Books for the Beach

Face it, most people aren’t going to lug “War and Peace” to the beach.

Pinnacle Books Inc., a New York-based mass-market paperback publisher, is well acquainted with the concept of the “beach book,” the lightweight form of literature that isn’t too heavy to carry or too taxing to read while you work on your tan.

Taking that a step further, the company this month launched a book-marketing campaign at bookstores, drugstores and supermarkets in Southern California and elsewhere aimed at beach- and pool-bound readers.

Under the slogan “Take a $5.95 vacation on us,” three Pinnacle paperbacks are packaged in a small net beach bag with a sample of suntan lotion. Each package contains a Pinnacle best-seller (usually in the “blitz-saga” genre, according to the promotion’s creator), a thriller and a romance novel.

While it’s a nationwide promotion, Pinnacle had Southern California firmly in mind, according to Tony Seidel, the Pinnacle vice president and associate publisher who conceived the idea. The Southland is a hot market for paperbacks in any season, accounting for about 15% of the business, he said, compared to about 2% or 3% in New York.

The promotion is a new wrinkle in the notoriously hidebound book-publishing industry, which has long ignored merchandising techniques so basic to retailing. For Pinnacle, being an independent firm and not part of a large publishing house helped. “No corporation I know of would have agreed to this,” he said. “If you want to do something different like this, most houses would look at you like you’re crazy.”

He said Pinnacle set out to sell 750,000 books--250,000 net bags’ worth--but so far has sold 1.6 million, or more than half a million bags. “We’re pretty pleased,” he said.