The Talk of the Book World Still Can't Sell

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Mon Jun 3 12:11:56 PDT 2002


Good news. There is still hope for Americans! Anti-feminist scare-mongering flops miserably, despite the hype.

***** The New York Times May 20, 2002, Monday, Late Edition - Final SECTION: Section A; Page 1; Column 2; National Desk HEADLINE: The Talk of the Book World Still Can't Sell BYLINE: By WARREN ST. JOHN

In its two months on the market, Sylvia Ann Hewlett's book "Creating a Life: Professional Women and the Quest for Children" has generated the kind of publicity authors and publishers usually only dream of.

The book was featured on "60 Minutes" and the cover of Time and New York magazines. It was promoted on "Oprah," "Today," "Good Morning America" and the "NBC Nightly News." It was debated on the editorial and op-ed pages of The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times. But there's one place you will not find a mention of Ms. Hewlett's book: the best-seller lists. The most talked-about book in America, which raises the specter that women who sacrifice families for careers might wake up childless at 45, is hardly selling at all.

"It's shocking," said Meredith Schreiber, a manager of Powell's Books in Portland, Ore., which has sold just four copies of "Creating a Life." "That's hardly any, especially for something that's hit 'Oprah.' "

The peculiar fate of "Creating a Life" is the publishing world's mystery of the year. How could a book with such exposure -- on the hot-button topic of reconciling motherhood and career -- sell so abysmally? Data from the research marketing firm Bookscan suggest "Creating a Life" has sold fewer than 8,000 copies. The book's publisher, Talk Miramax Books, puts the number closer to 10,000 but acknowledges that the book has sold far short of expectations.

Manhattan publishers, especially those at Talk Miramax, which paid a six-figure advance for the book and printed 30,000 hardcover copies, are considering the possible causes: a generic title, an ambiguous cover, the failure of the news media to appreciate the nuances of Ms. Hewlett's research. But out on the front lines, at the bookstores where publicity turns to sales -- or does not -- the explanation is all too simple: women are just not interested in shelling out $22 for a load of depressing news about their biological clocks.

"Why would anybody go pay money for something that's going to make them feel worse?" said Leslie Graham, the buyer for A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco, which has sold three copies of the book.

In Britain, where the book is published under the title "Baby Hunger," the situation is much the same. "If there was a pure correlation between publicity and media, this would be a No. 1 best seller," said Toby Mundy, the managing director of Atlantic Grove U.K., the book's British publisher. "In fact it's not in the top 10. It's not even in the top 50."

And no one is more baffled than Ms. Hewlett. "I don't know what to make of this absence of huge sales," she said. "There is a level at which I'm genuinely puzzled."

From the beginning, there were signs of trouble. Ms. Hewlett originally named her book "Baby Hunger," and Talk Miramax catalogs featuring that title were distributed. But many involved with the book found the title offensive. "People objected violently to it -- women at the company and women in the book," said Jonathan Burnham, the editor in chief of Talk Miramax Books. After polling friends and colleagues, Ms. Hewlett renamed her book "Creating a Life." Mr. Mundy, the British publisher, insisted on sticking with "Baby Hunger," he said, "to make this book as noisy as it needs to be."

Ms. Hewlett's retitled book was launched to fanfare. In February, Tina Brown, the chairman of Talk Media, invited media notables like Katie Couric, Lesley Stahl and Wendy Wasserstein to a luncheon in Ms. Hewlett's honor.

Over the clink of silverware on china, Ms. Hewlett presented the findings of her research: Many successful women weren't having children, she said, because their prime childbearing years coincided with the years when companies demand the most energy and time from employees. Women who put off having children until later did so with undue faith in science to ensure their ability to get pregnant, she argued. But even with fertility treatments, Ms. Hewlett reported, only 3 to 5 percent of women over 40 are able to have children.

The outlook is actually not that dismal, said Dr. Alan DeCherney, editor of the journal Fertility and Sterility, adding that Ms. Hewlett's figures appeared to lump too many women together. For example, Dr. DeCherney said, 15 to 20 percent of women ages 40 to 42 can become pregnant, compared with fewer than 3 percent of women over 44.

Ms. Hewlett's book included a short list of strategies for women who wanted to have children and successful careers -- start looking for a mate early, work for a company with progressive policies about pregnancy -- but it was the frightening news on fertility rates that caught the media's attention.

The blitz was on. Both "60 Minutes" and Time emphasized the infertility angle in their coverage. The magazine sold briskly -- nearly 10 percent more than Time's average newsstand volume -- and a loud public conversation began. Ms. Hewlett was praised for "breaking a silence" by the psychologist and author Carol Gilligan. Critics disparaged the book as a high-brow version of the mate-finding manua "The Rules."

In The Nation, the columnist Katha Pollitt wrote that "Creating a Life" belonged "with all those books warning women that feminism -- too much confidence, too much optimism, too many choices, too much 'pickiness' about men -- leads to lonely nights and empty bassinets."

It was exactly the sort of debate that typically drives big sales. "The Rules," after all, spent 28 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list five years ago. Similarly exposed books had long runs on the list as well, including 39 weeks for Susan Faludi's "Backlash" in 1992.

But the publicity may have backfired. The book was portrayed in articles as not merely controversial, but as scary. The headline on the cover of New York magazine summed up the anxiety the book was generating: Baby Panic.

"There was one piece of bad luck -- that both '60 Minutes' and Time chose to emphasize the infertility angle," Ms. Hewlett said. "They didn't ambush me, they just chose the most bad-news aspects of the book."

Mr. Burnham said: "What people come away with is the frightening data. They are taking in the bad news and not paying attention to the prescriptive elements."

Ms. Hewlett's book didn't make it easy to get to those prescriptive elements. It is front-loaded with the regretful voices of women in their 50's who never had children. The advice section at the end feels cursory and obligatory.

The torrent of coverage had another unintended effect, dampening interest among many readers.

"The woman who feels devastated that her life didn't work out doesn't want to read about it," said Roxanne Coady, the owner of R. J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn. "The woman who gets it as a cautionary tale gets what they need from the press."

Within days of publication Talk Miramax knew it had a flop on its hands. Mr. Burnham was tracking sales of the book through daily reports. "We expected a spike," he said. "We didn't get it."

Indeed, while the New York media was heaping attention on the book, booksellers were ordering not by the box, but by the envelope.

"The media's expectation about things in many cases aren't the same as the rest of America," said Ms. Graham, the San Francisco bookseller. "My expectations were I'd sell a few, and I've sold a few." Ms. Graham said that at her store, books about getting pregnant after 35 are outselling "Creating a Life."

Ms. Hewlett said she was now "just absorbing the realities."

"Do I fault Talk Miramax for not molding the coverage?" she said. "I'm not sure that kind of control is ever possible."

Talk Miramax says it has not given up on the book. "I feel the battle is not over," said Mr. Burnham, the editor in chief. "Books have long, complicated lives. I've not accepted that the book is a nonseller."

To that end, the company is focusing on a new marketing campaign for an upcoming paperback edition, one that will emphasize Ms. Hewlett's prescriptions for "having it all." It is also looking at new cover possibilities.

"We did everything we could do and if we didn't anticipate the deep level of anxiety on the part of women in America -- well that might be," said Hilary Bass, a spokeswoman for the company. "When you get that personal it's hard to know." ***** -- Yoshie

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