On Mon, 03 Jun 2002 15:11:56 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
writes:
> 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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