For superstar authors, the publicity machine runs nonstop. Lesser-known writers hit the road and promote their own books. Never mind that they may have better things to do -- like write

Adair Lara, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, July 12, 2003
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle


Hillary Rodham Clinton got a cool $8 million advance for her memoir, "Living History," and a publicity blitz that included prominent journalists from foreign countries flying to Washington to interview her. Right behind that, Harry Potter fans were whipped into a frenzy by an orchestrated campaign of embargoes on the new volume and then treated to bookstore pajama parties across the country.

Alas, the publishers of the estimated 55,000 books that come out every year in the United States must count on lesser-known authors to do more and more of the promoting of a book, from hiring publicists to setting up and paying for tours. Many publishers even expect authors to submit their marketing strategy as part of their proposal. For authors, finding readers for a book is often harder than writing it was.

J.S. Holliday, author of the acclaimed "The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience," recently drove from his home in Carmel to a vast chain bookstore 200 miles north in Roseville for a reading he set up himself. He arrived to find a podium and chairs, a mike turned on and 30 shrink-wrapped copies of his new book, "Rush for Riches," on a table.

But the chairs were empty. The manager refused to make an announcement over the PA system, so Holliday plucked an audience of six from among the store's shoppers. "Look, I'm about to give a rousing speech over there," he said, putting a friendly arm around their shoulders. "Why don't you come over and listen to me?"

He talked to six people for half an hour and sold five books. Then he helpfully took the shrink wrap off the remaining books and signed them. The clerk was aghast. "You've torn the bar code off! We need that to sell the book! " Holliday fished the shrink wrap out of the garbage and restored the bar codes while customers watched, "amazed, no doubt, at the humiliation authors must wade in to make sure that a book gets sold," he said, laughing. Later he learned that every one of those books had sold, and the store had reordered.

When San Francisco's Kirk Read got his coming-of-age memoir, "How I Learned to Snap," published by Hill Street Press, an independent house in Athens, Ga., he understood that publishing it was all they could afford to do. "I told them,

just send me 200 books and I'll sell them," Read said. He drove to 100 tour dates in 40 cities -- everything from book group meetings to huge university lectures. He made purple T-shirts and buttons depicting a hand snapping and gave them out at each stop.

"A lot of authors are better at thinking outside the box than publishers because they live outside the box," said Gerry Howard, head of Broadway Books, a division of Random House. He offered as an example Dave Pelzer, author of the best-selling book "A Child Called 'It': One Child's Courage to Survive."

"He's on a permanent campaign," Howard said. "He travels the country in an evangelical way and sells lots of books in the back of the auditorium."

Even cookbook authors must -- literally -- cook up interest in their books. Joyce Goldstein of San Francisco flew to Miami with six pounds of fresh phyllo on her lap. The former owner of Square One and author of 19 books, she cooked all morning, making 300 "tastes" of bougatsa, a Greek phyllo pastry filled with cheese custard -- and sold five books. Soon she'll fly to Baltimore to attend a conference at the invitation of the Potato Board. She went to Copia in Napa to do "This Is Not Your Mother's Seder."

"I have cornered a rather funny little niche as the resident food Jew in the Bay Area," Goldstein said. "You sell them one book at a time. Drip, drip, drip.

"Bookstores? You might as well kill yourself," she said.

The imagination every author possesses goes to good use in these grassroots marketing efforts. When he isn't setting up readings at bookstores, Holliday speaks at Rotary clubs, always making sure they have his books there for sale afterward. In March he spoke to the American Glaucoma Society. "There are conventions and conferences in town all the time, and they need some alternative to their subjects," he says.

Linda Watanabe McFerrin of San Francisco, author of the story collection "The Hand of Buddha," traveled to 25 states on an Amtrak pass for a month. She taught workshops and stayed with friends. Constance Hale ("Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose") conducts writing and grammar workshops in bookstores and at Media Alliance, the Learning Annex and UC Extensions up and down the state.

"My publisher did next to nothing," she said, "but each time I teach a class there's a little notice in some catalog or mailer about my book."

Laurie Wagner, author of "Living Happily Ever After," said that an aunt threw huge book parties for her in Los Angeles. "At the first event I sold 160 books to family and friends. The next event I sold 120. And the events generate word of mouth."

The downside of all of this is the time taken away from what writers do best: write. The financial realities can be daunting, too. Most authors make $2 to $3 on a hardcover sale. An out-of-town reading might cost $300, even if you stay with friends. An author has to sell 100 books to break even, and bookstores rarely order that many copies.

Yet do-it-yourself promotion pays off, if not in huge sales then at least in keeping a good book in print long enough to find its readers. Joyce Goldstein says her editor knows how hard she works to sell the books and will keep that in mind next time he's considering publishing her. Kirk Read promoted his hardback so vigorously that the paperback was bought by Penguin. Holliday gets books from the publisher at a 40 percent discount, so when he sells them himself he not only makes a few dollars, but, more importantly, helps them stay in print.