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Rules for Writing a Bestseller
When the author went on tour for his new book Power Rules, he discovered the secret to being Thomas L. Friedman and Fareed Zakaria: It’s better to be wrong and famous.
If you have a choice between a book tour around the United States and some big pill, take the pill and then go on the tour as I did several months ago.
Book writers have been obliged to do these tours for ages, perhaps most famously, Mark Twain. But that was long before radio and television, when speaking was probably the best way to promote book sales. Now, it’s the tube, even more than very good reviews in The New York Times. For most of the last four or five decades, a good review in the Times was book-selling nirvana. But that was back in the days when people read books or read the Times review just so they could claim they read the book.
As Bill Safire, my former Times colleague, said in introducing me at a Washington, D.C. book event, it reminded him of the duality of one of his favorite titles, Avoid Boring People.
Allow me to restrict this reverie to foreign-policy books, which I know more about than the other kinds. If there were a God or a smidgeon of fairness in life, my book—Power Rules—would be a bestseller. Trust me, and don’t believe the review in The Washington Post that says I should have written my memoirs instead. As I say at the start of most of my talks, once you read this book, you’ll be able to vanquish every foe and make multiple sexual conquests, or your money back. But while I was near-famous when I toiled as a correspondent and columnist for the Times, I’m an acquired taste now. So, making the bestseller list is an impossible stretch.
Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Save American Foreign Policy. 352 pages. Harper. $27.99.
The only foreign-policy books nowadays that make it to the top are those written by authors like Tom Friedman, who succeeded me at the Times. He had his fame and his title going for him. Everybody knows Friedman. But more importantly for sales, he had a phenomenal title, The World Is Flat, which is of course wrong as was the basic argument of the book that international power has been equalized by globalization. But he sold millions. Being spectacularly wrong, however, is good.
Also, you can have a foreign-policy bestseller if you’re Fareed Zakaria with his great Indian-British accent and exotic good looks, and with a television show. The title of his current bestseller is The Post-American World. This is also wrong (America remains the leading power in the world by far), but unlike Friedman, Zakaria knows the title is wrong, as he makes clear early on in the book. What it shows, however, is that people love the idea that America’s day is over. Fareed’s real argument is that we are in the pre-post-American era. And that could be right if we don’t shape up, and fast.
Anyway, my wife Judy thought up my title, Power Rules, and though it suffers from being true, I like it a lot. The title has a double meaning: One of the premises of the book—power still rules international affairs—and the rules that the book offers on how to think about and use those powers. As Bill Safire, my former Times colleague, said in introducing me at a Washington, D.C. book event, it reminded him of the duality of one of his favorite titles, Avoid Boring People.
But I digress; back to the book tours. If you’re not a celebrity or, at a minimum, someone who has committed a recent heinous or otherwise memorable crime, don’t expect throngs of worshippers to fill the seats in the auditoriums and hotel dining rooms. If 100 people turn out at the Los Angeles Public Library, that’s good. Depressingly, maybe 25 will buy the book for you to sign. The best ratio I got was at my own Council on Foreign Relations events in New York and Washington. A few hundred gathered at each place and about half plunked down $28 for my treasured signature on the book.
In San Francisco, the audience topped 300 members of the Northern California World Affairs Council. It was a great group that asked good questions like how I would solve Afghanistan, which I’m always eager to talk about to show how my book can solve just about anything. Inexplicably, there was no break after my talk (they went directly into a panel discussion), which meant no time for the mesmerized audience to flock to the book table where I was poised, grease pen in hand.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
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Leslie H. Gelb, a former New York Times columnist and senior government official, is author of Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (HarperCollins 2009), a book that shows how to think about and use power in the 21st century. He is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Alexius
Interesting... that's why US government officials are wrong most of the time, just to get their 2 seconds of fame.
.................
http://lucifer-fables.blogspot.com/
flyoverland
There is a great little book out Called "The Last Dickens", by Matthew Pearl which chronicles perhaps the greatest book tour of all time, that of Charles Dickens last tour of America in the late 1860's. Very entertaining and informative. As a former CEO, we used to call them "road shows", but I think the concept is the same. Saying the same thing over and over, day after day, is a drag.
oliverckerr
Dear Mr. Gelb,
The following is a letter to you from Michael Stephen Levinson. He used to post here under the pseudonym "jacklegs," but The beast has banned his writings. So as a favor to him I am pasting in his personal letter to you. Hopefully I won't be banned because of it.
"Dear Gelb,
In 2003 I decided to stop working and write a book that was a long time brewing. Instead of scrounging around for an agent and a publishing house I decided to do it myself. That way I would be in control of the front and back cover, besides the selling price.
The company I landed on, for printing, was Lightning Source the subsidiary of Ingram, the giant book distributor. They do big business with Barnes & Noble, besides other book chains.
I planned on running for president, which I did, as an independent write-in candidate seeking the nomination of both political parties, so to present a united face to the rest of the world, because I bring to the table giant ideas beyond the scope of everybody's imagination. Visit youtube.com/poetprophet where you can see me in New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner's office, declaring my independent candidacy, with a copy of "New World Hors D'oeuvres" in my hand.
I published "New World Hors D'oeuvres" subtitled, "The Recipe for World Peace" under the name "Golashes Journalista" because the copy was so hot. I discovered what I hold to this day, was a treasonous act by Billy Clintstone when he was president. I believe that, were I to sell a million copies Billy Clintstone would leave our country, like Roman Polansky, and end up sharing an apartment in France, with Marc Rich.
I also expose a Supreme Court case that I am positive, and I show the fruits of my research to the reader, so the reader can judge, a case that was altered by someone FBI connected, after the galleys were approved by the justices. It never occurred to anyone Hoover's minions would go that far to influence what people get to see and hear - our first Amendment. But they did.
Heavy stuff. You mention Bill Safire. While I was writing, I wrote to Bill Safire and asked him "purr mission" to quote from one of his essays. I directed him to a web page where he could read "New World Hors D'oeuvres," in progress, and see what I was saying. My remarks were critical and I know he is thin skinned.
Shift to the beginning of "New World Hors D'oeuvres." Here is the third paragraph, which Safire read online:
"With my own case pen ding, I believed in the Supreme Coats, those Supreme do-whoppers. I planned on spending my first precious minutes, with Goldbar and the Coats, before Goldbar took sick in his throat, crafting my Torah delight, the story of King Solomon and "Baby Eliána."
The next day, Safire coined the phrase "The Supremes" in an essay about Rhenquist (Goldbar) and the highest court. That night Peggy Noonan used the phrase, "Supremes' quoting Bill, and it has since become a standard, the phrase, "the Supremes" when talking heads refer to the Highest Court. Well, Bill Safire stole it from me because he was mad at what I was writing about his column. He did it because he could. He was mad at me!
I took him to task in "New World Hors D'oeuvres" about lifting my Supremes line but pointed out he could claim he heard it in the movie, "The Pelican Brief" where heroine Darby Shaw refers to the justices on the highest court as "Supremes."
Oh well. When "New World Hors D'oeuvres" came out I had high hopes for publishing success, though my mother told me years ago, 1969 to be exact, that 'hope' was a nope. That whenever you use the word 'hope,' doubt is built in.
J. Edgarina Hoover, the pervert of dirt marked me down for top shelf counter intelligence activities, a person of interest, years ago, and regardless the Church committee hearings his people have never let me be. I have the tell tale Hoover party line echo in my telephone, on and off, generally for three days running, for years and whatever I attempt they are there to interfere.
I called up someone at Barnes and Noble. FBI was listening. I arranged to send the person I talked to a copy of "New World Hors D'oeuvres." On the monday my "New World Hors D'oeuvres arrived I telephoned the lady at B&N. She wasn't there. She had the day off. Not a coincidence.
Someone else answered the phone. That person said, "Mr. Levinson I'm glad you called. I have your package here and I was wondering, what is it?" I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "I looked it up in the Ingram catalogue and it said it was art." (Ohhh. Who wrote that for their catalogue?)
"Then I looked it up in the Bowker ISBN data base and it said it was "witty humor." I said, "Look at the back cover. See the original drawing by Tom Toles. He's a Pulitzer Prize winner at The Washington Post. Her used to draw me when he was a teenager. See the blurb?"
She blurted out, "This is impressive."
A few weeks later I received a letter from B&N telling me they felt the book would sell much better online and in the event someone ordered it they would fulfill the order. I thought that was horrible because it was / is a trade book with full 55% discount and full return. They had nothing to lose by piling some copies on a table or two. Books sell via word of mouth!
I did mine in soft covers because someone in the store told me the customers preferred soft cover though I could have done it in hard covers. So what was the prob limb. I let it sit a couple years and then decided to update the pages about the election, and Hillary Rodham Clintstone running instead of idling in gear.
I suspended the first published version and decided on my own name instead of my Golashes Jurnalista non de plume. I looked up the book in the Bowker ISBN data base. It said "New World Hors D'oeuvres" was "witty humor" and a "Specialty" book - not a Trade Book with full returns, and writen specifically for an audience of people age 13 to 17. Gee. A specialty book of witty humor for kids age 13 to 17. Is it any wonder I didn't get any orders?
Of course I raised bloody hell with the Bowker people. They didn't write that. Nor did I! That was / is J. Edgarina's fascist minions at work, seeking to suppress what they don't want you to see. I also got with the Ingram people over their "art" description.
Well, I have had one book review. A lady I know bought a copy, and it landed in the hands of her fourteen year old son. I plan on posting his review on Amazon but haven't yet. Here is what Jesse Long wrote:
Here you go lev,
Here are the comments you wanted:
This book is awesome my mom knows lev, the author, and he is very interesting in the way he writes and the subjects he writes about. I didn't understand his book at first but I looked some stuff up did a little research and then it hit me like BAM! I got addicted to it the 2nd time I picked it up and yes I recommend it to ANYONE its excellent. It was a little hard at first since I'm only 14 years old but its such an attention grabber I remember getting out of school and going "oh yes I get to read that book from lev!!!" and actually being exited to read not many people my age like reading but if you read a few pages you can't put it down... literally I remember mom calling me for diner and I kept telling her "hold on mom one more page" and reading about 5 pages that way and getting in trouble for it later BUT IT WAS WORTH IT. I love the way he writes like instead of saying "not" he will say "knot" so it grabs your attention.
Also I remember where he says "God's eggs pan ding universe" talking about how the universe is growing every moment of our lives.
He is so good!
Thanks for signing the book
I published the new edition of "New World Hors D'oeuvres" under my own name, but in retrospect I wish I'd had an editor. Here is my very first line:
Ah, dear peers, do not pass go.
An editor would have told me i was saying the opposite - that "Do not pass go" says do not keep reading. I'm tempted to pull the interior from the Lightning Source edition, remove that line, and then upload it again, so i could qualify to win the contest for best opening line in a book as here is what follows:
This is the story of the man who walked and talked with
God; who was given words for all mankind.
(Gripping don't you think? original, for sure). Here is the next:
With His Vehicle for World Peace, the "Jacklegs," our Poet Prophet candidate for President, is "Jumping Up" on the granite steps of the United States Supreme Court when Elian Gonzalez intervenes.
And here Leslie Gelb, is your full copy, not counting the cover:
www.michaelslevinson.com/newworld.pdf
enjoy the read
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