Dateline: Laguardia Airport, NYC, 5 May
The end of the road—sort of. Quick pit stop at home and then right back to Providence airport for two flights taking me to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast Expo of the U.S. Naval Institute. There I give a short speech and participate in a panel on border security, plus sign books.
Here’s what happened last night in my final appearance on this initial media tour: Steve Oppenheim of Putnam picked me up with a car and we were taken to CUNY for my author’s appearance/signing. There are a slew of books out in front of the auditorium for people to buy and a couple of neat posters of the book cover blown up. We head to a back-of-the-stage dressing room and hang out.
Steve and I talk about book sales. I ask if Putnam is disappointed that it’s been all (roughly) downhill since the book peaked on Amazon last Thursday (29 April) at 42 (this morning it was in the 900s). He said no, the book was doing about what he expected given my lack of name recognition. So no bestseller status, but expectations of long and strong sales.
Some things clearly worked well on the tour, meaning wherever I appeared, producers and hosts only had great things to say about my performances. So no problem there. The disappointments tend to fall in the range of timing of print stories, or the lack of them. The AP reported Matt Kelley interviews my on the 26th, promising a story to appear on the 27th. This still hasn’t happened.
It still looks like something may happen with a major national newspaper (Wall Street Journal), but that possibility, largely because it morphed from being something small to something potentially quite large, has dragged on and on in terms of scheduling. Yes, you want everything to come out at the same time and generate a critical mass of PR that would have kept that 42 ranking for a length of time and perhaps pushed it up even higher, but there’s only so much you can do in terms of engineering when things get published. Media appearances are easier to schedule on some level, it’s just harder to hit the biggest shows, meaning Dennis Miller was fantastic but Jon Stewart and The Daily Show would have been even better (same for Brian Lamb on CSPAN versus a Today Show).
But as I have said before, it’s awfully hard to complain about what we did achieve or how I performed. The real challenges of the book are: my relative unknown status, the lack of the words “Bush” and “liar” in my title, and the reality that what I offer in the book is a complex but optimistic vision of the future when the market right now is focused on finger-pointing and back-stabbing in the most simplistic of packages.
So what happens is the New York Times passes on a review of my book but reviews Joseph Wilson’s book today. It will be a bestseller, because built right into the title is the bit about the White House allegedly outing his CIA spy wife. Is the book any good? The review in the NYT said it was a complete waste of time. But it got the review and it achieve bestseller status. No one will give a rat’s ass about the book in 4 months, but it scores in one key way that mine apparently cannot.
So you accept this reality: PR drives the book sales in the key opening window of 3-to-4 weeks more than anything else. In that way, as I have said before, big books (and mine was at 100,000 units in first printing) live and die in terms of opening week box office grosses and the PR that gets people into the theaters that first couple of weekends.
Clearly, that realization only fuels my anger at having my website off-line for so long during the first crucial weekend following release. After all the effort I put into making the site what it was in terms of content, it burns my ass to no end that no one could access it the weekend following that (for me) huge Putnam-generated PR blitz. I know it wouldn’t have made a big difference, but it was something I thought I had some control over, thus the personal sense of failure.
I battle a lot of sense of failure right now, but there are key signs of big things ahead: possible WSJ coverage, scheduled Washington Post review, the CSPAN show with Lamb airing, maybe getting the brief on CSPAN, the Esquire article and all the PR that will generate, and finally, the chance for even bigger briefs within the defense community (can’t really say whom that might involve, but it would easily be the biggest brief of my career if it happens, meaning I wouldn’t be “playing Jack Ryan” on that one, I’d be the real deal). Then there’s still what can be accomplished through this website, the usual word of mouth, and what I still expect will be a load of public-speaking engagements (the offers for bigger and bigger conferences are already rolling in).
So while I battle the sense of disappointment and failure and that feeling that I had a chance for a bestseller but that it just didn’t happen for reasons largely beyond my control or—frankly—stemming from my decision to write a book I could be proud of, I find myself back in that old familiar position of winning minds one room at a time (or perhaps one blog at a time). In many ways, this is best for me, as any real “overnight” success would probably kill my sense of drive, and like Al Pacino’s character in Heat (Vincent), I gotta stay sharp and lean, out there on the edge where I need to be.
Enough introspection, back to the story . . .
Leonard Lopate steps into the room, the local NPR legend who interviewed me on his show last Friday and is serving as my interviewer again tonight. He was fairly snarky on his show, and asks if it would be okay to “be tougher” on me tonight. I smile and say, “of course,” but it worries me a bit. Finding out that the Times wouldn’t even review the book on the way over to CUNY had left me feeling a bit like a fake—in New York at least. Now here was this NYC heavyweight promising to work me over in front of a Manhattan crowd. Worse still, Steve said the crowd could be very small because of the beautiful weather—maybe 15 to 20.
Turns out 50 show up, including my brother and his wife, who live in Manhattan. Leonard is tougher on me, but in a good way, and his more probing and skeptical questions push me to better and more persuasive answers. We go about 50 minutes and then open the floor to questions. That goes another 30 minutes and it ends with a nice round of applause. About 3 or 4 people leave during the talk, but the rest stay until the end.
Then I sit at a table on stage and sign books—actually one book for someone not from Putnam. A bit embarrassing, but there it is. But this guy had relatives in the Gulf and said he bought 4 copies to send them all, because—in his words—he wanted them “to really understand what this was all about.” That kind of feedback from servicemen and women or their loved ones back home is really quite thrilling. These are the people I’ve devoted my adult life to, so their approval means a lot.
What’s also nice about the night is that Neil Nyren, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of G.P. Putnam’s Sons is in the audience, as is Marilyn Ducksworth, Exec Director of PR, plus two of her assistants. I know these people are incredibly busy, so they were there as a sign of support for their author, letting him know that even if the book wasn’t a bestseller right off the bat, they still really believe in the book.
As we walk out of the auditorium, we review all the upcoming events we believe can still propel this book to some serious sales, and we plot a bit of strategy, bucking each other up in the process. What Marilyn emphasizes is this: when they get me in front of any audience, I can sell books—pure and simple. Reemphasizing that with her is a big deal for me, because it pushes her and Steve to keep trying to get me in front of audiences, knowing I will make it pay off in spades.
Afterwards, Steve relays a compliment from Leonard Lopate, who says that not only am I good and a natural in front of audiences, but the tougher the question the better I get. That means a lot to me. Lopate really did push me hard throughout the interview, and I have learned that you are only as good as the interviewer, no matter what your material.
So all in all I walk away from the night feeling fairly solid. I know what I am good at and I know this thing is far from over. Good, big stuff loom right around the corner (fingers crossed tightly and knowing nothing is in the bag until it actually happens), and both my performances and the material still shine when given the chance.
So the beat goes on . . .
Already I have six radio shows scheduled for next week—5 regional and one syndicated, with 4 being AM/FM and 2 NPR. Four will be half-hours and two will be full hours, meaning four full hours to sell the book, and judging how many emails I get from radio listeners, I know this effort is well worth my time. Plus I just love the radio format.
But one thing is for sure: when I leave Putnam’s tour I leave behind the drivers, the media handlers, the first-class hotel suites with mini-bars and gourmet restaurants doing the room service. Back to USG per diems and compact rent-a-cars and travel vouchers where I have to count every cent.
But you know what? I’ll probably say goodbye to at least 10 pounds within a week.
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