SOURCE: "Publish and Perish: First-Time Author Stages His Own Book Tour After Publisher Ignores Him," Detroit News, www.detnews.com, September 5, 1997.

[In the following review, Schleier discusses how Henkin had to do his own promotion for his novel Swimming Across the Hudson, because of the nature of today's publishing industry.]

From the time he was a youngster in New York City. Joshua Henkin knew he wanted to be a writer.

But he thought of writing, he says, like some kids want to be in the NBA or walk on the moon. It was a far-off fantasy rather than something to which he seriously aspired.

When he finished Harvard in 1987 with a B.A. in social studies, however, Henkin went to the San Francisco area, got a job reading fiction for a magazine and discovered how bad the majority of writers were. So bad, he says, that he was convinced he could do at least as well.

"I thought if so many people were willing to fail. I ought to be willing to fail," he recalls.

So he came to Ann Arbor in 1991 and enrolled at the University of Michigan in quest of a master's degree. He received his degree in June 1993, started writing that fall and a little more than a year later was offered a book contract for a "literary" (meaning serious) novel, Swimming Across the Hudson.

With an advance large enough to pay the rent for a while, Henkin was convinced he was on his way to living his dream. He'd go on tour with his book and wow the reading public. And live happily ever after.

Only it didn't exactly work out that way.

Instead, Henkin quickly got a bruising education in the realities of the book business, and eventually went public with his anger in the pages of the New York Times. What happened to Josh Henkin might be a cautionary tale for others dreaming of fame and fortune through writing.

"I didn't have any illusions ahout my book becoming a best seller," says Henkin. "Hardly any literary novels arc on bestseller lists."

Still, like every author, he thought Swimming Across the Hudson had potential to do well, and hoped Putnam, its publisher, "would send me on a pretty extensive book tour And I was hoping they would take out a few advertisements."

Surprise: Henkin soon discovered that publisher-sponsored promotional tours and ad campaigns are the domain of the Tom Clancys and Danielle Steels of the world.

But rather than accept the conventional wisdom—that it's unseemly for literary authors to dirty their hands in commerce—he decided to promote his book on his own.

He arranged and paid for a 34-city, six-week tour during which he gave bookstore readings for as many as 150 people (in Ann Arbor) and as few as three (in Dallas). He had to read over the sounds of a live jazz concert in one store and answer questions until he was ready to scream ("Do you have pets?").

In the process, he managed to sell a few books (Swimming went back for two additional printings) and learn the book business Catch-22: Publishers spend money promoting successful authors, yet it's almost impossible for a newcomer to become successful unless he or she is promoted.

"Publishers only promote writers who don't need the promotion," agrees author Joseph Heller, whose novel Catch-22 added the phrase to the English language. "I never did promotion for Catch-22," he recalls. "It was not a success (in hardcover). The first printing was only 7,500 copies."

Topsy-turvy business

Three decades ago, Jacqueline Suzanne set the publishing industry on its car by arranging a TV promotion tour for her book, Valley of the Dolls. Other authors have since chosen to do some publicity on their own. But Henkin's extensive self-promotion blitz may provide a case history for literary authors of the future.

"May" is the operative word because Henkin launched Swimming at a time when, analysts say, the publishing industry is trying to keep its head above water and figure out in what direction it should be going. Though sales are up, returns of books from stores also have increased. Recently, many books with large initial print orders (and hefty advances for authors) have fared poorly—including highly touted memoirs by Jay Leno and Brett Butler.

Publishers not only don't seem to know what the public wants, sometimes they're rot even sure what they want. HarperCollins recently canceled more than 100 books for which it had contracted.

Moreover, the venues where books are sold are fast changing, according to Publisher's Weekly, the industry trade publication. Independent bookstores around the country, the traditional refuge for literary novels, are closing, replaced by chain mega-stores where books are featured alongside designer coffee and croissants.

In turn, coffee bars and supermarkets are selling books, providing additional outlets for established, best-selling authors. But when was the last time anyone asked the butcher to suggest the latest in experimental fiction?

It was into this uncertainty that Josh Henkin brought out his book.

Henkin, 33, now teaches creative writing at U[niversity of] M[ichigan]—a natural career segue from his novel of two adopted brothers. In the story, one of the brothers, now grown, gets a letter from his birth mother that reveals a secret about his past. He willingly risks everything he has attained to search for where he came from.

One of the brothers is gay, both were raised Jewish, and it is a measure of Henkin's marketing orientation that, he admits, the marketing opportunities were not lost on him. "The Jewish and gay communities are disproportionate readers of literary fiction," he says.

The rights and wrongs

Henkin made all the right moves with Swimming. He found an agent in New York, Lisa Bankoff of ICM. She sent the unfinished manuscript to a number of publishers and brought Henkin to New York to meet with those who responded positively. Ultimately, the book was sold to Putnam. Henkin's $20,000 advance was far more than most first-time authors receive, though hardly a king's ransom. He finished the novel late last year, and it was published in April.

Henkin's editor was Faith Sale. While everyone seemed to like Swimming Across the Hudson, she says, no one got genuinely excited by it at Putnam—a common fate of serious fiction. "No one did hand stands," is the way Sale puts it. There was no book club sale, no paperback sale. That meant there was no money available to promote the book.

With energy if not enthusiasm, Henkin assumed the mantle of book promoter. "I worried that it would appear unseemly," he says. "I did my best to be as unassuming and as low-profile as possible."

He began contacting reviewers and bookstore owners from lists and by networking, starting out "with bookstores where I knew someone."

He made postcards that featured the book cover, and once a bookstore agreed to let him read, he'd send a card announcing the reading to everyone he knew in that town.

A Putnam publicity executive, Marilyn Ducksworth, says the company helped him set up his tour: "Josh didn't do this alone. We tried to set up local media appearances."

But Henkin denies that. "I set everything up," he says. "I called up every bookstore and set it up on my own. Once I set up my itinerary, my publicist made sure it went to the sales department so there would be books around. But Putnam didn't get involved in where I was going and when I was going."

All told, he spent about $7,000 out of his own pocket, including travel, faxes and phone, he says. The phone bills were the biggest expense. At one point, the phone company cut off his credit card, assuming the sudden volume in calls meant someone had stolen it.

Henkin's not sure how many books he sold through the readings, but direct sales was only part of his mission. "I hoped to get attention for (he book, for someone at the reading to recommend it to a friend. Especially at independent bookstores, you're really appealing to the people who work there, who do a lot of personal selling when people come in and ask for a recommendation."

Overall, though, the tour "was expensive and tiring and kept me from writing. I don't have any regrets I did it. I just regret having had to do it."

Books vs. TV

Henkin has become a semi-celebrity for his promotional efforts, if not his book. He wrote an op-ed page essay for the New York Times about his experiences and subsequently appeared on CNN to talk about them. Another Catch-22. "I did the tour to get attention for the book, but it's the tour I'm getting attention for. I'm not interested in being famous for a book tour."

Still, he says he was lucky, because he was single, had saved up some money and wasn't shy. "What this experience says to me is that you really have to be more than just a writer. You have to go out and shake a lot of trees and be self-reliant, and that's unfortunate because the best writers arc not always the best speakers."

Phyllis Grann, the president of Penguin-Putnam, says that despite what industry Cassandras predict, serious fiction like Henkin's book will always have a place at Putnam. "We believe in publishing that kind of book," she says.

But the idea, she adds, is to start with realistic expectations—say 10,000 copies—and then move a literary author up to the mid-teens for a second book, and perhaps 20,000 copies for a third. "I try to publish over the long haul," she says. "It's never easy to hit the jackpot the first time out."

That's "completely reasonable," Henkin replies. "I don't disagree with it. At the same time, I'm also aware that plenty of first novels (without promotion) don't sell at all, and come the second book and third book and you get a track record for not selling. In the old days, publishing houses would have patience. This is not about my frustration with Putnam. This is about reality."

It's a reality that author Heller touched upon. "Television shows that cover books are competing for ratings," he says, "and the only way they'll get those ratings is if they book guests the audiences already know, another Catch-22."

That's a sentiment echoed by Henkin's editor Sale. "Am I happy?" she asks rhetorically. "I don't like what's going on. Who do you blame? (Commercial books) are what people are buying, what they are going into bookstores and asking for. I don't think anyone is to blame. Publishers want to publish literary books. But we're up against people who want to read a blockbuster entertaining novel. I don't know what you can do to change that.

"People would rather sit in front of a TV than read. I know that's an ugly generalization, but that's what's driving publishing, movies and everything else."