Saturday, September 23, 2006
Who Invented the Bowie Knife?
TECHNICS
The year 1844 marked the end of an era. In that year, Captain Jack Hays and part of a company of Texas Rangers, newly equipped with the Walker model of Samuel Colt’s revolver, fully demonstrated the superiority of that weapon over all others for close combat. This history-making event occurred during the Battle of the Pedernales in what is now Kendall County, Texas, where the fifteen Texas Rangers stood off and severely defeated about seventy Comanche Indians.
The repeated volleys from Hays and his men sounded the death knell of a weapon which until that time had been the favorite for infighting. Part of the regular equipment of frontiersmen and backwoodsmen from the Mississippi to California, that weapon was the Bowie knife and its many imitations and modifications.
The question of the identity of the originator of the first Bowie knife has been argued for many years. Today, the answer can be only that no one really knows who made the first of these famous weapons. At least a dozen different accounts have been accepted as true, depending on the author and the locality--for even the place of origin is difficult to fix--and the exact time when the first Bowie knife was made is anybody’s guess. As a matter of fact, in dealing with the many stories that have come down through the years about the origin of the Bowie knife, it is now impossible to draw the line where history leaves off and legend begins.
The Bowie Family
All accounts--or legends, if you choose to call them that--are agreed on one point: Some member of the Bowie family had a hand in the design, manufacture (either purposeful or accidental) or use of the first blade. Like everything else connected with the Bowie knife, the history of the Bowie family itself is rather difficult to trace, even though the name was an old one in America even before the Revolution, with branches in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina.
By all odds, the most colorful member of this family was James Bowie--soldier, searcher for lost mines, and fighter for Texan independence. Of all the characters connected with the history of the Southwest, James Bowie comes closer to being a true folk hero than any other. His brave and tragic death in the Alamo in 1836 only added to the legends already begun by the hair-raising tales of his fights with Indians, his duels to the death while lashed to his opponent and his fondness for alligator- wrestling, to name but a few.
“Big Jim,” as he was called, was born in Georgia, or in Kentucky, or in Tennessee--historians are not clear about the place. The date is variously given as 1795, 1796, or 1799; some writers place it as late as 1805, but this date is inconsistent with the generally accepted statement that his parents moved to Louisiana in 1802, taking him with them. He was the son of Rezin Bowie and Alvina (or Elvira) Jones; again, the surname of his mother may only be a blundering attempt to write the name “Jane” on the early Spanish records in which it appears. He had four brothers: David, Rezin P. (also spelled Resin and Reason), John J. and Stephen. Their names are among the certain facts of Bowie history that have come down to us.
Relatively little is known about James Bowie’s early life. Tradition makes him a participant in a desperate encounter on the Vidalia Sandbar in the Mississippi River on September 19, 1827--the so-called “Sandbar Duel”--in which, after being badly wounded, he killed his opponent with his now-famous knife. About 1828 he traveled to Texas, making his home in San Antonio and searching in the San Saba region for the lost mine that bears his name.
If numbers count for anything, then James Bowie may well have been responsible for the Bowie knife, for he figures in more different accounts of the origin of the first blade than any other member of the clan. One account with an early and wide circulation is that of the broken sword: Bowie, while engaged in a fight with some Mexicans, it is said, broke off his sword some fifteen or twenty inches from the hilt. He found the broken blade so useful in hand-to-hand fighting that others rushed to imitate his weapon. Harper’s Weekly printed this version at the time of the Civil War as the true story of the origin of the Bowie knife, a weapon that was again finding favor with Southern troops.
But still other accounts give Bowie credit for devising the first blade rather than accidentally contriving it. One has it that in preparation for the Sandbar Duel, he took a fourteen-inch file to a cutler named Pedro, in New Orleans. It seems that Pedro had learned his trade in Toledo, the famous sword-making center in Spain. Another version tells that James Bowie whittled a pattern of the knife from soft wood--but after the “Sandbar Duel,” while he was recovering from his wounds--and that a blacksmith named Lovel Snowden fashioned the weapon. Yet another story maintains that James Bowie injured himself in an Indian fight by letting his hand slip from the hilt to the blade of his knife. Bowie afterward discussed the addition of a guard, with John Sowell, a blacksmith of Gonzales, Texas, who made the first weapon from a wooden model carved by Bowie, according to a descendant of Sowell.
Additional Claimants
Other members of the Bowie family are also given credit for the invention of this lethal weapon. John S. Moore, a grandnephew of James Bowie, claimed the original blade was modeled as a hunting knife by Rezin Bowie, the father of James Bowie and was wrought by his plantation blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe. Later, according to Moore, James Bowie met Major Norris Wright while riding, and Wright, in a very unneighborly manner, took a shot at Bowie, whose life was saved by the presence of a silver dollar in his pocket. Bowie drew his own gun to return Wright’s fire, but his flint was faulty and the gun “snapped.” When his father, Rezin Bowie, learned of the incident, he gave his hunting knife to his son, telling him, “This will never snap.
But even the lineal descendants of the Bowie family are not agreed on the subject. Notes kept by another, Dr. J. Moore Soniat du Fosset of New Orleans, give credit for the design to James Bowie’s brother, Rezin P. (for Pleasant or Pleasants) Bowie. This version has it that Rezin P. Bowie cut his hand on a knife while butchering wild cattle and decided to design a knife that would not slip from his hand. He drew the design of the desired knife and gave it to the previously mentioned Jesse Cliffe, together with a file, from which Cliffe fashioned the knife. Apparently the resulting weapon was highly prized by Rezin P. Bowie, but when James Bowie told his brother about the encounter with Major Wright, and how the faulty pistol had prevented him from evening the score, Rezin immediately gave his knife to his brother, with the advice: “Here, Jim, take ‘Old Bowie.’ She never misses fire.”
The Sandbar Duel
If stories of the Sandbar Duel that followed are to be believed, the knife fully lived up to its expectations. What started out as a duel between Dr. Thomas H. Maddox and Samuel Levi Wells became a free-for-all fight among about ten partisans of the duelists, in which two men were killed and three badly wounded. Bowie himself was shot in the arm and hip and stabbed in the chest. This same Major Wright had rushed up to Bowie in the course of the fight and stabbed him with his sword cane, saying, “Damn you, Bowie, you have killed me.” Bowie made this statement completely accurate and final by disemboweling Wright. But if the version ascribing the invention of the knife to Bowie’s father is correct, it must have occurred before 1819, the year of the death of Rezin Bowie Sr.
Knowledgeable readers may point out that the “Sandbar Duel” did not take place until 1827, eight years after Rezin Bowie had died, but history has no more business challenging legend than legend has challenging history. However, the evidence is certain that Bowie used a knife in the “Sandbar Duel.” Whether it was only a butcher knife or a true Bowie knife is unknown.
Rezin P. Bowie has received wide acceptance as the inventor of the Bowie knife. The chief evidence to support this is the word of Rezin P. Bowie himself, contained in a letter dated August 24, 1838, to the Planters’ Advocate, a small weekly newspaper in French and English published in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. A series of articles by a NewOrleans correspondent signing himself “P. Q.” had appeared in the Baltimore Commercial Transcript on June 9 and 11, 1838, and were subsequently copied by Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, a Philadelphia newspaper. The articles claimed that the first knife had been made in Arkansas by Rezin P. Bowie, with the help of an itinerant blacksmith, and described the duels of the Bowie brothers in great detail.
But the facts, according to Rezin P. Bowie’s letter, were these: The first knife had been made by him in the parish of Avoyelles Parish in Louisiana as nothing more than a hunting knife. In what may have been a reference to the “Sandbar Duel,” Rezin P. Bowie stated that the knife was used by his brother only once after its manufacture”--in a chance medley or rough fight”--and then only after he had been shot and as a means of saving his life. He disclaimed any credit for the fine state of perfection the knife had since acquired in the hands of experienced cutlers and asserted that neither he nor his brother had ever had a duel with any person. It seems probable that Rezin P. Bowie was anxious to destroy the growing legend that his then dead brother had been a bloodthirsty duelist. That he was unsuccessful can be concluded from the legends that remain current about Jim Bowie’s prowess as a knife wielder.
For a long time the Bowie knife was also known as the “Arkansas toothpick,” and that state takes credit in some versions for a part in the manufacture of the first Bowie weapon. But the true Arkansas Toothpick is a heavy dagger with a narrow blade up to 25 inches long. A former judge in Arkansas, William F. Pope, insisted that Rezin P. Bowie carved a pattern of the first knife from the top of a cigar box and gave it to James Black, an early-day smith in Washington, Arkansas. Black’s charge for making this knife was ten dollars, but Bowie was so pleased with the workmanship that he gave the smith a bonus of fifty dollars. In a burst of state patriotism, Judge Pope maintained that no genuine Bowie knives were ever made outside the state of Arkansas.
Another claimant, Daniel Webster Jones, Democratic governor of Arkansas from 1897 to 1901, concurred that James Black had a hand in making the first Bowie knife, but insisted that Black was also responsible for the design. His story was that Black, who had been a silversmith in Philadelphia, came to Washington, Arkansas, and set up a blacksmith shop there on the route of the Southwest (or Chihuahua) Trail to Texas, specializing in the making of knives. Now part of Old Washington Historic State Park, with 40 restored buildings and facilities, including Black's shop. In 1830, James Bowie came to Black's shop and gave him an order for a knife, furnishing the desired pattern. Black completed the knife according to Bowie’s pattern and, because he had never made a knife that had really suited his own taste, he made another based on his idea of what a knife should be. When Bowie returned, Black showed both knives to him, offering him his choice at the same price. Bowie immediately selected Black’s design. The fame and reliability of this knife soon spread, until people were telling Black, “Make me a knife like Bowie’s.” This eventually became “Make me a Bowie knife.”
Governor Jones claimed that Black had worked out a process something like that used in making Damascus steel, and kept it a jealously guarded secret. After making and tempering a knife and before polishing it, Black would test it by carving on a tough old hickory axe-handle for half an hour. Then, if the knife would not easily shave the hair from his arm, he would discard it. After many years of knife making, Black grew old and blind and was treated by Dr. Isaac N. Jones, father of Governor Jones. In 1870, Black, then living with Jones, tried to impart the secret to him but discovered, to his consternation, that he could not remember a single one of the dozen processes through which he had put the knives. Some blacksmiths scorned such prosaic tests as whittling hickory axe-handles and instead drove their newly made Bowie knives through silver dollars. Others rejected blades that did not quiver at the touch of a finger, or give off a bell-like, vibrating tone when plucked with a thumbnail.
In Texas, the knife is sometimes attributed to Noah Smithwick, a pioneer blacksmith and gunsmith in the town of San Felipe on the Brazos River--although Smithwick said only that he had cut a pattern of the original knife carried by James Bowie and set up a factory to manufacture authentic copies of Bowie knives. The completed blades brought him from five to twenty dollars, depending upon the finish desired. Antiquarians in Pennsylvania have claimed that James Bowie himself hammered out the first model there when he visited the city of Philadelphia. In Natchez, Mississippi, it is said that the design was Rezin P. Bowie’s, that a blacksmith’s file furnished the crude steel for the first Bowie knife, and that the cutler was a Natchez craftsman.
What Happened to the Original?
Stories about the fate of the “original” Bowie knife are today almost as numerous as those describing the circumstances of its manufacture. One story is that Bowie left it on the ground after butchering a deer with it near the Goliad road; when he rode back to get it, it was gone. He decided that a wolf had found it and carried it off because of the traces of blood on it. Another tradition is that Bowie gave the original knife to the famous actor Edwin Forrest, who used it in his presentation of the play Metamora.
And still another claims that many years ago a Louisiana descendant of Rezin P. Bowie lost the original knife in a bog.
Accounts of the fall of the Alamo in 1836 usually include the claim that James Bowie had the original knife with him there. The heap of dead Mexican attackers said to have been found around his cot (he was ill at the time of the attack) would seem to bear witness to the corpse-making qualities of the blade. One Juan Padillo, said to have been a member of Jean Lafitte’s band of pirates, presented a Bowie knife with a silver plate on the handle, bearing the name “Jim Bowie,” to a Texan. An “original” Bowie knife is among the relics exhibited in the Alamo today; the Witte Museum in San Antonio has another that is supposed to have been presented by Bowie to a friend. The Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock recently acquired a Bowie knife attributed to James Black and confirmed to be of his manufacture.
A comparison of several descriptions indicates that the original knife had a superbly tempered blade from ten to fifteen inches long, curved concavely along the back, and convexly along the edge near the point. It was about two inches across at its broadest part and was equipped with a wide guard and a man-sized hilt, the whole thing being so well balanced that it could be thrown with unerring accuracy, as well as wielded. The hilt was usually of wood, but in the more elaborate versions was often of inlaid horn or ivory. Whatever the original knife may have looked like, it was soon copied throughout the Southwest. About 1840, copies were being made in large quantities by a cutlery firm in Sheffield, England, exclusively for the Texas trade.
The Bowie knife was a weapon of many uses. The pioneer and hunter found it handy for skinning game, cutting up meat, eating or fighting. The handle could be used for hammering nails or pounding a bag of coffee beans. On the trail, the knife was unexcelled for cutting firewood, blazing a trail, or even for hacking a path through the underbrush.
Texas folklorist and historian J. Frank Dobie once attempted to unravel the many conflicting tales connected with the first Bowie knife in an attempt to separate truth from legend. He concluded, however, “Bowie’s knife has become nothing less than the American counterpart of King Arthur’s ‘Excalibur’ or of Sigmund’s great sword ‘Gram.’ Its origin is wrapped in multiplied legends as conflicting and fantastic as those that glorify the master weapons of the Old World.” And so it seems destined to remain.
The year 1844 marked the end of an era. In that year, Captain Jack Hays and part of a company of Texas Rangers, newly equipped with the Walker model of Samuel Colt’s revolver, fully demonstrated the superiority of that weapon over all others for close combat. This history-making event occurred during the Battle of the Pedernales in what is now Kendall County, Texas, where the fifteen Texas Rangers stood off and severely defeated about seventy Comanche Indians.
The repeated volleys from Hays and his men sounded the death knell of a weapon which until that time had been the favorite for infighting. Part of the regular equipment of frontiersmen and backwoodsmen from the Mississippi to California, that weapon was the Bowie knife and its many imitations and modifications.
The question of the identity of the originator of the first Bowie knife has been argued for many years. Today, the answer can be only that no one really knows who made the first of these famous weapons. At least a dozen different accounts have been accepted as true, depending on the author and the locality--for even the place of origin is difficult to fix--and the exact time when the first Bowie knife was made is anybody’s guess. As a matter of fact, in dealing with the many stories that have come down through the years about the origin of the Bowie knife, it is now impossible to draw the line where history leaves off and legend begins.
The Bowie Family
All accounts--or legends, if you choose to call them that--are agreed on one point: Some member of the Bowie family had a hand in the design, manufacture (either purposeful or accidental) or use of the first blade. Like everything else connected with the Bowie knife, the history of the Bowie family itself is rather difficult to trace, even though the name was an old one in America even before the Revolution, with branches in Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina.
By all odds, the most colorful member of this family was James Bowie--soldier, searcher for lost mines, and fighter for Texan independence. Of all the characters connected with the history of the Southwest, James Bowie comes closer to being a true folk hero than any other. His brave and tragic death in the Alamo in 1836 only added to the legends already begun by the hair-raising tales of his fights with Indians, his duels to the death while lashed to his opponent and his fondness for alligator- wrestling, to name but a few.
“Big Jim,” as he was called, was born in Georgia, or in Kentucky, or in Tennessee--historians are not clear about the place. The date is variously given as 1795, 1796, or 1799; some writers place it as late as 1805, but this date is inconsistent with the generally accepted statement that his parents moved to Louisiana in 1802, taking him with them. He was the son of Rezin Bowie and Alvina (or Elvira) Jones; again, the surname of his mother may only be a blundering attempt to write the name “Jane” on the early Spanish records in which it appears. He had four brothers: David, Rezin P. (also spelled Resin and Reason), John J. and Stephen. Their names are among the certain facts of Bowie history that have come down to us.
Relatively little is known about James Bowie’s early life. Tradition makes him a participant in a desperate encounter on the Vidalia Sandbar in the Mississippi River on September 19, 1827--the so-called “Sandbar Duel”--in which, after being badly wounded, he killed his opponent with his now-famous knife. About 1828 he traveled to Texas, making his home in San Antonio and searching in the San Saba region for the lost mine that bears his name.
If numbers count for anything, then James Bowie may well have been responsible for the Bowie knife, for he figures in more different accounts of the origin of the first blade than any other member of the clan. One account with an early and wide circulation is that of the broken sword: Bowie, while engaged in a fight with some Mexicans, it is said, broke off his sword some fifteen or twenty inches from the hilt. He found the broken blade so useful in hand-to-hand fighting that others rushed to imitate his weapon. Harper’s Weekly printed this version at the time of the Civil War as the true story of the origin of the Bowie knife, a weapon that was again finding favor with Southern troops.
But still other accounts give Bowie credit for devising the first blade rather than accidentally contriving it. One has it that in preparation for the Sandbar Duel, he took a fourteen-inch file to a cutler named Pedro, in New Orleans. It seems that Pedro had learned his trade in Toledo, the famous sword-making center in Spain. Another version tells that James Bowie whittled a pattern of the knife from soft wood--but after the “Sandbar Duel,” while he was recovering from his wounds--and that a blacksmith named Lovel Snowden fashioned the weapon. Yet another story maintains that James Bowie injured himself in an Indian fight by letting his hand slip from the hilt to the blade of his knife. Bowie afterward discussed the addition of a guard, with John Sowell, a blacksmith of Gonzales, Texas, who made the first weapon from a wooden model carved by Bowie, according to a descendant of Sowell.
Additional Claimants
Other members of the Bowie family are also given credit for the invention of this lethal weapon. John S. Moore, a grandnephew of James Bowie, claimed the original blade was modeled as a hunting knife by Rezin Bowie, the father of James Bowie and was wrought by his plantation blacksmith, Jesse Cliffe. Later, according to Moore, James Bowie met Major Norris Wright while riding, and Wright, in a very unneighborly manner, took a shot at Bowie, whose life was saved by the presence of a silver dollar in his pocket. Bowie drew his own gun to return Wright’s fire, but his flint was faulty and the gun “snapped.” When his father, Rezin Bowie, learned of the incident, he gave his hunting knife to his son, telling him, “This will never snap.
But even the lineal descendants of the Bowie family are not agreed on the subject. Notes kept by another, Dr. J. Moore Soniat du Fosset of New Orleans, give credit for the design to James Bowie’s brother, Rezin P. (for Pleasant or Pleasants) Bowie. This version has it that Rezin P. Bowie cut his hand on a knife while butchering wild cattle and decided to design a knife that would not slip from his hand. He drew the design of the desired knife and gave it to the previously mentioned Jesse Cliffe, together with a file, from which Cliffe fashioned the knife. Apparently the resulting weapon was highly prized by Rezin P. Bowie, but when James Bowie told his brother about the encounter with Major Wright, and how the faulty pistol had prevented him from evening the score, Rezin immediately gave his knife to his brother, with the advice: “Here, Jim, take ‘Old Bowie.’ She never misses fire.”
The Sandbar Duel
If stories of the Sandbar Duel that followed are to be believed, the knife fully lived up to its expectations. What started out as a duel between Dr. Thomas H. Maddox and Samuel Levi Wells became a free-for-all fight among about ten partisans of the duelists, in which two men were killed and three badly wounded. Bowie himself was shot in the arm and hip and stabbed in the chest. This same Major Wright had rushed up to Bowie in the course of the fight and stabbed him with his sword cane, saying, “Damn you, Bowie, you have killed me.” Bowie made this statement completely accurate and final by disemboweling Wright. But if the version ascribing the invention of the knife to Bowie’s father is correct, it must have occurred before 1819, the year of the death of Rezin Bowie Sr.
Knowledgeable readers may point out that the “Sandbar Duel” did not take place until 1827, eight years after Rezin Bowie had died, but history has no more business challenging legend than legend has challenging history. However, the evidence is certain that Bowie used a knife in the “Sandbar Duel.” Whether it was only a butcher knife or a true Bowie knife is unknown.
Rezin P. Bowie has received wide acceptance as the inventor of the Bowie knife. The chief evidence to support this is the word of Rezin P. Bowie himself, contained in a letter dated August 24, 1838, to the Planters’ Advocate, a small weekly newspaper in French and English published in Donaldsonville, Louisiana. A series of articles by a NewOrleans correspondent signing himself “P. Q.” had appeared in the Baltimore Commercial Transcript on June 9 and 11, 1838, and were subsequently copied by Alexander’s Weekly Messenger, a Philadelphia newspaper. The articles claimed that the first knife had been made in Arkansas by Rezin P. Bowie, with the help of an itinerant blacksmith, and described the duels of the Bowie brothers in great detail.
But the facts, according to Rezin P. Bowie’s letter, were these: The first knife had been made by him in the parish of Avoyelles Parish in Louisiana as nothing more than a hunting knife. In what may have been a reference to the “Sandbar Duel,” Rezin P. Bowie stated that the knife was used by his brother only once after its manufacture”--in a chance medley or rough fight”--and then only after he had been shot and as a means of saving his life. He disclaimed any credit for the fine state of perfection the knife had since acquired in the hands of experienced cutlers and asserted that neither he nor his brother had ever had a duel with any person. It seems probable that Rezin P. Bowie was anxious to destroy the growing legend that his then dead brother had been a bloodthirsty duelist. That he was unsuccessful can be concluded from the legends that remain current about Jim Bowie’s prowess as a knife wielder.
For a long time the Bowie knife was also known as the “Arkansas toothpick,” and that state takes credit in some versions for a part in the manufacture of the first Bowie weapon. But the true Arkansas Toothpick is a heavy dagger with a narrow blade up to 25 inches long. A former judge in Arkansas, William F. Pope, insisted that Rezin P. Bowie carved a pattern of the first knife from the top of a cigar box and gave it to James Black, an early-day smith in Washington, Arkansas. Black’s charge for making this knife was ten dollars, but Bowie was so pleased with the workmanship that he gave the smith a bonus of fifty dollars. In a burst of state patriotism, Judge Pope maintained that no genuine Bowie knives were ever made outside the state of Arkansas.
Another claimant, Daniel Webster Jones, Democratic governor of Arkansas from 1897 to 1901, concurred that James Black had a hand in making the first Bowie knife, but insisted that Black was also responsible for the design. His story was that Black, who had been a silversmith in Philadelphia, came to Washington, Arkansas, and set up a blacksmith shop there on the route of the Southwest (or Chihuahua) Trail to Texas, specializing in the making of knives. Now part of Old Washington Historic State Park, with 40 restored buildings and facilities, including Black's shop. In 1830, James Bowie came to Black's shop and gave him an order for a knife, furnishing the desired pattern. Black completed the knife according to Bowie’s pattern and, because he had never made a knife that had really suited his own taste, he made another based on his idea of what a knife should be. When Bowie returned, Black showed both knives to him, offering him his choice at the same price. Bowie immediately selected Black’s design. The fame and reliability of this knife soon spread, until people were telling Black, “Make me a knife like Bowie’s.” This eventually became “Make me a Bowie knife.”
Governor Jones claimed that Black had worked out a process something like that used in making Damascus steel, and kept it a jealously guarded secret. After making and tempering a knife and before polishing it, Black would test it by carving on a tough old hickory axe-handle for half an hour. Then, if the knife would not easily shave the hair from his arm, he would discard it. After many years of knife making, Black grew old and blind and was treated by Dr. Isaac N. Jones, father of Governor Jones. In 1870, Black, then living with Jones, tried to impart the secret to him but discovered, to his consternation, that he could not remember a single one of the dozen processes through which he had put the knives. Some blacksmiths scorned such prosaic tests as whittling hickory axe-handles and instead drove their newly made Bowie knives through silver dollars. Others rejected blades that did not quiver at the touch of a finger, or give off a bell-like, vibrating tone when plucked with a thumbnail.
In Texas, the knife is sometimes attributed to Noah Smithwick, a pioneer blacksmith and gunsmith in the town of San Felipe on the Brazos River--although Smithwick said only that he had cut a pattern of the original knife carried by James Bowie and set up a factory to manufacture authentic copies of Bowie knives. The completed blades brought him from five to twenty dollars, depending upon the finish desired. Antiquarians in Pennsylvania have claimed that James Bowie himself hammered out the first model there when he visited the city of Philadelphia. In Natchez, Mississippi, it is said that the design was Rezin P. Bowie’s, that a blacksmith’s file furnished the crude steel for the first Bowie knife, and that the cutler was a Natchez craftsman.
What Happened to the Original?
Stories about the fate of the “original” Bowie knife are today almost as numerous as those describing the circumstances of its manufacture. One story is that Bowie left it on the ground after butchering a deer with it near the Goliad road; when he rode back to get it, it was gone. He decided that a wolf had found it and carried it off because of the traces of blood on it. Another tradition is that Bowie gave the original knife to the famous actor Edwin Forrest, who used it in his presentation of the play Metamora.
And still another claims that many years ago a Louisiana descendant of Rezin P. Bowie lost the original knife in a bog.
Accounts of the fall of the Alamo in 1836 usually include the claim that James Bowie had the original knife with him there. The heap of dead Mexican attackers said to have been found around his cot (he was ill at the time of the attack) would seem to bear witness to the corpse-making qualities of the blade. One Juan Padillo, said to have been a member of Jean Lafitte’s band of pirates, presented a Bowie knife with a silver plate on the handle, bearing the name “Jim Bowie,” to a Texan. An “original” Bowie knife is among the relics exhibited in the Alamo today; the Witte Museum in San Antonio has another that is supposed to have been presented by Bowie to a friend. The Historic Arkansas Museum in Little Rock recently acquired a Bowie knife attributed to James Black and confirmed to be of his manufacture.
A comparison of several descriptions indicates that the original knife had a superbly tempered blade from ten to fifteen inches long, curved concavely along the back, and convexly along the edge near the point. It was about two inches across at its broadest part and was equipped with a wide guard and a man-sized hilt, the whole thing being so well balanced that it could be thrown with unerring accuracy, as well as wielded. The hilt was usually of wood, but in the more elaborate versions was often of inlaid horn or ivory. Whatever the original knife may have looked like, it was soon copied throughout the Southwest. About 1840, copies were being made in large quantities by a cutlery firm in Sheffield, England, exclusively for the Texas trade.
The Bowie knife was a weapon of many uses. The pioneer and hunter found it handy for skinning game, cutting up meat, eating or fighting. The handle could be used for hammering nails or pounding a bag of coffee beans. On the trail, the knife was unexcelled for cutting firewood, blazing a trail, or even for hacking a path through the underbrush.
Texas folklorist and historian J. Frank Dobie once attempted to unravel the many conflicting tales connected with the first Bowie knife in an attempt to separate truth from legend. He concluded, however, “Bowie’s knife has become nothing less than the American counterpart of King Arthur’s ‘Excalibur’ or of Sigmund’s great sword ‘Gram.’ Its origin is wrapped in multiplied legends as conflicting and fantastic as those that glorify the master weapons of the Old World.” And so it seems destined to remain.
Labels: Alamo, Bowie Knife, History, James Bowie, Technics
Monday, September 18, 2006
Come Blow Your Horn: Do-It-Yourself Book Promotion for Authors
THE WRITING CLINIC
If authors share one complaint, it's that publishers don't do enough to promote their books. What will a publisher do to publicize a book by a new author? The answer is, not very much--unless a lot of money was advanced to the author against anticipated royalties. A publisher's' willingness to promote a "title" (the term publishers prefer to us to refer to a book) will often be proportional to how much a publisher has invested in the book in the form of such advances.
This, by the way, is the single best reason for authors--or their literary agents, if they have managed to get a reputable agent to handle their work--to try for sizable advance when negotiating a book contract. But remember that a publisher will not advance more than a book will generate in royalties and sales of subsidiary rights (i.e., paperback, book club and foreign rights). Book publishing can be a risky business, and some books disappoint both author and publisher by failing to earn their advances.
Dozens of new titles are added to major publishers' lists each season. Such numbers make it impossible for any publishing house to get behind every book. As a result, works by new authors often languish while so-called "blockbusters" get all the attention. Frustrated authors are convinced that their books would earn more if publishers had simply advertised them more. Not necessarily, say publishers. For every book that becomes a bestseller because of advertising, they can point to another that failed in spite of heavy promotion.
Consider two classic case histories: In 1985, after resigning as Ronald Reagan's budget director, David A. Stockman signed a contract with Harper and Row, said to be worth more than $2 million--then the largest advance that publisher had ever paid for a book. Thanks to an all-out publicity campaign, The Triumph of Politics, Stockman's kiss-and-tell account of life inside the Reagan administration, started out as number one on bestseller lists. However, when readers discovered that Stockman had little new to say about how the massive deficit he masterminded had gotten so far out of control, his heavy-handed book dropped from the top spot a scant two weeks later.
Other titles have climbed the bestseller charts without benefit of advertising. An often-cited example is Blue Highways, whose author, William Least Heat-Moon, rewrote the manuscript eight times before selling it. Published in 1982 by Little, Brown and Company, this account of one man's travels in a battered van named "Ghost Dancing" over the back roads of America--the ones printed in blue on road maps that were once the main arteries of early travel and now only link backwater towns--aroused strong feelings in readers. Of English-Irish and Osage Indian ancestry, the author's curious surname, Heat-Moon, is the Sioux name for the moon of midsummer nights.
After the nearly simultaneous loss of his college teaching job and the failure of his marriage, he embarked on a 13,000-mile trip across America, visiting forgotten small towns and talking to their colorful inhabitants. The book's initial promotion had been limited to an excerpt in The Atlantic Monthly. But readers who bought Blue Highways discovered that, as the Chicago Tribune said, it was "better than Kerouac." Reviewer Robert Penn Warren called the book "a masterpiece. [The author] has a genius for finding people who have not even found themselves." Other enthusiastic newspaper reviews made Blue Highways into what the book trade calls a "sleeper," and booksellers' orders surged. Only then did the surprised publisher crank up an ad campaign to match its bestseller status.
The Business of Bookselling
Bookselling operates like no other business model. Moreover, most authors are abysmally ignorant about book publishing, an industry still largely saddled with practices dating back to the early 20th century. Chief among these is the privilege publishers accord to booksellers of returning unsold books for creditagainst future orders..
In recent years, the number of unsold books reached uneconomical proportions, with as many as 50% of books ordered by booksellers remaining on store shelves. This figure has since dropped to 40% as a consequence of more prudent ordering on the part of retailers, but it still means four out of every ten books ordered are being returned to distributors or publishers. These books are then replaced in stock and used to fill future orders . When the time comes to declare a book "out of print," publishers sell the remaining copies in large lots to specialized dealers as "remainders." These are then retailed at reduced prices to readers through specialized catalogs . Authors get no royalties on remaindered books. Perhaps if writers better understood how books are merchandised, friction between authors and publishers would diminish. Similarly, with more and more authors embarking on self- publishing ventures, awareness of the intricacies of retail bookselling can help to avoid headaches.
The selling of a book actually starts many months before it is published. At sales conferences held twice a year, usually at a hotel near the publisher's offices, editors "present" forthcoming titles to their sales staff. Originally called "book travelers," sales people are today more prosaically described as sales reps, publishing consultants or even account managers.
Following these meetings, the publisher's specialized sales force fans out across broad territories to call on a dwindling number of independent booksellers. At each outlet, they echo those presentations in negotiations with bookstore owners or book buyers for chain stores, soliciting--even pleading for--orders. Predicting customer interest in a title not yet set in type can be a gamble for individual bookstore owners and chain-store book buyers. Yet it is these advance orders from booksellers that govern the size of the initial press run for each title.
In the United States, 190,478 individual titles were published in 2004, the latest year for which firm statistics are available. Of these, 24,159 were so-called trade books (fiction and nonfiction sold in bookstores, as contrasted with specialized professional, technical and reference books). Preliminary figures for 2005 indicate slippage in the total number of titles--some 18,000 fewer titles were published last year--an unsurprising reduction considering the steadily rising costs of paper, presswork and binding. Competing with such an avalanche of new titles in any year are several hundred thousand previously published titles still in print, referred to as the publisher's "backlist." With so many books clamoring for the limited space on bookstore shelves and for the reading public's attention, the chances that any bookseller will order a new title by a first-time author are exceedingly small.
Advice from Literary Agents
What can an author do when a publisher budgets next to nothing for advertising and does little in the way of promotion? New York literary agent Bill Adler advises: "The first rule for success in book publishing is that the best person to promote your book is you. Don't count on the publisher to do it for you."
Another New York agent, Richard Curtis, is equally emphatic: "If you feel that the only thing holding book back from success is the expenditure of a little money, and you can't persuade your publisher to spend it--then spend it yourself." Good advice. But don't rush out to buy advertising. Your money will go farther if spent in other ways. Besides, if your book isn't in local bookstores, any money you spend on advertising will be wasted. Readers who have been made eager to read a book don't want to hear the disappointing words, "Sorry, we don't have that title in stock--but we can order it for you."
Once a date has been set for publication of your book (called the "pub date" by publishers), you, the author, must move swiftly. The initial thrust of your self-promotion should be to increase awareness of your book within the book trade, with specialized review and media outlets, and among librarians in the crucial period leading up to your book's pub date. A book that's not on the shelves of most retailers on its pub date and that has escaped the notice of reviewers and librarians is a sure bet to be overlooked by readers. After publication, you should shift your attention to the media and to media personalities likely to give your book a post-publication push with the reading public.
Do-It-Yourself Promotion
The ideal self-promotional tool for authors, whether published by a traditional publisher or self-published, is direct mail, the second-largest advertising medium in use today. Direct mail's success stems from its ability to command instant attention from specifically targeted recipients at comparatively low-cost. With the explosion of vanity press and print-on-demand books, a promotional campaign of direct mailings in advance of publication is really the only medium open to authors of self-published books.
Can direct-mailings by an author pay dividends? You bet. Consider the experience of novelist Terry McMillan. Because Houghton Mifflin, publisher of her first novel, Mama, had planned virtually no publicity, McMillan launched a letter-writing campaign to booksellers and reviewers. In addition, she arranged and paid for a post-publication reading tour to promote her story of a poverty-stricken unmarried black mother's struggle to raise five children.
That was in 1987. Two years later, unhappy with her original publisher, the 37-year-old African-American writer took her second novel, Disappearing Acts, to Viking Press, where it became a bestseller. Without the first novel's successful publicity generated by author McMillan's own self-promotion efforts, it's unlikely she would have earned strong publisher support for her second novel. In 1992, to promote her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, Viking Press paid for an intensive six-week, 20-city author tour, and her book skyrocketed to near the top of fiction bestseller lists. Pocket Books bought paperback rights for a cool $2.64 million.
When movie rights were sold to this story of four females friends looking for love, 20th Century-Fox allotted a mere $15 million to the production budget, not expecting it to have much "crossover" appeal for white audiences. The 1995 film, directed by Forest Whitaker and starring Whitney Houston, Angela Basset, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon, became a surprise hit, grossing almost $68 million domestically. The budding novelist and self-promoter suddenly became a millionaire.
The success of McMillan's books and films made her a hot property. In 1996, her novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, about the relationship between a woman and a much younger man, became an instant bestseller, and movie rights were snapped up by 20th Century-Fox. Produced for $20 million, the 1998 grossed nearly $38 million. Terry McMillan co-wrote the screenplays of both films. Film rights to her second novel, Disappearing Acts,were bought by MGM and later resold to an independent production company. The resulting 2000 TV movie, with sizzling performances by Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan, was shown on HBO.
Mailing Lists and Letters
The renting of mailing lists is the cornerstone of direct mail. But ours is a mobile society, and rented lists quickly become dated unless their names and addresses have been verified recently--the procedure is called "cleaning." Some letters will inevitably be returned because of what mailers call "bum addresses." The objective of list cleaning is to keep these to a minimum. List rental can be expensive, too--averaging about $100 per 1,000 names.
One low-cost solution is to prepare your own mailing lists. Drawing names from the directories listed at the end of this article, you can compile your own local, regional and national lists of booksellers, wholesalers, book reviewers, librarians, radio and TV talk-show hosts or program directors. Don't overlook off-trail possibilities. If your book is a history of cutlery thought the ages, you'd be wise to compile lists of organizations with interests in knives and cutlery, particularly those that publish newsletters or bulletins for members.
Resist the urge to pick up the phone to call persons on the lists you compile. Unsolicited telephone calls are intrusive and often result in a negative response. A well-organized letter touting your book is always better. In the public relations field, these are called "pitch letters." With your computer's mail-merge program, you can easily generate personalized letters, labels and envelopes. For the ultimate in personalization, addressing your envelopes by hand will spark curiosity and increase the chances that the letter will reach the addressee and be opened. Make your pitch short and to the point. Keep your letters positive in tone. Their sole purpose is to create interest in your book--and in you. Remember that successful direct mail always promises benefits to the recipient.
When writing to librarians and book reviewers, make your book sound interesting or exciting. To newspaper feature editors, make your book--and you--the focus of the story. When pitching booksellers, emphasize its sales appeal and the intensive publicity campaign you are mounting. Letters to radio and TV program directors should portray your book as all of the above, and present you as a colorful, lively and desirable guest. Avoid the pedestrian. Be imaginative. Lead off in the first paragraph with a challenging fact or provocative statistic to catch attention. Nonfiction writers will recognize this as "the hook," a time-honored technique for beginning an article.
The body of your letters should describe in broad terms what makes your book--and you--noteworthy. Summarize its theme, offer supporting facts, quote critics' advance praise, highlight the importance of the subject, underscore your availability and stress the book's reader appeal or listener interest. Your letters should also make clear exactly what you're asking for: a book review; an order; a meeting; an interview with a reporter and a feature story; an appearance on a radio or TV show. Conclude letters addressed locally by saying that you will telephone in a few days to follow up. Pitching letters to big names also can be fruitful. A well-known expert might be willing to read the manuscript or galleys of your book and write a foreword or jacket blurb. Imagine what a few kind words from Dr. C. Everett Koop, would do for the sales of a book on health care. Remember, it costs almost nothing to ask.
Pitching to Booksellers
Your letters to booksellers should, of course, encourage them to order your book. Dealers who neglected to stock it may be prompted to do so by a strong pitch letter. Dealers who ordered only a few copies may decide to increase their order. Only when your book is widely available in bookstores should you think about spending money on advertising.
The number of retail book outlets, especially independent booksellers, fell dramatically in the United States in recent years. An idea of the severity of the decline can be gleaned from the following statistics: In 1995, the American Booksellers Association, based in Tarrytown, N.Y., numbered more than 5,500 members with about 7,000 stores. Five years later membership was down to 3,100 members and 4,000 locations. Today, this trade group of book retailers has only 1,800 members and 2,500 locations. Don't overlook the importance of chain bookstores in book distribution today--including the new superstores--with centralized buying facilities. This means that one buyer does the ordering for many outlets, and any book order will likely be a big one. Major book wholesalers and distributors are desirable contacts, too.
Every author should make friends with local booksellers. Follow up your letters to them with a telephone call and then a visit in person. Having your book in a prized spot in a bookseller's display window can make a big difference in the number of copies sold. Suggest a traditional in-store autographing party. At these, you will talk about the writing of your book, chat with customers and autograph the copies they buy. If wine and cheese are served, your publisher may underwrite that cost.
Because customers rely on their recommendations, independent retailers can still play a major role in a book's success even though their numbers are dwindling. A case in point is Robert James Waller's 1992 novel, The Bridges of Madison County, a tender story of the brief love affair between a lonely Iowa farm wife and a magazine photographer, and how it haunts them for the rest of their lives. As with many other first novels, the publisher, Warner Books, made no special effort to publicize Waller's book. Enter Warren Cassell, owner of Just Books, a tiny independent bookstore in Greenwich, Connecticut. Cassell praised Waller's book in his store's newsletter as "one of the finest first novels we have ever read," certain to be on "our life list of favorite novels." Booksellers everywhere shared his enthusiasm. Word-of-mouth praise kept The Bridges of Madison County on bestseller charts until it reached the number one spot early in 1993 and remained there tenaciously. Just Books, the store that originally ordered only three copies of this unheralded work, eventually sold more than a thousand copies.
Pitching to Librarians
In pitching a direct-mail publicity campaign, don't ignore libraries, especially regional library systems with centralized purchasing. Local public libraries or nearby college and university libraries are also good targets. Librarians like to have the works of local authors represented in their collections. Although librarians are strongly influenced by reviews of forthcoming books in such publications as Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, these publications cannot evaluate every new title. A personal letter from the author can make librarians aware of a new book they otherwise might have overlooked. The buying power of the 34,296 libraries in the United States and Canada is impressive. In fact, librarians buy one of every three trade books published. And, unlike individual book buyers, larger libraries often buy multiple copies of popular titles for their main and branch libraries.
Pitching to Reviewers
It's accepted dogma in publishing that a good review does more for sales than any advertisement. This makes review copies inexpensive tools for self-promotion. All publishers maintain mailing lists of the book reviewers to whom review copies are sent, and they will usually share these lists with their authors. Classified according to size, the publication's circulation and its clout with readers, these are referred to as their A, B and C lists. With them in hand, you can easily compile your own mailing lists of reviewers at newspapers and magazines that are not on the publisher's lists. When a preliminary dummy of your book jacket is available, mail a photocopy of it and the table of contents with a cover letter to such untapped reviewers. Ask them to note at the bottom of your letter whether they would like to receive a review copy, and include a return envelope to make responding easy. Publishers will welcome the names of such reviewers who express an interest in receiving your book--especially if you provide the addresses on peel-off labels. Your publisher can afford to be generous with review copies; authors are paid no royalties on books distributed for promotional purposes.
Other Promotional Possibilities
Sales of subsidiary rights are important sources of additional income for both publishers and authors. These rights can include sales to book clubs, paperback publishers, or movies and TV, as well as the marketing of foreign rights and serial (magazine) rights. Your publisher will probably touch base with the major players in these leagues. But don't be timid about doing a little horn-blowing on your own in the form of personalized letters to book club acquisition editors and other subsidiary rights buyers.
The Truth About Author Tours
Many writers dream of author tours, but a tour can be expensive. Airfares, hotels, meals and incidentals make this a particularly costly form of advertising for publishers. The fact is that certain books--first novels, children's books, and some kinds of nonfiction--often don't lend themselves to all the chores. Moreover as the late Fran Harris, longtime Detroit newscaster and radio and TV interviewer, pointed out to this writer, "many authors simply aren't good at impromptu conversation, or are uncomfortable before a camera or microphone, making them poor candidates for tours." Nevertheless, if you're convinced that a tour is essential to the success of your book and your publisher won't underwrite it, there's nothing stopping you from personally financing the tour.
Writers also can tour their books without even leaving home. "Radio interviews conducted over the telephone are the hottest way of promoting books today," says Rick Frischman, president of Planned TV Arts, a New York and Washington booking agency for author tours. "We've booked authors Bill Moyers, James Michener, Arnold Palmer, Jane Bryant Quinn, Alan Dershowitz, and others on our 'Morning Drive Radio Tours' with great success."
The Wayne Dyer Story
The undisputed all-time self-promotion champ is Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. In 1976, he was an associate professor at St. John's University and a practicing therapist. That year Funk & Wagnalls published his Your Erroneous Zones, a book based on his own experience and describing how to reverse unhealthy behavior patterns .
Convinced that he needed to take control of his life and to stop worrying about being bald or feeling guilty about his divorce, he decided to write a bestseller. After spending two years in reflection, he wrote the book in 13 days. When the prestigious New York Times Book Review failed to review his book, the 36-year-old Dyer decided to do his own promotion. Taking leave from his faculty post as a guidance counselor, he loaded his station wagon with copies of his book and began his self-financed promotional tour that took him to every state in the United States. People magazine called his effort "a self-marketing tour de force."
Making himself available for talk show interviews at any hour of the day or night, he soon propelled his book to the top of bestseller charts and kept it there for well over a year. Avon Books later bought the paperback rights, paying one of the highest prices then on record. Other best-selling self-help titles followed, all promoted by Dyer in the same way. He never returned to teaching and gave up his private practice and moved to Hawaii. Aggressive self-promotion had made him a millionaire. Today, Dyer is a fixture on public television, where he preaches his inspirational philosophy and hawks his books and associated products.
Why Self-promotion?
Unless you're an established author, it's unlikely that any publisher will provide your book with much in the way of advertising and promotion. The publisher's efforts will, in most cases, be perfunctory and largely futile. It's up to you, the author, to do everything you can to promote your book. But you must be ready to move quickly. As in perhaps no other industry, the timing of a book's promotional campaign is critical. The average book has the reading public's attention for only a few weeks or even days. A book's shelf life is--in humorist Calvin Trillin's words--"somewhere between milk and yogurt." The window of opportunity for the promotion of your book will be open ever so briefly. As the author, you must seize the moment. Self-promotion is no longer an option; it's a basic survival tactic.
Build your own mailing lists of booksellers, librarians, book reviewers, and radio and TV programs that feature books and authors by using the following books available from public libraries. Many are also available on databases through regional library systems and larger public libraries.
BOOK DEALERS
American Book Trade Directory lists 30,000 retail and antiquarian book dealers in the U.S. and Canada, and over 1,000 wholesalers and paperback distributors.
LIBRARIANS
American Library Directory lists 34,296 U.S. and Canadian libraries, including public, armed forces, government and special libraries.
REVIEWERS, NEWS BUREAUS, SYNDICATES
Bacon's Newspaper/Magazine Directory lists `8,000 trade and consumer magazines, newsletters and journals, including ethnic and university newspapers.
Editor & Publisher International Yearbook lists daily and Sunday newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, weekly newspapers, newspaper syndicates.
Literary Market Place lists selected news services and feature syndicates, book reviewers at newspapers and magazine, and book clubs. Also lists selected radio and TV programs featuring books.
Standard Periodical Directory has more than 56,000 listings of U.S. and Canadian periodicals.
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory lists more than 280,000 periodicals by 90,000 publishers in over 300 countries.
RADIO AND TV
Bacon's Radio/TV/Cable Directory lists every U.S. and Canadian broadcast outlet, with names of producers, assignment editors and reporters.
If authors share one complaint, it's that publishers don't do enough to promote their books. What will a publisher do to publicize a book by a new author? The answer is, not very much--unless a lot of money was advanced to the author against anticipated royalties. A publisher's' willingness to promote a "title" (the term publishers prefer to us to refer to a book) will often be proportional to how much a publisher has invested in the book in the form of such advances.
This, by the way, is the single best reason for authors--or their literary agents, if they have managed to get a reputable agent to handle their work--to try for sizable advance when negotiating a book contract. But remember that a publisher will not advance more than a book will generate in royalties and sales of subsidiary rights (i.e., paperback, book club and foreign rights). Book publishing can be a risky business, and some books disappoint both author and publisher by failing to earn their advances.
Dozens of new titles are added to major publishers' lists each season. Such numbers make it impossible for any publishing house to get behind every book. As a result, works by new authors often languish while so-called "blockbusters" get all the attention. Frustrated authors are convinced that their books would earn more if publishers had simply advertised them more. Not necessarily, say publishers. For every book that becomes a bestseller because of advertising, they can point to another that failed in spite of heavy promotion.
Consider two classic case histories: In 1985, after resigning as Ronald Reagan's budget director, David A. Stockman signed a contract with Harper and Row, said to be worth more than $2 million--then the largest advance that publisher had ever paid for a book. Thanks to an all-out publicity campaign, The Triumph of Politics, Stockman's kiss-and-tell account of life inside the Reagan administration, started out as number one on bestseller lists. However, when readers discovered that Stockman had little new to say about how the massive deficit he masterminded had gotten so far out of control, his heavy-handed book dropped from the top spot a scant two weeks later.
Other titles have climbed the bestseller charts without benefit of advertising. An often-cited example is Blue Highways, whose author, William Least Heat-Moon, rewrote the manuscript eight times before selling it. Published in 1982 by Little, Brown and Company, this account of one man's travels in a battered van named "Ghost Dancing" over the back roads of America--the ones printed in blue on road maps that were once the main arteries of early travel and now only link backwater towns--aroused strong feelings in readers. Of English-Irish and Osage Indian ancestry, the author's curious surname, Heat-Moon, is the Sioux name for the moon of midsummer nights.
After the nearly simultaneous loss of his college teaching job and the failure of his marriage, he embarked on a 13,000-mile trip across America, visiting forgotten small towns and talking to their colorful inhabitants. The book's initial promotion had been limited to an excerpt in The Atlantic Monthly. But readers who bought Blue Highways discovered that, as the Chicago Tribune said, it was "better than Kerouac." Reviewer Robert Penn Warren called the book "a masterpiece. [The author] has a genius for finding people who have not even found themselves." Other enthusiastic newspaper reviews made Blue Highways into what the book trade calls a "sleeper," and booksellers' orders surged. Only then did the surprised publisher crank up an ad campaign to match its bestseller status.
The Business of Bookselling
Bookselling operates like no other business model. Moreover, most authors are abysmally ignorant about book publishing, an industry still largely saddled with practices dating back to the early 20th century. Chief among these is the privilege publishers accord to booksellers of returning unsold books for creditagainst future orders..
In recent years, the number of unsold books reached uneconomical proportions, with as many as 50% of books ordered by booksellers remaining on store shelves. This figure has since dropped to 40% as a consequence of more prudent ordering on the part of retailers, but it still means four out of every ten books ordered are being returned to distributors or publishers. These books are then replaced in stock and used to fill future orders . When the time comes to declare a book "out of print," publishers sell the remaining copies in large lots to specialized dealers as "remainders." These are then retailed at reduced prices to readers through specialized catalogs . Authors get no royalties on remaindered books. Perhaps if writers better understood how books are merchandised, friction between authors and publishers would diminish. Similarly, with more and more authors embarking on self- publishing ventures, awareness of the intricacies of retail bookselling can help to avoid headaches.
The selling of a book actually starts many months before it is published. At sales conferences held twice a year, usually at a hotel near the publisher's offices, editors "present" forthcoming titles to their sales staff. Originally called "book travelers," sales people are today more prosaically described as sales reps, publishing consultants or even account managers.
Following these meetings, the publisher's specialized sales force fans out across broad territories to call on a dwindling number of independent booksellers. At each outlet, they echo those presentations in negotiations with bookstore owners or book buyers for chain stores, soliciting--even pleading for--orders. Predicting customer interest in a title not yet set in type can be a gamble for individual bookstore owners and chain-store book buyers. Yet it is these advance orders from booksellers that govern the size of the initial press run for each title.
In the United States, 190,478 individual titles were published in 2004, the latest year for which firm statistics are available. Of these, 24,159 were so-called trade books (fiction and nonfiction sold in bookstores, as contrasted with specialized professional, technical and reference books). Preliminary figures for 2005 indicate slippage in the total number of titles--some 18,000 fewer titles were published last year--an unsurprising reduction considering the steadily rising costs of paper, presswork and binding. Competing with such an avalanche of new titles in any year are several hundred thousand previously published titles still in print, referred to as the publisher's "backlist." With so many books clamoring for the limited space on bookstore shelves and for the reading public's attention, the chances that any bookseller will order a new title by a first-time author are exceedingly small.
Advice from Literary Agents
What can an author do when a publisher budgets next to nothing for advertising and does little in the way of promotion? New York literary agent Bill Adler advises: "The first rule for success in book publishing is that the best person to promote your book is you. Don't count on the publisher to do it for you."
Another New York agent, Richard Curtis, is equally emphatic: "If you feel that the only thing holding book back from success is the expenditure of a little money, and you can't persuade your publisher to spend it--then spend it yourself." Good advice. But don't rush out to buy advertising. Your money will go farther if spent in other ways. Besides, if your book isn't in local bookstores, any money you spend on advertising will be wasted. Readers who have been made eager to read a book don't want to hear the disappointing words, "Sorry, we don't have that title in stock--but we can order it for you."
Once a date has been set for publication of your book (called the "pub date" by publishers), you, the author, must move swiftly. The initial thrust of your self-promotion should be to increase awareness of your book within the book trade, with specialized review and media outlets, and among librarians in the crucial period leading up to your book's pub date. A book that's not on the shelves of most retailers on its pub date and that has escaped the notice of reviewers and librarians is a sure bet to be overlooked by readers. After publication, you should shift your attention to the media and to media personalities likely to give your book a post-publication push with the reading public.
Do-It-Yourself Promotion
The ideal self-promotional tool for authors, whether published by a traditional publisher or self-published, is direct mail, the second-largest advertising medium in use today. Direct mail's success stems from its ability to command instant attention from specifically targeted recipients at comparatively low-cost. With the explosion of vanity press and print-on-demand books, a promotional campaign of direct mailings in advance of publication is really the only medium open to authors of self-published books.
Can direct-mailings by an author pay dividends? You bet. Consider the experience of novelist Terry McMillan. Because Houghton Mifflin, publisher of her first novel, Mama, had planned virtually no publicity, McMillan launched a letter-writing campaign to booksellers and reviewers. In addition, she arranged and paid for a post-publication reading tour to promote her story of a poverty-stricken unmarried black mother's struggle to raise five children.
That was in 1987. Two years later, unhappy with her original publisher, the 37-year-old African-American writer took her second novel, Disappearing Acts, to Viking Press, where it became a bestseller. Without the first novel's successful publicity generated by author McMillan's own self-promotion efforts, it's unlikely she would have earned strong publisher support for her second novel. In 1992, to promote her third novel, Waiting to Exhale, Viking Press paid for an intensive six-week, 20-city author tour, and her book skyrocketed to near the top of fiction bestseller lists. Pocket Books bought paperback rights for a cool $2.64 million.
When movie rights were sold to this story of four females friends looking for love, 20th Century-Fox allotted a mere $15 million to the production budget, not expecting it to have much "crossover" appeal for white audiences. The 1995 film, directed by Forest Whitaker and starring Whitney Houston, Angela Basset, Loretta Devine and Lela Rochon, became a surprise hit, grossing almost $68 million domestically. The budding novelist and self-promoter suddenly became a millionaire.
The success of McMillan's books and films made her a hot property. In 1996, her novel How Stella Got Her Groove Back, about the relationship between a woman and a much younger man, became an instant bestseller, and movie rights were snapped up by 20th Century-Fox. Produced for $20 million, the 1998 grossed nearly $38 million. Terry McMillan co-wrote the screenplays of both films. Film rights to her second novel, Disappearing Acts,were bought by MGM and later resold to an independent production company. The resulting 2000 TV movie, with sizzling performances by Wesley Snipes and Sanaa Lathan, was shown on HBO.
Mailing Lists and Letters
The renting of mailing lists is the cornerstone of direct mail. But ours is a mobile society, and rented lists quickly become dated unless their names and addresses have been verified recently--the procedure is called "cleaning." Some letters will inevitably be returned because of what mailers call "bum addresses." The objective of list cleaning is to keep these to a minimum. List rental can be expensive, too--averaging about $100 per 1,000 names.
One low-cost solution is to prepare your own mailing lists. Drawing names from the directories listed at the end of this article, you can compile your own local, regional and national lists of booksellers, wholesalers, book reviewers, librarians, radio and TV talk-show hosts or program directors. Don't overlook off-trail possibilities. If your book is a history of cutlery thought the ages, you'd be wise to compile lists of organizations with interests in knives and cutlery, particularly those that publish newsletters or bulletins for members.
Resist the urge to pick up the phone to call persons on the lists you compile. Unsolicited telephone calls are intrusive and often result in a negative response. A well-organized letter touting your book is always better. In the public relations field, these are called "pitch letters." With your computer's mail-merge program, you can easily generate personalized letters, labels and envelopes. For the ultimate in personalization, addressing your envelopes by hand will spark curiosity and increase the chances that the letter will reach the addressee and be opened. Make your pitch short and to the point. Keep your letters positive in tone. Their sole purpose is to create interest in your book--and in you. Remember that successful direct mail always promises benefits to the recipient.
When writing to librarians and book reviewers, make your book sound interesting or exciting. To newspaper feature editors, make your book--and you--the focus of the story. When pitching booksellers, emphasize its sales appeal and the intensive publicity campaign you are mounting. Letters to radio and TV program directors should portray your book as all of the above, and present you as a colorful, lively and desirable guest. Avoid the pedestrian. Be imaginative. Lead off in the first paragraph with a challenging fact or provocative statistic to catch attention. Nonfiction writers will recognize this as "the hook," a time-honored technique for beginning an article.
The body of your letters should describe in broad terms what makes your book--and you--noteworthy. Summarize its theme, offer supporting facts, quote critics' advance praise, highlight the importance of the subject, underscore your availability and stress the book's reader appeal or listener interest. Your letters should also make clear exactly what you're asking for: a book review; an order; a meeting; an interview with a reporter and a feature story; an appearance on a radio or TV show. Conclude letters addressed locally by saying that you will telephone in a few days to follow up. Pitching letters to big names also can be fruitful. A well-known expert might be willing to read the manuscript or galleys of your book and write a foreword or jacket blurb. Imagine what a few kind words from Dr. C. Everett Koop, would do for the sales of a book on health care. Remember, it costs almost nothing to ask.
Pitching to Booksellers
Your letters to booksellers should, of course, encourage them to order your book. Dealers who neglected to stock it may be prompted to do so by a strong pitch letter. Dealers who ordered only a few copies may decide to increase their order. Only when your book is widely available in bookstores should you think about spending money on advertising.
The number of retail book outlets, especially independent booksellers, fell dramatically in the United States in recent years. An idea of the severity of the decline can be gleaned from the following statistics: In 1995, the American Booksellers Association, based in Tarrytown, N.Y., numbered more than 5,500 members with about 7,000 stores. Five years later membership was down to 3,100 members and 4,000 locations. Today, this trade group of book retailers has only 1,800 members and 2,500 locations. Don't overlook the importance of chain bookstores in book distribution today--including the new superstores--with centralized buying facilities. This means that one buyer does the ordering for many outlets, and any book order will likely be a big one. Major book wholesalers and distributors are desirable contacts, too.
Every author should make friends with local booksellers. Follow up your letters to them with a telephone call and then a visit in person. Having your book in a prized spot in a bookseller's display window can make a big difference in the number of copies sold. Suggest a traditional in-store autographing party. At these, you will talk about the writing of your book, chat with customers and autograph the copies they buy. If wine and cheese are served, your publisher may underwrite that cost.
Because customers rely on their recommendations, independent retailers can still play a major role in a book's success even though their numbers are dwindling. A case in point is Robert James Waller's 1992 novel, The Bridges of Madison County, a tender story of the brief love affair between a lonely Iowa farm wife and a magazine photographer, and how it haunts them for the rest of their lives. As with many other first novels, the publisher, Warner Books, made no special effort to publicize Waller's book. Enter Warren Cassell, owner of Just Books, a tiny independent bookstore in Greenwich, Connecticut. Cassell praised Waller's book in his store's newsletter as "one of the finest first novels we have ever read," certain to be on "our life list of favorite novels." Booksellers everywhere shared his enthusiasm. Word-of-mouth praise kept The Bridges of Madison County on bestseller charts until it reached the number one spot early in 1993 and remained there tenaciously. Just Books, the store that originally ordered only three copies of this unheralded work, eventually sold more than a thousand copies.
Pitching to Librarians
In pitching a direct-mail publicity campaign, don't ignore libraries, especially regional library systems with centralized purchasing. Local public libraries or nearby college and university libraries are also good targets. Librarians like to have the works of local authors represented in their collections. Although librarians are strongly influenced by reviews of forthcoming books in such publications as Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, these publications cannot evaluate every new title. A personal letter from the author can make librarians aware of a new book they otherwise might have overlooked. The buying power of the 34,296 libraries in the United States and Canada is impressive. In fact, librarians buy one of every three trade books published. And, unlike individual book buyers, larger libraries often buy multiple copies of popular titles for their main and branch libraries.
Pitching to Reviewers
It's accepted dogma in publishing that a good review does more for sales than any advertisement. This makes review copies inexpensive tools for self-promotion. All publishers maintain mailing lists of the book reviewers to whom review copies are sent, and they will usually share these lists with their authors. Classified according to size, the publication's circulation and its clout with readers, these are referred to as their A, B and C lists. With them in hand, you can easily compile your own mailing lists of reviewers at newspapers and magazines that are not on the publisher's lists. When a preliminary dummy of your book jacket is available, mail a photocopy of it and the table of contents with a cover letter to such untapped reviewers. Ask them to note at the bottom of your letter whether they would like to receive a review copy, and include a return envelope to make responding easy. Publishers will welcome the names of such reviewers who express an interest in receiving your book--especially if you provide the addresses on peel-off labels. Your publisher can afford to be generous with review copies; authors are paid no royalties on books distributed for promotional purposes.
Other Promotional Possibilities
Sales of subsidiary rights are important sources of additional income for both publishers and authors. These rights can include sales to book clubs, paperback publishers, or movies and TV, as well as the marketing of foreign rights and serial (magazine) rights. Your publisher will probably touch base with the major players in these leagues. But don't be timid about doing a little horn-blowing on your own in the form of personalized letters to book club acquisition editors and other subsidiary rights buyers.
The Truth About Author Tours
Many writers dream of author tours, but a tour can be expensive. Airfares, hotels, meals and incidentals make this a particularly costly form of advertising for publishers. The fact is that certain books--first novels, children's books, and some kinds of nonfiction--often don't lend themselves to all the chores. Moreover as the late Fran Harris, longtime Detroit newscaster and radio and TV interviewer, pointed out to this writer, "many authors simply aren't good at impromptu conversation, or are uncomfortable before a camera or microphone, making them poor candidates for tours." Nevertheless, if you're convinced that a tour is essential to the success of your book and your publisher won't underwrite it, there's nothing stopping you from personally financing the tour.
Writers also can tour their books without even leaving home. "Radio interviews conducted over the telephone are the hottest way of promoting books today," says Rick Frischman, president of Planned TV Arts, a New York and Washington booking agency for author tours. "We've booked authors Bill Moyers, James Michener, Arnold Palmer, Jane Bryant Quinn, Alan Dershowitz, and others on our 'Morning Drive Radio Tours' with great success."
The Wayne Dyer Story
The undisputed all-time self-promotion champ is Dr. Wayne W. Dyer. In 1976, he was an associate professor at St. John's University and a practicing therapist. That year Funk & Wagnalls published his Your Erroneous Zones, a book based on his own experience and describing how to reverse unhealthy behavior patterns .
Convinced that he needed to take control of his life and to stop worrying about being bald or feeling guilty about his divorce, he decided to write a bestseller. After spending two years in reflection, he wrote the book in 13 days. When the prestigious New York Times Book Review failed to review his book, the 36-year-old Dyer decided to do his own promotion. Taking leave from his faculty post as a guidance counselor, he loaded his station wagon with copies of his book and began his self-financed promotional tour that took him to every state in the United States. People magazine called his effort "a self-marketing tour de force."
Making himself available for talk show interviews at any hour of the day or night, he soon propelled his book to the top of bestseller charts and kept it there for well over a year. Avon Books later bought the paperback rights, paying one of the highest prices then on record. Other best-selling self-help titles followed, all promoted by Dyer in the same way. He never returned to teaching and gave up his private practice and moved to Hawaii. Aggressive self-promotion had made him a millionaire. Today, Dyer is a fixture on public television, where he preaches his inspirational philosophy and hawks his books and associated products.
Why Self-promotion?
Unless you're an established author, it's unlikely that any publisher will provide your book with much in the way of advertising and promotion. The publisher's efforts will, in most cases, be perfunctory and largely futile. It's up to you, the author, to do everything you can to promote your book. But you must be ready to move quickly. As in perhaps no other industry, the timing of a book's promotional campaign is critical. The average book has the reading public's attention for only a few weeks or even days. A book's shelf life is--in humorist Calvin Trillin's words--"somewhere between milk and yogurt." The window of opportunity for the promotion of your book will be open ever so briefly. As the author, you must seize the moment. Self-promotion is no longer an option; it's a basic survival tactic.
SOURCES OF NAMES AND NUMBERS FOR MAILING LISTS
Build your own mailing lists of booksellers, librarians, book reviewers, and radio and TV programs that feature books and authors by using the following books available from public libraries. Many are also available on databases through regional library systems and larger public libraries.
BOOK DEALERS
American Book Trade Directory lists 30,000 retail and antiquarian book dealers in the U.S. and Canada, and over 1,000 wholesalers and paperback distributors.
LIBRARIANS
American Library Directory lists 34,296 U.S. and Canadian libraries, including public, armed forces, government and special libraries.
REVIEWERS, NEWS BUREAUS, SYNDICATES
Bacon's Newspaper/Magazine Directory lists `8,000 trade and consumer magazines, newsletters and journals, including ethnic and university newspapers.
Editor & Publisher International Yearbook lists daily and Sunday newspapers in the U.S. and Canada, weekly newspapers, newspaper syndicates.
Literary Market Place lists selected news services and feature syndicates, book reviewers at newspapers and magazine, and book clubs. Also lists selected radio and TV programs featuring books.
Standard Periodical Directory has more than 56,000 listings of U.S. and Canadian periodicals.
Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory lists more than 280,000 periodicals by 90,000 publishers in over 300 countries.
RADIO AND TV
Bacon's Radio/TV/Cable Directory lists every U.S. and Canadian broadcast outlet, with names of producers, assignment editors and reporters.
Labels: Authorship, Book Promotion, The Writing Clinic, Writers and Writing
