paperback.
Of course, buying movie rights to a novel doesn't always mean that the picture will be made. At any one point, the studios have a few dozen projects in development that never make it to the silver screen. Gay Talese's nonfiction book about our sex mores, Thy Neighbor's Wife, was optioned by United Artists in 1979 for the then- record sum of $2.5 million. The studio never made the movie.
Celebrities as Best-Selling Authors
The handful of best-selling popular fiction novelists can hardly fill the voracious appetites of publishers and their eager audiences. An alternative is publishing biographies and autobiographies of modern celebrities and living legends. In 1995, many of the top books in the nonfiction category were by or about such luminaries as Robert S. McNamara, Shirley MacLaine, Kathie Lee Gifford, Colin Powell, William J. Bennett, and Oprah Winfrey's cook, Rosie Daley.
Few celebrities write their own autobiographies, although some have insisted on doing so, usually to the chagrin of the publisher. One positive factor in publishing books about celebrities is their promotional value. A tour of the TV talk show circuit can reap rewards for these books beyond the limits of traditional authors.
What Drives Publishers in Their Quest for Best-Sellers
The world of bestsellerdom is peopled by a group of publishers whose principal motivation is the bottom line and their need to in-crease profits by at least 10 percent a year. Publishing efforts must be keyed to building authors in their stable and signing new ones who will achieve brand-name status, very much like a product in a supermarket.
