Grisham's latest hits shelves

Wednesday is Independence Day for the book community. That is, it's Grisham Day, which means that 2.5 million hardcover copies of John Grisham's latest novel go on sale in every bookstore in the United States and Canada, large and small, independent and chain, as well as every retail outlet that sells books, and every supermarket and airport and record-store bookstall.

And that means joy, without a blush and almost beatific, for every store owner or manager.

Overly dramatic? Not by much. A Grisham novel will generally have a net sale of well over 2 million copies in hardcover, with a first printing of 2.8 million copies, and 3 or 4 million more in paperback. And he is a seamless sell. "There's always a Grisham starting or ending," said Phil Ollia, vice president for merchandising at Borders Books and Music and Waldenbooks. "The cloth ends, the paper begins; the paper ends, the cloth begins." The paper Grisham that is now metaphorically ending this cycle was last year's cloth best seller, The Partner, which remains at No. 1 Sunday on the New York Times paperback fiction best-seller list. Wednesday, this year's cloth begins with the sale of The Street Lawyer, the ninth Grisham novel in nine years. Book publishing does have its other celebrations, when, for instance, the latest by Tom Clancy or Stephen King or Michael Crichton or Danielle Steel or Mary Higgins Clark goes on sale. But Grisham is the Garth Brooks of popular literature. Is it possible for the writer to even top the country singer? The potential is there, at least. According to the Census Bureau, nearly 134 million Americans have been certified by some high school or college as being able to read. So if a goodly number of those really can read, then there is a colossal number of people who could but don't read Grisham. The Grisham glass ceiling has been about 6 million copies, although The Firm eventually sold about 14 million copies. Grisham's publishers, Doubleday in hardcover now and Dell (in paperback next year), are going to try once again to break through -- by offering everyone in the world with an e-mail address a copy of the first chapter of The Street Lawyer. Jacqueline Everly, associate publisher and executive director of marketing for Doubleday, said the strategy was based on the wistful belief that the first chapter is so compelling that vast numbers of its readers will immediately dash out and buy the book. (The first chapter starts with the usual Grisham hero, the young white male lawyer, meeting up in an elevator with an apparent homeless bum of pungent odor who is armed with a gun and 12 sticks of what is seemingly dynamite strapped to his waist under a bulky gray cardigan and who halfway through the chapter takes nine white male lawyers hostage.) Is this e-mail campaign simply the breathless adventure of the entrepreneur, or avarice? Does Doubleday think it can get the whole world to read Grisham? Whatever, word of mouth is the best driver of sales, but sampling is the best marketing device to build word of mouth. So on Wednesday, much as a toothpaste company sends small samples through the mail, Doubleday will take full-page ads in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today reprinting half of the book's first chapter and offering an e-mail address for the entire chapter to be e-mailed back to the reader who asks for it (TheStreetLawyer "For Borders the first day and the first week are tremendous. It's destination buyers. They know what they want when they enter the store." Waldenbooks, on the other hand, is a chain of 800 mall stores. "It's impulse buying," he said. "Grisham is a brand name. He's stacked in the front of Borders, but in Walden he is so far up front he's on the lease-line." The "lease-line" is that precise point where the store's front meets the municipally owned sidewalk. Ollia discounts the old myth that megaseller authors like Grisham or Clancy bring customers into a store for their latest books, and then the customer buys another book or two. "What these writers do is get people used to being in bookstores and buying books," he said. "Grisham gets people in the habit of buying books." Why is Grisham so popular? Why is he review-proof, since many reviewers certainly do not consider him a stylist? Many in book publishing point, first of all, to his plots, which mostly intrigue, whatever one thinks of his actual writing. Jack Hoeft, chairman and chief executive officer of Bantam Doubleday Dell, of course says that the author "is an excellent storyteller," but points out that his stories are topical. The Rainmaker, for instance, was about insurance companies; the new book is about the homeless. "There's not a lot of violence, and no sex, and since he writes about current subjects, he's got the broadest selection of readers I've ever seen," Hoeft said. There are other theories. Grisham books raise moral dilemmas, and the theory is that readers like to discuss how they would act in the circumstances that engage the books' main characters. Is the first chapter of The Street Lawyer so compelling that the e-mail pitch will break new sales records for Grisham? By Wednesday afternoon booksellers will be able to glimpse the answer. Meanwhile, by 5 o'clock this morning, John Grisham was up and writing next year's cloth.

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