You gotta love a story like this one.

Friday, January 3, 2003

Lessons in book promotion pay off for young self-published author

By JOHN MARSHALL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER BOOK CRITIC

The fresh-faced young man sat at a table at last fall's Northwest Bookfest in Seattle, sometimes outfitted in costume as a storyteller of yore, but not altogether pleased with the number of buyers for his self-published fantasy novel. Eighteen-year-old Christopher Paolini of Paradise Valley, Mont., had been on the road hawking his book for most of the year and was used to far more buyer interest, sometimes approaching sales of 100 copies in a single day. So Paolini was not just indulging in idle grousing when he told a Saturday visitor to his display, "This is a bookfest, but nobody is buying."

Those frustrations are behind Paolini now. This young author became one of the latest graduates of the difficult world of self-publishing to climb into the major publisher big leagues. World rights to Paolini's "Eragon" and its two unwritten sequels were sold recently to the youth division of one of the country's most prestigious houses, Alfred A. Knopf, in a deal reportedly worth more than $500,000.

"I'm sorry," Paolini said this week from Montana, "but I can't confirm the size of the deal."

The young author, who recently turned 19, has now learned far more than just to sound like a big-time author. He has learned about the draining grind of book promotion, with more than 70 appearances around the country during 2002, from elementary schools to bookstores. And he has also learned the power of persistence, to keep slogging away through good times and bad.

Since his novel was self-published in February, Paolini says he had never spent more than three days in a row at his home near Livingston where he was home-schooled and where he graduated with a high school degree at 15. That was the same year when he first started writing "Eragon." He finished his first draft of the book at 16, his second draft at 17. And at 18, he was a published author with a 472-page paperback novel that also bore a cover he designed.

The road to Knopf in New York was paved with tireless personal appearances and strong word-of-mouth response from readers that soon resulted in some impressive reviews, including readers posting their comments at Amazon.com and in Publishers Weekly, the trade journal that described it as an "impressive epic fantasy."

Some of the interest in the young man's novel was, no doubt, generated by the huge popularity of "Harry Potter" and "The Lord of the Rings" and their film versions. Paolini's publicity flier attempts to make that connection on its cover: "After 'Harry Potter' and 'Lord of the Rings,' read 'Eragon.'"

But there were also bookstore owners who trumpeted "Eragon" to their customers. Among the most enthusiastic was Roger Page, owner of Island Books on Mercer Island, who has sold 200 copies of the novel.

"I've had a 50-year-old reader say 'Eragon' is the best book he's read since 'Lord of the Rings' and a 10-year-old reader say the same thing," Page relates. "I've also had 25 people say this novel is just a great read."

So much momentum had been building for the novel that Paolini and his family were starting to find themselves overwhelmed by the demands of running their own publishing business, including an exhaustive Web site supporting the novel's sales (www.factsource.com). And the author himself was feeling a tad tired from a promo schedule that left him finding it difficult to focus much attention on the writing of his second novel.

"We couldn't handle things any longer on our own, then Knopf came to us, so it was a case of perfect timing," Paolini said. "It's incredible to me, very, very exciting. I think it's wonderful that so many more people will be able to read 'Eragon.' "

Knopf plans to bring out a hardback edition of the first novel in Paolini's planned "Inheritance Trilogy" next September. Sales of the self-published paperback will be discontinued in the next few weeks.

Paolini's "Eragon" is the second self-published novel by a Northwest author to be given the big-bucks boost by a major publisher in the past nine months. Craig Joseph Danner of Hood River, Ore., received a six-figure payment for "Himalayan Dhaba," which was published last spring by E.P. Dutton.